Speakers

Dr. Amal-Lee Amin

Climate Change Director, CDC Group

Amal-Lee Amin joined CDC as Climate Change Director, within the Value Creation Strategies team in February 2020. Previously, Amal-Lee worked for the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), where she was Chief of Climate Change. Prior to joining the IADB, Amal-Lee spent ten years working on sustainable energy and climate change within the UK Government, including at the Cabinet Office, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and the Foreign Office. At CDC, Amal-Lee plays a pivotal role in leading the Climate Change team and implementing the strategy. She also supports and promotes CDC’s priorities within this area internally and externally.

Michael Anderson

CEO, MedAccess

Michael has overall lead on strategy, partnerships, and delivery at MedAccess. Prior to joining MedAccess in 2017 he was CEO at CIFF (the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation) and Director General at the UK Department for International Development. He has served as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on the SDGs, on the UN Commission for Life-Saving Commodities, and various committees for the UN, World Bank, G7, G20, and OECD. He was a founder owner of Bazian, a company specialising in Evidence Based Medicine, and had a legal career for 15 years specialising in cross-border litigation. Michael has held academic posts at SOAS and the LSE and was made a Companion in the Order of the Bath in 2014 for his services to international development.

Amit Bouri

CEO and Co-Founder, The Global Impact Investing Network

Amit Bouri leads the largest global community of impact investors dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing. Amit co-founded the GIIN in 2009, following the launch of the Monitor Institute’s, Investing for Social and Environmental Impact, a landmark report, which he helped to conceive and develop. His work would eventually lead to the growth of a global network around the concept of impact investing and provide a blueprint that would seed the GIIN’s creation. Today, Amit dedicates his work to engaging industry leaders, institutional investors, foundations, and leading financial institutions all over the world to advocate for greater integration of social and environmental factors in all investment decisions, and to develop the tools and resources needed to effectively mobilize more capital towards impact investments.

Sir Ronald Cohen

Chairman, Global Steering Group for Impact Investment

Sir Ronald Cohen is a pioneering philanthropist, venture capitalist, private equity investor, and social innovator. He is recognized as the father of impact investment and European venture capital, and is driving forward the global Impact Revolution. He serves as Chairman of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative at Harvard Business School, and The Portland Trust. He is a co-founder and former Executive Chairman of Apax Partners Worldwide, a global private equity firm. He is also a co-founder of Social Finance UK, USA, and Israel, co-founder Chair of Bridges Fund Management and former co-founding Chair of Big Society Capital. Oxford and Harvard educated, Ronnie was born in Egypt and left as a refugee at the age of 11, when his family came to the UK. He is now based in Tel Aviv, London and New York. He is the author of IMPACT: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change, which was published in 2020 by Penguin Random House and is a Wall Street Journal Best Seller.

Kwasi Donkor

Chief Strategy Officer, U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF)

Kwasi Donkor joined USADF as the Chief Strategy Officer in April 2020. In this role, he is responsible for driving efforts to incorporate digitization and innovative finance across USADF’s country programs and strategic focus areas, including the energy, entrepreneurship and agriculture portfolios. Kwasi brings a wealth of knowledge gained over 20 years working in the private, non-profit and government policy sectors to address a wide range of enterprise development and socially responsible investment issues. Most recently, as a Senior Advisor at USAID he was charged with implementing USAID’s global strategic focus on payment models and digital technology for financial inclusion. Prior to USAID, Kwasi worked for the Grameen Foundation in Uganda as the Interim Country Director where he led a strategic turnaround and served as the overall risk manager for country operations, anticipating and responding to potential threats to execution, financial viability and regulatory compliance. Before joining Grameen, from 2009 to 2013, Kwasi worked in Ghana, where he served as the Mobile Financial Services Head of Go-to-Market for Millicom’s commercial brand Tigo. At Tigo, he led and executed the commercial launch for the Tigo Cash mobile money product. Kwasi has held multiple roles across a number of Fortune 500 diversified financial services firms. He started his career as a Senior Specialist in Merrill Lynch’s private client business.

