Keynote Speakers
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Neil Blumenthal is a co‐founder and co‐CEO of Warby Parker, a transformative lifestyle brand that offers designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially conscious businesses. In 2015, Fast Company named Warby Parker the most innovative company in the world.
Prior to launching Warby Parker in 2010, Neil served as director of VisionSpring, a nonprofit social enterprise that trains low‐income women to start their own businesses selling affordable eyeglasses to individuals living on less than $4 per day in developing countries.
He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. He serves on the board of RxArt and on the United Nations Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council.
A native of New York City, Neil received his BA from Tufts University and his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Neil lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, Rachel, the founder and CEO of Rockets of Awesome, and their two children. 
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​Meg Garlinghouse leads the Social Impact programs at LinkedIn.  In this role, she is responsible for programs that leverage the LinkedIn platform to create positive social impact for the world.  Garlinghouse has more than twenty years of experience working in the technology and philanthropy sector. She spent almost 10 years building and leading Yahoo!’s global community relations function. 
She also has a background in international development, working in the private sector development department of the World Bank and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa.  Garlinghouse received her Bachelor’s degree in public policy studies from Duke University and a Master's in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  She currently serves on the Boards of VolunteerMatch and KQED.  
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Ella is president of VisionSpring, an award winning social enterprise that is accelerating the uptake of eyeglasses in emerging and frontier markets for consumers who earn less than $4 a day. Under her leadership, VisionSpring is helping vision entrepreneurs and their organizations to sell 10 million pairs of radically affordable eyeglasses, which will create $2.16 billion in economic impact at the household level.
Prior to joining VisionSpring in 2015, Ella served as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Program Development at the emergency response and global health organization AmeriCares. In prior roles, she led humanitarian operations as Vice President of Emergency Response, including for the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami; and managed a broad range of health programs in ten countries as Director of Asia and Eurasia Partnerships. Earlier in her career she served as Head of Foreign Government Relations at the Population Council, focused on reproductive health, youth and poverty. Teaching at the University of Sanata Dharma in Indonesia during the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the ensuing democracy movement, amplified Ella’s passions for social justice and economic development.
Born in England and raised in California, Ella earned her BA with honors from Vassar College, and her MA with distinction in international economics from Johns Hopkins University. Ella co-founded the Haiti Adolescent Girls Network following the 2010 earthquake, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Blending the best of business and non-profit practices, VisionSpring has been internationally recognized by the Skoll Foundation, Draper Richards Kaplan, Ashoka, the Schwab Foundation, the Aspen Institute, and the World Bank; is three-time winner of Fast-Company's Social Capitalist Award and a winner of Duke University's Enterprising Social Innovation Award; as well as the recipient of the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award in partnership with Warby Parker.
Ella is a seasoned global health executive and strategist. She previously served as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Program Development at AmeriCares. In prior roles, Ella led humanitarian operations as Vice President of Emergency Response, and managed health related interventions in ten countries as Director of Asia and Eurasia partnerships. Earlier in her career she served as Head of Foreign Government Relations at the Population Council, focused on reproductive health, youth and poverty. She earned an MA with distinction in international economics at Johns Hopkins University, and a BA with honors from Vassar College. Ella is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 
Ella’s passions for social justice and economic development issues were ignited when she worked for several years in Indonesia spanning the Asian financial crisis and the ensuing democracy movement. She regularly speaks on social entrepreneurship, scaling hybrid business models, and measuring impact.
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Clara Miller is President Emerita of the Heron Foundation, which helps people and communities help themselves out of poverty. She was President of Heron from 2011 through 2017. Prior to assuming Heron’s presidency, Miller was President and CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund which she founded and ran from 1984 through 2010.
Miller serves on the boards of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Family Independence Initiative, and StoneCastle Financial Corp. She is a board member of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance and is a BridgeSpan Fellow. In 2017 she was named Social Innovator of the Year by the University of New Hampshire.
In 1996, Miller was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Treasury’s first Community Development Advisory Board for the then-newly-created Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. She later became its Chair. She chaired the Opportunity Finance Network board for six years and was a member of the Community Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for eight years.
Ms. Miller speaks and writes extensively and has been published in The Financial Times, Medium, The Atlantic Blog, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Nonprofit Quarterly and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has spoken recently at Aspen Ideas Festival, Sciences Po, Oxford Saïd Business School, Bloomberg L.P., SOCAP, and Mission Investors Exchange.
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Adrian Hernandez, MD, was named Vice Dean for Clinical Research for the Duke University School of Medicine on September 5, 2017.
As Vice Dean for Clinical Research, Dr. Hernandez has direct responsibility for advancing the clinical research mission of the School of Medicine. He works with leaders in single and multi-site based human research, patient care delivery, information technology, and health data science within School of Medicine departments, and centers and institutes including the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and Margolis Center for Health Policy, in order to achieve the vision of advancing health and executing a coordinated strategy in clinical research to evolve the model of care and improve outcomes. Dr. Hernandez oversees the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for Duke Health, the Duke Office of Clinical Research, the Office of Regulatory Affairs & Quality, and the Research Integrity Office.
A Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, Dr. Hernandez previously served as Director of Health Services and Outcomes Research and was a Faculty Associate Director of the DCRI. He has extensive experience in clinical research ranging from clinical trials to outcomes and health services research.  He leads research programs focused on understanding population health, generating real-world evidence, and improving patient-centered outcomes through development of new therapies and better care delivery in the national health system. Dr. Hernandez is the coordinating center principal investigator for multiple networks and clinical trials such as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Heart Failure Clinical Research Network, PCORI’s National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet) and the NIH’s Health System Collaboratory. A central aim of these networks is to transform clinical research by uniting patients, clinicians, health systems, and electronic health data to improve population health and decision making. Dr. Hernandez has over 450 published articles in top peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Lancet.
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​Botond leads the development team in IBM’s Watson Health division responsible for creating provider-facing, point of care healthcare applications that leverage artificial intelligence.  He joined Watson Health after spending four years as the marketing director in IBM’s Cloud and Software divisions. Prior to that, he managed a hardware business in the Systems division for IBM’s Growth Markets in Shanghai, China. Botond also led IBM's global Intel server product strategy and marketing teams and worked in Corporate Market Intelligence as a strategy analyst.
 
