Globally, we face significant development challenges such as climate change, gender inequality, inequitable access to healthcare, and access to quality jobs. It has been well publicized that in this poly-crisis moment, the financing gap to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has widened to USD 4 trillion a year. Innovative financial tools and collaboration is required to meet this moment.
Catalytic capital, which accepts disproportionate risk and/or concessionary return and enables third-party investment, has the potential to help close the gaps left by government and mainstream capital and generate impact that otherwise could not be achieved.
In the first of a series of Global Webinars on Catalytic Capital from the IVPC Family of Networks, this webinar kicked off with an exploration of alignment & partnership, a foundational element for successfully deploying catalytic capital.
Catalytic capital models tend to involve a number of different parties, each with their own set of priorities and ambitions. This can result in a misalignment of expectations and differences in risk-reward perception, particularly between commercial and impact investors. The process of alignment is time and cost-intensive, but critical to the success of the catalytic capital deployment.
| SPEAKERS |
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Divya Patel
COO, Ishk Tolaram Foundation Divya Patel is passionate about delivering impact through needs-oriented, effective and sustainable solutions. After a decade in management consulting with IBM in London and Singapore, she switched career paths to grow Singapore’s entrepreneurship ecosystem by building accelerator programs to develop social entrepreneurs, first with Impact Hub and then with Ashoka. She continues to follow her passion to build a stronger ecosystem for the impact sector in her current role at Ishk Tolaram Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that provides underserved individuals access to quality education, healthcare and skills training in Indonesia, Nigeria and Singapore. As Chief Operations Officer, she steers the design of Ishk’s program and grantmaking strategies, while building global partnerships. She is also championing innovation in impact financing and the use of alternate financial instruments to fund social change projects and bring greater participation from the private sector in funding solutions. |
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Wonyoung Kim
Executive Director, Crevisse Partners Wonyoung is a founding member at Crevisse Partners since 2006 and he is an executive director managing impact investing and blended finance of early-stage and later-stage startups. With his years of expertise in company building, business development, IT services, and corporate operations, he focuses on deal-sourcing, value-up, and portfolio management of impact fund. He manages a team that runs impact acceleration program called Remake City and works with different financing structures such as equity fund, government grant fund, ODA grant fund, and social financing loans. He holds a Master of Business Administration from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology on Social Entrepreneurship and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Yonsei University. He serves as the board of directors at Crevisse Partners, the board of directors at AVPN, a contributor of IRIS+ by GIIN, and a member of GSG Korea NAB. |
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Amma Lartey
CEO, Impact Investing Ghana Amma Lartey is CEO of Impact Investing Ghana an initiative to mobilize $1 billion in funds for impact investing in Ghana and West Africa. She has over 16 years of experience as a director in the social enterprise, impact investing and nonprofit sectors. She is skilled at strategy development and execution, building partnerships, advocacy, fundraising and working with people and teams across cultures and has managed teams in Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Senegal, Chad and DRC. She is a fellow of the fifth class of the Africa Leadership Initiative-West Africa and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Amma is also a social entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of Market Express, an e-commerce platform and marketplace with a mission to create a buying and selling environment to increase incomes across Africa. She also founded Social Enterprise Ghana, a membership-based organisation that works to provide training, advocacy and research to help social enterprises launch and grow, advocating for policies and working with government and other partners to deliver key things which social enterprises need. She chairs the board and actively works with the Executive Director and secretariat team to deliver results and impact. |
| MODERATOR |
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Frank Aswani
Chief Executive Officer, African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA) Dr. Frank Aswani, is the CEO of Africa Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA), a network of social investors who are collaborating to increase the flow of capital into social investors across Africa and ensure that the capital is deployed for maximum social Impact. He’s Kenyan, living in Johannesburg and holds a Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Nairobi and an MBA from GIBS (Gordon Institute of Business Studies), University of Pretoria, South Africa. He presents extensive Private and Social sector experience. His previous roles including 14 years with Eli Lilly where he worked in Kenya, England, Switzerland and South Africa. His last role at Lilly was the Sales Director for South Africa and Regional Director for Sub Sahara Africa. His other stints included being the VP and Director of Strategic Relations at African Leadership Academy (ALA) in Johannesburg and the African Regional Director with ARK (Absolute Return for Kids) and time running his own consultancy in Innovation. Frank is a passionate pan-African who believes that Africans should be at the forefront of solving our own problems. |