Temitayo Erogbogbo

Director of Advocacy, MSD for Mothers

Tayo Erogbogbo has two decades of combined private sector and international development experience, 10 years of which was spent in the pharmaceutical industry in multiple roles across community relations, government affairs, marketing and sales. As the Director of Advocacy for MSD for Mothers, Tayo is responsible for national and global strategic partnerships and programs to bring about policies and practice changes to improve maternal health care and strengthen health systems, particularly where private sector approaches can be leveraged for greater impact. Prior to MSD for Mothers, Tayo led the establishment of an adolescents and youth constituency at The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) to advocate for better sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health policies and services at global, regional, and national levels. Previously, in collaboration with multisectoral partners in Nigeria, he contributed to the passage of the National Health Bill, the development of the National Gender Policy Guidelines and the passage of Violence Against Person's Prohibition in support of gender equality. Tayo also spearheaded Abbott's HIV patient relations function within Europe, developing services to support people living with HIV by partnering with community organizations.

Christopher Fabian

Co-Founder and Co-Lead, Giga

Most recently Chris co-founded Giga — a partnership between UNICEF and ITU to structure billions of dollars of financing to deliver affordable connectivity to every school in the world. Chris is a global technology executive and serial co-founder of initiatives that use technology for the public good. He has built, invested in, and mentored companies from startup through multiple investment rounds and exit. He led teams that built some of the largest implementations of low-connectivity mobile phone applications in the world, the first public-sector drone/UAV corridors, and various financial vehicles that have helped bring together the best of public sector values and technological innovation. Chris co-founded UNICEF's Innovation Unit, and built a world-class team of open-source technologists that propelled UNICEF to the forefront of innovation for public good. He led the teams that set up UNICEF's Venture Fund, as well as the organization's Cryptocurrency Fund.

Saliem Fakir

Executive Director, African Climate Foundation

Prior to establishing the African Climate Foundation, Saliem served as the Head of the Policy & Futures Unit of WWF South Africa for 11 years. He has worked as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Public Administration and Planning and an Associate Director for the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy at Stellenbosch University. Prior to that he served as Director of the World Conservation Union, South Africa (IUCN-SA) for eight years. Saliem has served on several Boards and is a prolific writer who contributes regularly to leading South African publications like Engineering News, Business Day and the Daily Maverick.

Tariq Fancy

Founder and CEO, The Rumie Initiative

Tariq Fancy previously served as the Chief Investment Officer for Sustainable Investing at BlackRock in 2018 and 2019, where he was responsible for the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations across the investment activities of the world’s largest asset manager. He currently serves as CEO of Rumie, an education technology non-profit that he originally founded in 2013. Rumie uses innovative and free mobile-based microlearning to close learning gaps and today reaches learners in over 200 countries, including allowing Afghan women and girls to learn safely from anywhere in local languages through mobile phones. Rumie is a graduate of Y-Combinator and is the subject of business school case studies by INSEAD and Harvard Business School. Tariq began his career in Credit Suisse First Boston’s technology-sector investment banking group in Silicon Valley in 2001. In late 2003, he joined New York-based private equity firm MHR Fund Management, where he focused on distressed and special situations investing and became the firm’s youngest partner in 2006. From 2010 to 2012 he helped build out and invest new strategies at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).

Dr. Kevin P. Gallagher

Director and Professor, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University

Dr. Kevin P. Gallagher is a Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, where he directs the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. Gallagher is the author or co-author of six books: The China Triangle: Latin America’s China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus, Ruling Capital: Emerging Markets and the Reregulation of Cross-Border Finance; The Clash of Globalizations: Essays on Trade and Development Policy; The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization (with Roberto Porzecanski); The Enclave Economy: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Mexico’s Silicon Valley (with Lyuba Zarsky); and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA and Beyond. Gallagher serves on the United Nations’ Committee for Development Policy and co-chairs the T20 Task Force on An International Financial Architecture for Stability and Development at the G20.

Kyla Gineitis

VP, Citi Social Finance

Kyla has been a member of the Citi Social Finance team (previously Citi Inclusive Finance) since 2017 and has a background in small to mid-sized corporate banking with the Citi Commercial Bank. Citi Social Finance is a specialist team that works across Citi businesses globally to develop solutions that enable the bank, its clients, and partners to expand access to financial services and advance economic progress in underserved market segments. We seek out innovative partnerships with financial institutions, telecommunications and fintech providers, local and national governments, consumer goods companies, community-based organizations and others that have close relationships with the unbanked and the underserved segments of society.