Prior to his IBM career, Botond was a Senior IT Consultant at Sapient Corporation based in Cambridge, MA.  There, Botond worked with Fortune 500 companies on initiatives ranging from business process transformation, to software design and systems integration.  He started his career as a developer nearly 20 years ago and holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Columbia University in New York and an MBA from Duke University in North Carolina.
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​Leigh Morgan is a global leader whose mission is to build and lead high performing, purpose-based organizations that change the world for the better.
In her former role as COO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Leigh was a key architect of its strategic transformation efforts. Her accountabilities included strengthening the foundation’s global impact by driving innovation, improving operating efficiency, and elevating its performance culture. As a member of the Foundation’s Executive Leadership Team, she was also a key contributor to global health, development, advocacy and domestic education strategies and represented the foundation to grantees, partners, and government officials around the world. 
Leigh’s previous leadership roles include Associate Chancellor at the University of California San Francisco, Vice President/Global Head of HR at Genentech, and Principal Organization Development Consultant at GlaxoSmithKline. She also served in North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt’s administration, where she helped establish the statewide AmeriCorps national service program.
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Greg is a global healthcare and Business Intelligence (B.I.) executive with over two decades of experience and leadership in the field. He holds a BA in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a Masters of Management in Clinical Informatics, Healthcare Analytics and Performance Management from Duke University, and has conducted doctoral level work in Social Psychology and Quantitative methods at the University of Georgia.
Prior to founding ThotWave, Greg served as the Director of Technology at a large, privately held CRO, Director of Application Development for the Gallup Organization, and a director at the University of Georgia’s computer center. A prolific writer and compelling speaker, Greg has published and presented over 150 professional papers on healthcare analytics and the strategic use of information technology in the United States and Europe.

