Venturing Societal Solutions - The 2020 Investing for Impact Survey

Elisabeth Paulson is the Portfolio Director at Impetus, where she leads investment and portfolio strategy and manages the performance of the charity's investment team and partnership portfolio.

She previously worked for some of the UK's most innovative funders, focusing on the implementation and impact of international interventions. Earlier in her career, Elisabeth worked at The Economist Intelligence Unit, where she was deputy director of the country forecasting division and the senior South Asia analyst. She has degrees from Wellesley and the LSE and was a teacher in New York with the inaugural cohort of Teach for America.

As Investment Director, Tom deploys philanthropic growth capital to organizations and companies with effective, innovative and scalable solutions to social and environmental challenges. In his role he covers the whole life-cycle of philanthropic investments, from sourcing all the way through to exit.

In his previous role as Head of Impact Management at LGT VP and LGT Lightstone, Tom was leading the impact measurement and management activities within the firm. He coordinated impact evaluation activities, social performance data management and reporting. In his first role as Head of Talent at LGT VP, Tom connected portfolio organizations with professionals that desire to apply their knowledge in a meaningful way. In 2009, Tom worked with Heart Social Investments, a social enterprise incubator in Cape Town, South Africa, to support social enterprises addressing the needs of low-income customers. Before joining the philanthropic sector, Tom spent 9 years with BMW in Germany and UK. He gained experience in different management positions, in-house consulting, call-center management, dealer operations and IT. Tom holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Applied Science of Munich, Germany.

Oscar Ugarte Gamboa is director of the management company Seed Capital Bizkaia since 2008, a public-private Risk Capital entity with a long track record in Seed Capital operations.

This company manages three investment funds and a venture capital entity. One of the Funds managed by the company is a Social Impact Fund. It was created in 2015 and it is the unique Social Public Fund operating in the Spanish market.

CEO of Seed Mikro venture capital company specialized in microfinance operations. Likewise, he has recently created an Equity Crowdfunding Platform with the objective of reinforcing the alternative financing market for the companies of the territory.

Previously, he has experience in different areas of management in the computer sector and the electricity sector. óscar was elected to the EMN Board in October 2018.

Silke Horáková is the Co-Founder & Partner of Tilia Impact Ventures, the first social impact fund in the Czech Republic and the co-owner of Albatros Media, a.s., the largest Czech book publishing company.

In the past, Silke worked as the CEO of the Czech Private Equity & Venture Capital Association as well as a senior professional for private equity funds and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She was also teaching Entrepreneurship Finance at the Prague University of Economics. Silke is the founder and chairperson of the supervisory board of the Albatros foundation, which supports socially disadvantaged children in education, and a co-founder of the Foundation for support of independent journalism in the Czech Republic. She is currently also serving as a member of the ASN Global Advisory Group of Ashoka, a global organisation supporting social entrepreneurs and innovation.

She has been working with national and international organisations like Ashoka, NESsT and the Social Impact Award on the promotion and development of social entrepreneurship.

With a decade of experience in the social investment space, as part of her long journey at Impact Europe, the investing for impact network, Alessia contributes to build the impact investing market, by supporting impact investors and all impact stakeholders in connecting, exchanging, learning from each other, and providing them with research, data insights and capacity building opportunities. Alessia aims at accelerating impact by focusing on building partnerships with other networks and relevant actors in the field, sharing learning and good practices, breaking silos, and facilitating the creation and the exchange of knowledge.

In her capacity as Impact Europe Director of Knowledge and Programs, Alessia leads a team of 8 young enthusiastic professionals working on research activities, content and programs development, programs management, data collection, and community engagement.

Alessia co-authored publications, practical cases, and articles on topics such as venture philanthropy, impact measurement and management, impact strategies, the European impact ecosystem, tailored and hybrid finance. Thanks to her research, she prominently contributed to the Impact Europe narrative around investing for impact and to the debate on the different nuances of impact investing. Alessia is invited to speak at international conferences and give guest lectures at European Universities and Business Schools (e.g., ESADE Center for Social Impact, Nova School of Business and Economics, Luiss – Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli, INSEAD Business School in Paris, Solvay Brussels School Economics & Management).

Alessia also cooperates with Impact Europe's sister organisations in Latin America, Asia and Africa (GAIN, Latimpacto, AVPN and AVPA) to strengthen the collaboration among actors active in the global impact ecosystem, by sharing learning, facilitating the exchange of experiences, contributing to scale successes across regions.

Gianluca Gaggiotti is Knowledge Manager at Impact Europe. He focuses on data analysis and content development of several research-related initiatives.

Gianluca joined Impact Europe in 2017, and since then has developed an in-depth knowledge on the impact ecosystem and all the actors involved in it. Gianluca has previously worked as a Research Assistant for several project related to development and social network economics at Bocconi University.

He holds a Master degree in Economics and Social Sciences at Bocconi University with a thesis on the effect of terrorism on political outcome in the US.

Ludovica is Research Associate at EVPA, where since March 2020 she is involved in the content development of several research activities with a focus on data collection, analysis and visualisation.

She holds a Master degree in Management Engineering from Politecnico di Milano with a focus on Sustainable Operations Management and Social Innovation. Being passionate about Social Innovation, she did an internship in UniCredit in the Internationalization project of Social Impact Banking in Milan.