Adam Hadidi

Founder and Managing Director, BluePeak Private Capital

Adam is the Founder and Managing Director of BluePeak Private Capital. He has 15 years of international investment management and banking experience. Adam was previously a Managing Director at Gulf Capital’s private credit business, which he joined as a founding member in 2011. Prior to joining Gulf Capital, Adam worked at UBS in London as Associate Director in its special situations team and at MezzVest, a mezzanine fund manager with over EUR 2 billion of assets under management. He started his career in leveraged finance at Royal Bank of Scotland. Adam holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Honors) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom.

Nafisa Jiwani

Managing Director for Health Initiatives, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)

Nafisa Jiwani is the Managing Director for Health Initiatives at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), America’s development bank. As a Managing Director, Ms. Jiwani serves as a senior policy adviser for the agency, providing guidance and leadership on policy and transactional matters focused on Global Health. Additionally, Nafisa is spearheading DFC’s Health and Prosperity Initiative, which seeks to mobilize capital to strengthen health systems and improve resiliency in developing countries. Prior to joining the agency, Nafisa served as the Deputy Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on Value-Based Care where she led strategic department-wide priorities on maternal morbidity and mortality, sepsis and kidney care, social determinants of health and artificial intelligence/predictive analytics. Before taking her role at HHS, Nafisa worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Team Lead for Policy and Partnerships in the Office of the Associate Director for Policy and Strategy. During her time at CDC, she focused her efforts on health systems transformation and was responsible for translating evidence into payment policy.

Lori Kerr

Chief Executive Officer, FinDev Canada

Lori Kerr joined FinDev Canada as Chief Executive Officer in June 2021. A Canadian national, she is a widely experienced international development finance professional with more than two decades of leadership in private investment in emerging markets with a focus on sustainable infrastructure, climate finance, and blended finance. Ms. Kerr joined FinDev Canada by way of the Global Infrastructure Facility at the World Bank in Washington, DC, where she was responsible for corporate strategy, thought leadership, partnerships, and international engagement for the largest global fund advising developing country governments on the preparation and structuring of commercially viable infrastructure projects. Previously, Ms. Kerr served as Senior Director at Climate Finance Advisors developing low-carbon, climate-resilient investment strategies and blended finance solutions to mobilize private capital in developing countries. She also spent 18 years at the Inter-American Development Bank Group serving in management and senior investment roles where she spearheaded strategic initiatives to support the expansion and development impact of private sector activities as well as private sector transaction origination, structuring, and asset management. Ms. Kerr also spent 14 years as an Adjunct Professor of International Project Finance and Investment at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Ms. Kerr holds an Honours Bachelor degree from the University of Western Ontario and an International MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Björn Kümmel

Senior Political Advisor, Global Health Affairs, Federal Ministry of Health, Germany

Björn Kümmel is currently the Senior political advisor on global health affairs at the German Federal Ministry of Health. A lawyer — specializing in international law — by trade, Kümmel has been a German member of the WHO Executive Board since 2018, Vice-Chair of the WHO Executive Board since 2020 and the Chair of the WHO open-ended working group on sustainable finance starting in 2021.

Leslie Maasdorp

Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, New Development Bank

Mr. Leslie Maasdorp is Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the New Development Bank. In this role he is responsible for the treasury, portfolio management, finance and accounting functions of the Bank. Over the past 25 years he has occupied senior leadership roles in both private and public sectors. Most recently he served as a Managing Director and President of Bank of America Merrill Lynch for Southern Africa for a period of four years. Prior to that he served in a dual role as Vice Chairman of Barclays Capital and Absa Capital. In 2002, he was the first African to be appointed as International Advisor to Goldman Sachs International. Before his 13 years as a global investment banker, he served in several senior leadership roles in the Government of South Africa. In 1994, after the transition to democracy, he was appointed as Special Advisor to the Minister of Labour and in 1999, in his role as Deputy Director General of the Department of Public Enterprises, he led the restructuring and privatization of state owned enterprises for the South African Government. Before his appointment at the NDB, Mr. Leslie Maasdorp was appointed by the Board of ADvTECH as Chief Executive Officer. In 2007 he was designated as a young global leader by the World Economic Forum. He holds a BA degree in Economics and Psychology from the University of the Western Cape and a Master of Science degree in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, at the University of London.

Pascal Murasira

Managing Director, Norrsken East Africa

Pascal Murasira is the Managing Director for Norrsken Foundation in East Africa and serves in its global management team. Before being named MD in February 2021, Pascal was a consultant in The Netherlands working with European tech startups operating on the African market. He advised clients on commercial issues ranging from go-to-market and growth strategies, partnership development, and talent acquisition. Previous to his work in the Netherlands, Pascal was Head of Commercial Operations in Rwanda for Babylon Health, a healthtech startup providing end-to-end digital health services to millions of Rwandans.