Greg is also author of “The Analytics Lifecycle Toolkit” to be published by Wiley in early 2018.
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David Wennberg, MD, MPH, leads the Data Science and Business Development functions at Quartet, a New York-based technology company transforming the way mental health is delivered, by making it more accessible and integrated into primary care. David previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Northern New England Accountable Care Collaborative (NNEACC), and as the Chief Executive Officer of the High Value Health Collaborative at The Dartmouth Institute. A co-founder of Health Dialog Analytic Solutions, the analytic division of Health Dialog, David served as Health Dialog’s Chief Science Officer. David received his MD from McGill University and MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, and is a member of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice faculty.
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Ari is the Chief Ambassador of Moeda, a cooperative
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based impact investing system using Blockchain
technology.(Moeda.in)
At 29 years old, Ari Is an Impact Investor, UN Activist, Social Entrepreneur, and Innovation Educator
aligned with the mission of achieving the 2030 Global Goals for Sustainable Development.
Ari was selected to be an International Chamber of Commerce repr
esentative to the United Nations
during the post
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2015 negotiations. Ari is a member of the UN’s Interagency Working Group for Youth
and Gender Equality and the Co
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Executive Director of the UN Global Sustainability Index Institute, an
independent foundation
mandated to measure and accelerate capital for the 2030 Sustainable
Development Goals. He is the cofounder of the "U.N.trepreneurship Initiative," which connects
entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs across sectors to innovate for the Global Goals.
Ari regularl
y lectures and delivers workshops to some of the world’s leading universities, including
Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, and NYU. In addition, he mentors startups with top incubator and
accelerator programs.
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​Karen is part of the Blockchain team at TATA Consultancy Services' (TCS), which works with Fortune 500 companies end-to-end in their exploration of new and disruptive technologies. She advises clients across various industries to understand blockchain, its business applications, and ideate use cases for eventual development into Proofs-of-Concept. Karen earned her MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and holds a degree in International Development, Business and Economics from American University. Prior to Duke, Karen had a career in international development working in public and private sector consulting firms and at USAID in the US, India and Sub-Saharan Africa. She managed multi-million dollar projects in challenging post-conflict contexts. Karen currently co-organizes the "Women in Blockchain" meetup in New York City and has mentored teams for the Blockchain for Social Impact Hackathon and Startup Weekend NYC Blockchain. She is excited about the potential for emerging technologies like blockchain to change not only the way we do business and exchange value, but also to improve lives around the world. ​
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​Rahul is an entrepreneur and investor.  He co-founded Freedom Health which is the largest Private Health Insurance company in America ($1.8B in annual revenue).  Anthem recently agreed to acquire Freedom Health and the transaction should close in Q1 of 2018.

Rahul and his family have made in investments in several leading Healthcare companies including:  Oscar Health, One Medical (which acquired Rise), RxAdvance.  In India, the family is the lead or majority investor in NanoHealth (2014 Recipient of the HULT Prize), eVaidya, United Hospitals, Empower Labs, and Anion Healthcare Services.   He is currently focusing on integrating these firms to build a Blockchain powered Health System in Hyderabad, India.

He has a JD/MBA from the Northwestern School of Law and Kellogg School of Management.  He has been investing in Blockchain and Digital Currencies since 2011.
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Brent Rowe is the head of Lab 58, a new corporate innovation lab at RTI International. In this role, he is using lean innovation management best practices and key partnerships to explore emerging technologies that could disrupt RTI or enable RTI to develop innovative new products or services. Brent is responsible for developing and implementing the overall strategy for Lab 58, which is aimed at higher risk opportunities, often with a long term horizon. This far, Lab 58 has primarily focused on blockchain, but initial exploration for AI, VR & AR is underway.
 
