Category Archives: conference/symposium

GenderSmart Investing Summit: Traction to Transformation

Suzanne Biegel Co-founder, GenderSmart with Kshama Fernandes Chairperson, Northern Arc Investments

The 2022 GenderSmart Investing Summit took place in London on Oct 18-19. Although I could not attend physically, I could feel the enthusiasm, power, and passion through reading and watching the takeaways, highlights, and videos. This powerful movement to mainstream and integrate gender across the whole capital spectrum and all value chains is accelerating.

GenderSmart’s merger with 2XCollaborative into 2XGlobal (as of Jan 2023) was announced at the Summit. 2XGlobal‘s mission is “to equip and engage the full spectrum of investors, intermediaries, and innovators capable of transforming systems of finance through the gender-smart deployment of capital across asset classes and markets.”

Also during the Summit, the GenderSmart State of the Field 2022 the most extensive and qualitative survey capturing the broadest and most in-depth spectrum of insight and experience across the gender-smart investing field to date was released.

Kudos to the GenderSmart community and especially to Suzanne Biegel for her leadership and contagious passion for advancing this field forward.

B Corp Summit 2019: Driving a new agenda for capitalism

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IMG_5318 (1)The 4th European B Corp Summit took place on Sept 23-24 in Amsterdam. Great energy as this community drives a new agenda for capitalism and it feels that we are close to the tipping point! The B Corp movement using business as a force of good is growing steadily. Today there are 3000 B Corps in 70 countries and 600 in Europe while 100,000 companies are using the B Impact Assessment to improve their businesses. Two main topics were highlighted throughout the summit; 1) the shift from shareholder primacy to a commitment to all stakeholders, and 2) the emergency of the climate change crisis.
John Elkington, world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development introduced his new concept and book for tomorrow’s capitalism “Green Swans”. The global agenda is changing exponentially, from responsibility and resilience to regeneration. If exponential problems are known as Black Swans, exponential regeneration calls for Green Swans. So, he calls B Corps the ugly ducklings that would likely become the Green Swans.
Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab, stressed the urgency of system change. First, recognize the system failure then fix it: change from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism, from a culture of more to one of enough. Jay also shared the draft of B Lab’s Declaration of Climate Emergency and System Failure to be launched soon, committing further this community to tackle climate as a business strategy.
News: In January 2020, B Lab is launching the SDG Action Manager in partnership with the UN Global Compact. Using this free tool, one can 1) get a clear view of how your operations, supply chain, and business model create positive impact, 2) take action and track progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals 2) New B Corps announced at the summit: Bodyshop, Danone Belgium, Danone Netherlands.

Key actions: collaborate, let’s get working together, B the change!

Takeaways from The GIIN Forum 2018

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Over 1300 delegates attended the GIIN Forum 2018 which took place in Paris on Oct 30-31st. A strong opening message from Amit Bouri, Co-founder and CEO of the GIIN;

We need a new financial system that is accountable for its effects on people and the planet. I believe that impact investing presents a real alternative to the status quo….. 3 priorities for impact investments: mobilize more capital, ensure impact integrity and build the movement…..I hope that every one of you views this movement not just as an opportunity but as a responsibility to lead, to change expectations, & to build a just and sustainable world where everyone uses the full power of their investment capital as a force for good!

As the movement grows and starts mainstreaming there are different forces at play. As my colleague quite cleverly pointed out, there are a few camps looking at impact investment from different perspectives: impact fundamentalists, risk mitigators and impact washers. Thanks to GIIN members, and the thought leaders like Jed Emerson and Sir Roland Cohen there is a strong push to ensure impact integrity.

Sir Cohen commented on “the steps to reach the impact tipping point 2020” that
1) we should start seeing by 2020 the equivalent of impact accounts under GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) so that companies can publish alongside their financial accounts their impact financial accounts and 2) Measurable means dependable, not 100% accountable… if 20% of companies measure their impact, that’s a paradigm shift and the rest will follow.

“We need to have a conversation about what value we really want to create. We will stay where we are if we just stay focused on making money with money.” were strong words by Jed Emerson who has recently published “The Purpose of Capital” (the book is free to download!), a very important literature that reminds us to stop and reflect as we are thinking and talking too much about the “how” and getting blurred on the “why”.

Dq1ALNEWsAAdjqP (3)Omydiar Network presented the outstanding series “Beyond Trade-offs” covering perspectives of leading investors who have moved beyond the trade-off debate to invest across the returns continuum.
“We need to move beyond the binary debate of commercial returns vs concessionary – in reality, it’s a continuum.” Roopa Kudva, Partner Omydiar Network

A topic which is appearing more is the role of Blockchain in impact. There were two presentations both moderated by Shaun Conway, President of ixoFoundation. ixo is building the Blockchain for Impact, transforming all measurable changes that have an impact into Verified Impact Data with crypto-economic Proof of Impact. A lot of exciting learnings to come from this area!

ixo: The Blockchain for Impact from ixo foundation on Vimeo.