Rosita Najmi

Senior Director, Head of Social Innovation, PayPal

Rosita Najmi has been a global social and economic development specialist since 2001. At PayPal, Rosita serves as the Global Head of Social Innovation and leads a team that engages PayPal customers, employees, products, and business operations to advance social, economic, and environmental impact. Her portfolio seeks to democratize financial services, improve the financial health of people and small businesses, increase the volume and scale of global charitable giving, support climate justice and resilience and environmental sustainability, and strengthen communities through local grantmaking, volunteering, and pro bono technical assistance. Rosita began in global development by co-founding an NGO in the public health sector in Benin and served as its executive director and board member. Her experience includes field research, publications, and operational and advocacy experience across Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, and Central Europe. She has advised and brokered collaborations with governments, the private sector, civil society, and multilateral organizations, including the G7 and G20. She has designed and executed strategies for global and country advocacy, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and capacity building. In her personal capacity, she is a member of the national board of the Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit which protects and serves courageous women and girls who refuse to be victims of violence.

Marcos Neto

Director of the Finance Sector Hub, UNDP

Marcos Athias Neto joined UNDP in February 2013 and has since led UNDP’s global work on private sector development and foundations, first at UNDP’s headquarters in New York and then, from November 2014, as head of the Istanbul International Center for Private Sector in Development (IICPSD). In April 2019, Marcos returned to New York to lead the establishment and management of UNDP’s new Finance Sector Hub.Marcos led the development of UNDP’s new private sector strategy and its offers on SDG Finance. He co-chairs the executive boards of the Business Call To Action and the Connecting Business Initiative. Apart from his role at UNDP, Marcos also serves on the Supervisory Boards of CARE International and the Museum of Tomorrow International.Over the past 25 years, Marcos has been a leader in sustainable development, poverty eradication and multi-stakeholder partnership building. He is a passionate advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals.Prior to joining UNDP, Marcos spent 17 years at CARE International. During his tenure at CARE International, Marcos served in numerous roles including Regional Manager for Asia and Latin America at CARE UK, Executive Director of CARE Brasil, and Program Director in Central America.

Christian Novak

CEO Delphos International - FMA

Mr. Christian Novak is CEO of Delphos - FMA and Global Head of Blended Finance of Delphos International. He possesses 30 years of combined experience in development financing and investment banking. Mr. Novak's advisory work centres on risk management and investment structuring in the space of development finance and impact investing. He is also a Professor of Practice at McGill University's Institute for the Study of International Development, where his practice is focused on development financing, particularly on the effective use of public and private capital to finance the SDGs. His previous experience includes senior emerging markets and global responsibilities in investment/commercial banks and in a leading regional development financial institution, in the areas of risk management and debt capital markets.

Ceyla Pazarbasioglu

Director of the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, IMF

Ceyla Pazarbasioglu is Director of the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department (SPR) of the IMF. In this capacity, she leads the work on the IMF’s strategic direction and the design, implementation, and evaluation of Fund policies. She also oversees the IMF’s interactions with international bodies, such as the G20 and United Nations. Prior to her current position, Ms. Pazarbasioglu served at the World Bank Group (WBG) from 2015–2020, most recently as the Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions. She oversaw a portfolio of nearly $30 billion of operational and policy work and advisory engagements in the WBG Global Practices of Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation; Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment; Governance; and Poverty and Equity. She also had management responsibility for more than 2,200 staff in 138 countries, including 30 fragile and conflict-affected states.

Ruth Richardson

Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food

Ruth Richardson, Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, brings over 25 years of experience in the philanthropic sector to this role, and of particular relevance to this undertaking, has extensive experience starting new and complex things. These include being the first Director of the Unilever Canada Foundation, Founding Chair of the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers’ Network, and the first Environment Director at the Metcalf Foundation. Her tenure at the Metcalf Foundation also included acting on the Advisory Committee of the City of Toronto, Board of Health, Toronto Food Strategy to develop an action plan to improve the food system of the Toronto city region. Ruth also served as the lead consultant to establish The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and has worked with private-public partnerships on sustainability issues and cross-border collaborations, such as coastal fisheries management. In her capacity with the Global Alliance, Ruth is on the International Advisory Group on Up-scaling Ecosystem-based Adaptation funded by the German Federal Environmental Ministry under its International Climate Initiative. She also served on the Steering Committee of TEEBAgriFood led by UN Environment, as well as on the International Advisory Committee of the Global Urban Food Policy Pact. In 2020, Richardson was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to serve on the Advisory Committee for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, and to serve as Chair, Champions Network. Richardson was awarded 2021 Alumni of Influence by University of Toronto, Canada.