Prior to founding & leading Lab 58, Brent was a Senior Economist at RTI for 15 years. Brent’s research focused on evaluating innovative technologies, developing novel economic impact models, and analyzing technology and security policies. Mr. Rowe has presented his work at numerous conferences and has published articles in a variety of journals, as well as coauthoring a book entitled Cyber Security: Economic Strategies and Public Policy Alternatives.
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​Fennie is a lawyer turned entrepreneur in the blockchain space, leading strategy and legal at the ixo
Network, which is a blockchain powered platform for collecting, verifying and tokenizing any project's
impact data, which can then be monetized, shared, traded or exchanged for funding. The tokenized
impact data, called Impact Tokens, are a new form of so
cial finance capital. The ixo Network is UNICEF
Ventures' first blockchain investment, funding a live pilot which has tokenized more than 50,000 pre
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school attendance records in South Africa which are then exchanged for government subsidies.
Fennie is a
US
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qualified securities lawyer, who practiced both securities defense (including SEC
investigations) and international capital markets. When not working on ixo, she is involved in legal
advocacy for the emergent token economy, as a contributor to the Block
chain Research Institute and as
a working group coordinator at COALA, a cross disciplinary policy group in the blockchain and legal
space. She started her career as a high yield research analyst at JPMorgan. In between Wall Street and
law school, she co
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fo
unded a legal services NGO in Uganda. She holds a law degree from Columbia, and
a business degree from Berkeley.
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Dr. Jessica Barron is a trained sociologist and demographer. Her body of research addresses questions concerning how large scale demographic shifts shape the way we measure, theorize and understand issues of racial inequality, inclusion, and stratification across the United States. Her work on race, diversity, and identity in America has been published in academic outlets, featured in the Guardian, New York Times Sunday Review, and the Boston Globe and her 2016 article, Managed Diversity: Race, Place and an Urban Church won the Distinguished Article of the Year Award for the Association for the Sociology of Religion. In her new book, The Urban Church Imagined (NYU Press), Barron explores the social processes that shape racial integration efforts in religious organizations located in diverse urban settings.​

Dr. Barron is a research scientist and consultant at Frontline Solutions,  a social equity consulting firm based in Washington DC. At the firm, she helps lead the strategic planning, facilitation, research, and tool building for diversity, equity, and inclusion engagements.

Dr. Barron is a native of Southern California and received her Ph.D. in sociology from Texas A&M University.
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​Dan Baum serves as both the Chief Strategy Officer, leading Redwoods’ efforts to scale outside of the US, and as the Executive Director of The Redwoods Group Foundation. His time at Redwoods began as a summer intern, and has included consulting with Redwoods customers on building cultures of safety, launching the Redwoods Institute and supporting collective impact efforts around child protection through the Foundation. Through Redwoods, he has used his annual volunteer hours to build with Habitat for Humanity Global Village trips, facilitate immersive diversity retreats, and march for Voting Rights with the NAACP. He holds both a BS in Economics and an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship from Duke University.
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Sarah created Reify Media in 2009, but truthfully, she’s been coding websites since she was 10. Her lifelong passion for integrating writing and technology fueled her former career as a technical writer for groups like IBM and the State of North Carolina, and for many years, she taught online and in-person technical writing courses to undergraduate engineers at North Carolina State University. She’s spoken internationally to educators and businesses about online education, active learning strategies, engaging the adult learner, social media in education and in business, and more.
As the President of Reify Media, Sarah studies trends in web development, instructional design, pedagogy, user experience, and technology, working to ensure that her company’s deliverables are cutting edge and user friendly. She also strives to create an environment where her team members feel supported and challenged, which in turn helps her team members support Reify’s amazing clients and partners.
Sarah loves loving Raleigh and balancing her roles as Mom, wife, daughter, and life-long student. She is an avid reader, a sporadic runner, a self-described comma nerd, and a zealous coffee addict.
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​Dwayne Marshall serves as the Senior Director of Programs and Partnerships for the Southeastern Council of Foundations. In his role, he designs educational programs for the over 300+ member foundations within their eleven state regional network. In addition, Dwayne fosters partnerships with leading national philanthropic, public and private sector organizations to provide collaborative opportunities for collective impact and community advancement. Previously, Dwayne was the founder of The Hope Institute, a startup social enterprise focused on leadership development for high school youth in the metro Atlanta area. Dwayne has also served as an Organizer in Residence at the Southern Partners Fund and as a field organizer for the Obama Biden 2018 presidential campaign. Dwayne currently serves as the Board Chair of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) and is an alumnus of the New Leaders Council and the Independent Sector NGEN Fellowship Program. Mr. Marshall is also a member of the Fund The People Advisory Board, Atlanta Black Jewish Coalition Alumni Network, Georgia Young Game Changers, and the Jackie Robinson Foundation Alumni Association. Dwayne received his BBA degree from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Jennifer is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Firsthand Foods, a women-owned, Durham-based meat company that markets and distributes pasture-raised, local meats throughout the state.  Jennifer’s interest in the meat industry stems from her 25+ years working to build sustainable food systems and help small-scale farmers address economic and environmental challenges.  Prior to founding Firsthand Foods, Jennifer was the Principal of Curtis Consulting where she was privileged to design and develop a wide range of agricultural and food systems projects, including for such clients as Gerber Products Company, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Wildlife Fund and NC State University’s Center for Environmental Farming Systems, for whom she authored their statewide report, From Farm Fork: A Guide for Developing a Sustainable Food System.  Jennifer has a Masters in Environmental Management & Policy from the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.   
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​Joel Reiner is the head grower and plant scientist at AeroFarms, the largest indoor vertical farm in the world, based in Newark, NJ.  In his role, Joel focuses on yield, plant quality, sustainability and scalability of the AeroFarms growing system, working toward the ultimate goal of building and operating environmentally responsible farms throughout the world.  Prior to joining AeroFarms, Joel worked for eight years as a grower at DuPont Pioneer in the controlled environment group, where he focused on soybean quality, yield and automation. Joel holds a Masters degree in Plant Science from the University of Delaware and a certificate in Hydroponic Lettuce Production from the University of Arizona.
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Bio coming soon!
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​Daniel Vermeer, Ph.D. Associate Professor of the Practice of Energy & Environment Executive Director Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
 