Skoll World Forum 2017 Fault Lines: Creating Common Ground


The 14th Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship took place on April 4-7. This year’s theme was Fault Lines: Creating Common Ground. As boldly described in their welcome message;

Globally, rifts are emerging along cultural, class, and political lines as globalization and the digital revolution have benefited some, and left some behind. The divide grows in how people perceive-and experience-the world which represents a threat to a peaceful and prosperous future. Can we design a world where our common humanity outshines our ideological, cultural, and political differences? Together we’ll rise to new ideas, new perspectives, and ultimately, new relationships built on trust and a mutual desire for human progress. We’ll highlight innovators around the world creating common ground through their drive, creativity and leadership.

It was not only an inspiring forum but a very rich and powerful gathering with bold and innovative ideas and exchanges happening, one of the best that I have attended in the past 11 years.
Highly recommended videos to watch… and if you would like to see more here is the entire playlist.
-Jeff Skoll talks with Jim Kim, President of World Bank Group (29min)

-Jess Search talks to Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder and CEO of Chobani (22min)

-A chilling and fascinating analysis by Michael Porter of HBS on what is the problem in the USA: Porter on Populism (90min)

Meet the Skoll Awardees of 2017 (link includes a 5 min intro to all 4 Awardees)
-Kola Masha: Babban Gona is an investor-owned social enterprise serving networks of smallholder farmers in Nigeria with a model created specifically to attract youth. The first for-profit company to receive the Skoll Award
-Elizabeth Hauser: Build Change trains homeowners, local builders, engineers, and government officials to construct or retrofit disaster-resistant houses and schools in emerging nations vulnerable to earthquakes and typhoons.
-Rajesh Panjabi: Last Mile Health partners with government to deploy, support, and manage networks of community health professionals and to integrate them into the public health system. Working in Liberia.
-Bradley Myles: Polaris systematically disrupts human trafficking networks and restores freedom to survivors. With experience and expertise from direct victim services such as hotlines and resource centers, to policy advocacy, Polaris provides a data backbone for the sector.

A big thanks to Jeff Skoll, Sally Osberg, Stephan Chambers, the Skoll team and the Saiid Business School for their awesome work.

Takeaways from the seif Impact Investing Congress 2017

IMG_8675The 2nd Impact Investing Congress organized by seif took place in Zurich on Jan 24th.
Some takeaways and highlights
-The space continues to grow rapidly and somewhat chaotically as new players from all segments with different aspirations and products enter and push for mainstreaming impact investment. Growth is great and as a result you can’t avoid some growing pains. Some big banks such as BBVA and Barclays are becoming more active in this field.
-Rod Schwarz, CEO of ClearlySo introduced the recently launched ClearlySo Atlas, an impact assessment solution for private equity investors and venture capital investors. Atlas asseses the impact of portfolio holdings enabling investors to map, track and report on their impact and sustainability. What is great about this tool is that it targets the mainstream investments managers/portfolios (not only the impact investments) to improve on its impact. This goes along with Rod’s and ClearlySo’s belief that we are moving from the two dimensional investment criteria (return vs risk) towards a three dimensional one adding impact as a feature to all investments.
-Antoni Ballabriga , Global Head of Responsible Business at BBVA made an impressive presentation on how this large bank has recently gone through a transformation involving 28,000 of their employees around the globe to (re)define their purpose. The bank’s purpose is now “To bring the age of opportunity to everyone” and thus their new tagline is “Creating Opportunities”. With the WHY being cleared, the WHAT and HOW follows. These opportunities will be offered through: financial products that meet individual customer needs; financial education programs; transparent, clear and responsible communication; commitment with the environment; support to entrepreneurship; and promotion of culture and science, among other initiatives in favor of society. Let’s see how the initiatives of another large financial player reshape the universe – for the time being let’s give them the benefit of doubt.
-Phyllis Costanza, CEO of UBS Optimus Foundation updated us on the positive results so far of their first Development Impact Bond, an innovative instrument which brings in new money and cross sector partnerships for development. They are working on a new DIB and hopefully many other DIBs would be launched by other institutions in the future.
-The closing was a very interesting panel that debated on the now and future of impact investments in Switzerland which gave us much hope but equally cautions as the industry grows and mainstreams with differing views on the extent of the impact (improving some things vs solving the real problems) that the organizations would like to create.
Thanks seif for organizing this productive Congress.