Cydney Ross

Country Manager, Tropiq

Cydney Ross is the Country Manager for a specialty coffee exporter and a marketing and digital strategy consultant in Ethiopia. She previously served as the Head of Programs and Strategy at Kifiya, a digital services and financial technology company based in Addis. In her time at Kifiya, she supported over 10,000 micro and small enterprises to access digital markets and financial services through Kifiya’s product offerings. Prior to moving to Ethiopia, she worked at a multi-billion dollar e-commerce company where she managed a product portfolio in excess of $200 million. She is an alumna of the Fuqua School of Business and Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

Clare Shakya

Director of Climate Change Research, IIED

Clare Shakya is the director of IIED’s Climate Change research group. She has 30 years of experience in climate and development, energy and natural resources. She works with a team of researchers on getting climate finance to the local level to support poor people’s priorities for action on climate change.

Geeta Sethi

Advisor and Global Lead for Food Systems, World Bank

Geeta Sethi is the Advisor and Global Lead for Food Systems at the World Bank. She is the lead architect of the World Bank’s Food System Transformation agenda, a food system that provides the triple bottom line—prosperity, sustainability and healthy people. She also manages the World Bank’s program on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. She has more than 20 years of experience working as an economist on fragile, low-, and middle-income countries. Her work has focused on issues of rural development, service delivery and intergovernmental fiscal policies around the world. She has delivered many lending programs to the World Bank Board and published books and articles in refereed journals on issues relating to rural labor markets, trade policy and fiscal decentralization. Previously, she was the Chief of Staff to the Climate Change Vice President and Special Envoy, the Operations and Strategy Manger for Climate Change, and worked as the Program Manager for the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. She has an MBA and PhD in Economics.

Katja Silva-Leander

Director of Development Finance and Investment, DAI

Katja Silva-Leander is a Director at DAI, specialised in the field of economic growth. She has 20 years of experience working for a range of donors, including the FCDO, the UN and the World Bank. She is a highly accomplished project director, having overseen the implementation of many large-scale and complex programmes. She is currently the Director of DAI’s Development Finance & Investment practice that focuses on mobilising private investment into low- and middle-income countries to overcome the funding gap to achieve the SDGs by 2030. A central focus of the practice is on catalysing climate finance at scale to help countries reduce emissions while adapting practices and building resilience to cope with adverse effects of climate change. Previously, she headed up DAI’s Economic Growth practice in the UK, where she oversaw a portfolio of work focusing on entrepreneurship, business environment reform and financial inclusion.

Anish Thakkar

Co-founder, Greenlight Planet

Anish Thakkar cofounded Greenlight Planet, a social business which designs, installs and finances affordable rooftop solar systems for off-grid homes around the world. To date it has connected and financed rooftop solar systems for 2.7 million homes in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and Zambia and it connects over 100,000 new homes each month.

Lynda Toussaint

CEO, Unjani Clinics NPC

Lynda joined Unjani Clinics NPC in January 2014 as the CEO. She is responsible for the fundraising, implementation, management and rollout of the Unjani Clinic Network in South Africa, taking it to 100 Clinics by December 2021; and then scaling it to 750+ Clinics by December 2030. Unjani Clinics NPC is a non-profit company and registered public benefit organisation established specifically to raise funding for, implement, train, monitor and manage the Unjani Clinic Network. There are currently 94 Unjani Clinics operating nationally, including 2 mobile clinics. Prior to this she was the CEO of Pure Pharmacy (Pty) Ltd (now The Pure Group). Lynda was an Executive Consultant to the Clicks Group from Oct 2010 to Nov 2011 dealing with regulatory issues and researching business opportunities. She was also the Managing Director of UPD from 2005 to 2010, SA’s largest, national pharmaceutical wholesaler. UPD is a subsidiary of the Clicks Group and prior to becoming the MD; she was the Financial Director from 1999 to 2005. She joined UPD as a Project Accountant in January 1999 after completing her articles at KPMG.