Dr. Daniel Vermeer is founder and director of Duke University's Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE), an initiative that harnesses the power of business to meet the global demand for energy, resources, and improved quality of life. Through education, thought leadership, and outreach, EDGE helps to develop promising new solutions to global energy and sustainability challenges, and convenes business, civic, and academic leaders to scale these solutions for maximum impact.
 
Since EDGE’s founding in 2010, Vermeer has launched several new programs including the Energy Industry Fundamentals workshop, EDGE Seminar on Energy & Environment, EDGE Chats video series, EDGE Notes blog, and the EDGE Forum (2014 Forum on the China Cleantech Revolution). He has also recruited 12 leading global companies to participate in the EDGE Advisory Council, including ABB, Duke Energy, Chevron, Coca-Cola, SunRun and Walmart. EDGE plays a major role in supporting several student clubs (e.g. Energy Club, Net Impact Club, MEM-MBA Club), and coorganizing the annual Energy Conference, Sustainable Business and Social Impact Conference, and Week-in-Cities tours.
 
Vermeer is Associate Professor of the Practice at Fuqua School of Business and Nicholas School of the Environment, where he teaches sustainability, energy, and international business courses. In addition to his Business Strategies for Sustainability class, Vermeer leads the EDGE Seminar Series, advises student teams through the Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum, and co-leads the China GATE Course, an immersive  introduction to Chinese culture and business that includes a 2-week trip to four Chinese cities. In his consulting practice, he works on sustainability challenges with leading companies and organizations including Bank of America, ABB, GE, Walmart, Dupont, The Nature Conservancy, UN Global Compact, Claremont Creek Ventures, and other private and public organizations.
 
His areas of expertise include sustainability strategy, risk management, energy & behavior, value chains, resource productivity, water and ecosystem services, sustainable agriculture, industrial efficiency, product certification, and sustainable development. His current research focuses natural capital considerations in business decision-making, water risk and resilience, data and analytics for sustainable agriculture, cleantech urban development, and energy innovation in emerging markets.
 
At Duke, Vermeer collaborates with several related initiatives, including the Duke University Energy Initiative, Center for Sustainability and Commerce, Duke Campus Sustainability Committee, Food Sustainability Committee, and the Duke Campus Farm. He is the faculty advisor to several student Master’s Projects at the Nicholas School for the Environment and Sanford School for Public Policy. He also serves on the Duke Brazil Initiative Board, and is a partner on a Mellon grant focused on Energy Geopolitics in the Western Hemisphere.
 
Beyond Duke, Vermeer is an editor for the Frontiers in Energy Systems and Policy journal, and serves on the Award Nominating Committee for the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS). He also is on Sustainability Advisory Boards for Ingersoll Rand and Xylem. He currently serves on USAID’s Powering Agriculture Mentoring Council, where he advises entrepreneurial ventures that provide energy solutions for agriculture in the developing world.
 
Vermeer joined Duke from The Coca-Cola Company, where he led the Global Water Initiative, an industry-leading effort to protect the quality and availability of the company's primary ingredient. As part of this work, he designed a new risk management methodology for assessing Coca-Cola’s global manufacturing facilities, and founded Coca-Cola’s Community Water Partnerships program, resulting in nearly 500 public-private partnerships in over 90 countries.
 