SOCAP 16

AAEAAQAAAAAAAAdQAAAAJGM1MDEyMWU4LWNkNDctNDlhYi05YWNlLTFkOWVmYjMwOWRkMAThe ninth SOCAP, the conference at the intersection of money and meaning took place Sept 13-16 with 2500 attendants, 10 tracks and 12 parallel meetings. It looked overwhelming how this conference has grown but judging from the plenaries and sessions, it has grown in breadth and depth in a solid remarkable way and whilst expanding keeping its feet on the ground. The Opening Plenary discussions and talks made us reflect that the “why” is as important as the “how” on impact investments was a great way to set the tone for the conference. The sessions on impact evaluation and measurement, mapping the impact investment landscape with collaborative data, gender lens investing, a total portfolio approach on fossil investing and B Corps, show the richness and evolution of this movement. Congratulations to Rosa Lee Harden, Kevin Jones, and Lindsay Smalling for the tremendous work!
There are many talks and sessions you can find of SOCAP16 in youtube. Some of my favourites were:
Jed Emerson, Blended Value
Impact at Scale
Shifting Culture Towards Equity
Also the following three sessions were very interesting but it requires a bit more time to watch.
The Transformative Edge of Impact
Navigating Impact Investing: the Pursuit of Clarity and Simplicity
Evolving Impact Measurement over the next decade

The First European B Corp Summer Summit

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The European B Corp Summit, a celebration for People Using Business as a Force for Good, took place in Rome on June30 & July1. Two energetic days of learning, sharing, networking amongst the rapidly expanding global B Corp community (currently 1809 companies in 50 countries). The focus was on brainstorming and action planning on how can we continue to accelerate this movement. Powerful messages through numerous inspiring speakers including: Pedro Tarak of Sistema B, Lorna Davis of Danone, Thomas Van Craen of Triodos Bank, Bryan Welch of B the Change Media, Mirella Zuidgeest of thermaflex, Corey Lien of DOMI, Pablo Sepulveda & Eloisa Silva of Birus, and Christoph Barman of Loyco. Thanks to the B Lab Europe team and Nativa for organizing such an impactful event!

Skoll World Forum 2016: Fierce Compassion


The 13th Skoll World Forum on social entrepreneurship took place on April 13-15. It was my 10th Skoll and it was one of my favourite forums so far. There are many sessions that can be seen on video. This year the theme was Fierce compassion and the topics most highlighted were “climate change” and “refugee crisis”.
Highly recommended videos to watch:
Al Gore: A Climate of Change: Fueling a new future
Alexander Betts: Refugees as a Resource
Profile of the 2016 Skoll Award Recipients:
Mallika Dutt and Sonali Khan (Breakthrough)
Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative)
Chuck Slaughter (Living Goods)
Vivek Maru (Namati)
Oren Yakobovich (Videre)
Sessions:
Refugee Crisis: Roots and Remedies
Getting Beyond Business as Usual: Paving the way for social progress

The musical performances during the Forum were just awesome and inspiring starting with Malek Jandali, Syrian-American Composer and Pianist, Juanes, and Sonita Alizadeth.

The most moving performance was of Sonita, rapper and child marriage activist. The two videos Sonita’s performance and the interview that followed are the must sees of this year’s Skoll.

I would like to thank Jeff Skoll, Sally Osberg, the whole Skoll team and the University of Oxford for hosting again such an inspiring and powerful rich content forum.

womeneffect.com – a platform accelerating investments in women and girls

IMG_5016Every year very interesting forums and meetings take place in the second half of January here in Zurich as these are scheduled before and after the WEF forum in Davos. This year we had the seif Congress on Impact Investment and Social Innovation, a nice venue providing an overview of the current state of impact investment in Europe and promoting the building of an ecosystem in Switzerland. Coinciding with this Congress there was a meeting launching the Women Effect.

We believe that investing in women and girls is not only right, it is smart. It leads to positive returns for investors and better social and economic outcomes for everyone. This is the women effect.

– Suzanne Biegel, founder of womeneffect and a pioneer in gender lens investing.

Women Effect is a global community of generous men and women, individuals and institutions (investors, philanthropists and wealth managers) who have come together to accelerate the women effect in the most strategic and efficient way. It is a platform to learn connect and collaborate, accelerating investments in women and girls. Suzanne’s article on this subject.

Skoll World Forum 2015: Belief

SWF2015_mobile_logoThe 12th Skoll World Forum took place April 15-17th in Oxford. It was my 9th Skoll in a row and it is still my favourite forum for its great content, inspiring conversations and unlimited networking opportunities. This year two of the topics that were most emphasized were girls’ education and the continuing need to collaborate amongst the three converging worlds; private, public and citizen sectors. Another positive,this year, many of the sessions were recorded (more than ever) so subscribe to the youtube page of Skoll so that you can check on the videos that are being uploaded. Check also content through their Facebook and twitter page.