Stephanie von Friedeburg

Senior Vice President, Operations, International Finance Corporation

Ms. Stephanie von Friedeburg serves as the first Senior Vice President, Operations, at IFC. She most recently stewarded the institution in the midst of the pandemic and led the implementation of IFC’s strategy to create projects, attract private investment, and ultimately support a resilient and inclusive recovery in emerging markets. Ms. von Friedeburg currently leads all IFC investment operations and advisory services, aiming to address key development challenges and create jobs and opportunities in the world’s poorest and most fragile countries. In addition to overseeing new business, she manages IFC’s $60 billion debt and equity portfolio in more than 100 countries. Her priorities include increasing opportunities for women, scaling up investments to fight climate change, and promoting digital development.

Robin Young

Senior Principal Development Specialist, Financial Services and Investment, DAI

Robin Young is Senior Principal Development Specialist for DAI with more than 25 years of experience as technical advisor and team leader on investment and financial services projects and engagements in developing and frontier markets. In 2017, she led development of the INVEST project with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and specialized investment partners, to create the platform for mobilizing investment for development impact, and serves as the project’s Strategic Investment Adviser, working with partners to mobilize private capital for health, clean energy, water and sanitation, agriculture, and small and growing businesses in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She engages directly in work to identify and develop innovative financing solutions for clients in developing and frontier markets and recently prepared a Catalytic Funding Guide for maternal and neonatal health in Indonesia, conducted a banking and investment sectoral analysis in Rwanda and a scoping study for an innovative river basin conservation fund in Nepal.

Moderators

Raquel Alcega

Pro Funding Editor, Devex

Raquel Alcega leads the data research and analysis at Devex, providing advice to organizations on the latest funding and programmatic trends that shape the global development space. She also heads up the news business content strategy and designs internal knowledge management processes. Prior to joining Devex’s Barcelona office, she worked in business development in Washington, D.C., and as a researcher in Russia and Mexico.

Rumbi Chakamba

Associate Editor, Devex

Rumbi Chakamba is an Associate Editor at Devex based in Botswana, who has worked with regional and international publications including News Deeply, The Zambezian, Outriders Network, and Global Sisters Report. She holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of South Africa.

Catherine Cheney

Senior Reporter, Devex

Catherine Cheney is a Senior Reporter for Devex. She covers the West Coast of the U.S., focusing on the role of technology, innovation, and philanthropy in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. And she frequently represents Devex as a speaker and moderator. Prior to joining Devex, Catherine earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University, worked as a web producer for POLITICO and reporter for World Politics Review, and helped to launch NationSwell. Catherine has reported domestically and internationally for outlets including The Atlantic and the Washington Post. Catherine also works for the Solutions Journalism Network, a non profit that trains and connects reporters to cover responses to problems.

Shabtai Gold

Senior Reporter, Devex

Shabtai Gold is a Senior Reporter based in Washington. He covers multilateral development banks, with a focus on the World Bank, along with trends in development finance. Prior to Devex, he worked for the German Press Agency, dpa, for more than a decade, with stints in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, before relocating to Washington to cover politics and business.

Sara Jerving

Global Health Reporter, Devex

Sara Jerving is a Global Health Reporter based in Nairobi. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vice News, and Bloomberg News, among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018, part of a Vice News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018 and received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014. She has reported from over a dozen countries.

Raj Kumar

President & Editor-in-Chief, Devex

Raj Kumar is a media leader and former humanitarian council chair for the World Economic Forum and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the book "The Business of Changing the World," a go-to primer on the ideas, people, and technology disrupting the aid industry.

Jenny Lei Ravelo

Senior Reporter, Devex

Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.

Adva Saldinger

Senior Reporter, Devex

Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers the intersection of business and international development, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. From partnerships to trade and social entrepreneurship to impact investing, Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.

Teresa Welsh

Global Health Reporter, Devex

Teresa Welsh is a Senior Reporter at Devex. She has reported from more than 10 countries and is currently based in Washington, D.C. Her coverage focuses on Latin America; U.S. foreign assistance policy; fragile states; food systems and nutrition; and refugees and migration. Prior to joining Devex, Teresa worked at McClatchy's Washington Bureau and covered foreign affairs for U.S. News and World Report. She was a reporter in Colombia, where she previously lived teaching English. Teresa earned bachelor of arts degrees in journalism and Latin American studies from the University of Wisconsin.