During his tenure at Coca-Cola, he also launched the company’s Sustainable Agriculture program to manage lifecycle impacts of agricultural supply chain inputs, and led the Sustainable Value Chain initiative to embed sustainability capabilities across business functions, including finance, strategy, operations, marketing, and procurement.
 
Vermeer plays a leading public role in advocating for business sustainability through speaking, research, and institution-building. He is the founder and chief architect of the Global Water Challenge, a multi-partner organization for innovative water and  sanitation initiatives, co-author of the CEO Water Mandate (signed by more than 50 Fortune 500 companies), and lead contributor to several policy documents issued through the World Economic Forum, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the United Nations Foundation.
 
Vermeer is trained as an anthropologist, and did extensive fieldwork and research in the Himalayas of India and Nepal as part of his Master’s thesis at the University of Virginia. He completed his Ph.D. in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, where he conducted research on organizational learning and change at Xerox PARC in Silicon Valley. Currently, he lives in Chapel Hill, NC with his wife and two children.
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Peter is a Managing Director with L.E.K. Consulting based in the New York office. He leads
the Agribusiness sub-sector. Peter has more than more than 20 years of global
management consulting experience, helping clients to develop and execute successful
growth strategies and elevate their overall business performance.

Peter returned to the U.S. in 2013 after leading L.E.K.’s Southeast Asia practice for more than 6 years and
spending 12 years in total working across the Asia Pacific region, based in Thailand. Prior to joining L.E.K., Peter spent 9 years with A.T. Kearney in the US and Asia, where he focused on business performance
improvement, large-scale transformation, and post-merger integration.
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Leila returned to Durham from Burlington where she was the Operations Manager at Company Shops Market, another food co-op. Leila helped guide the store through the start-up phase and developed a produce purchasing system that increased the volume of locally grown food sold at the store. She brings that knowledge with her to Durham Co-op Market as well as a commitment to make our store and its products accessible to all members of our community. Leila’s entire professional career has been devoted to promoting sustainable agriculture, local investment and neighborhood economic development through fair business practices. Before her job at Company Shops, Leila managed the Eno River Farmers Market. She has also worked as a production manager at Locopops in Durham and Simple Kneads Bakery in Greensboro.
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Named in 2014 one of the top 20 women in the USA working in philanthropy, social innovation and civic engagement, Cathy Clark has been an active pioneer, researchers, educator and consultant for over 25 years in the fields of impact investing and social entrepreneurship. She serves as Faculty Director at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she founded and directs the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing and co-leads the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), an accelerator working to scale impact of global health ventures in India and East Africa. She is also lead author of CASE’s online learning series for impact entrepreneurs, CASE Smart Impact Capital, and co-author of CASE’s #ScalingPathways series, in partnership with the Skoll Foundation, USAID’s Global Development Lab and MercyCorps. 
A former impact investment fund manager and private foundation program officer, who taught at Columbia Business School for 9 years before coming to Duke, Clark’s work has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, intermediaries, and governments around the globe improve their ability to use business as a tool for good. She helped develop the standards for B Corporations, and has coordinated global research across 15 universities using data from $4.5 billion of impact assets under management and from over 11,000 impact entrepreneurs in 29 countries. Clark was also the sole academic member of the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce US National Advisory Board, and was invited to track $2.5 billion in new impact investments by the Obama White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement. She is co-author of The Impact Investor: Lessons in Leadership and Strategy for Collaborative Capitalism, which reached #18 in finance textbooks on Amazon in 2014. Cathy holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School, and has published over 25 books, articles and case studies. She publishes #OnImpact, a weekly newsletter on impact investing and social innovation read in over 100 countries, and tweets at @cathyhc.
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Hilary Irby is a Managing Director and Co-Head of Morgan Stanley’s Global Sustainable Finance group, where her focus is on mobilizing private-sector capital to address major global challenges.  As the leader of the Morgan Stanley Investing with Impact Initiative, Hilary works across the firm to develop financial products and solutions that provide financial returns as well as positive environmental or social impact. Under Hilary’s leadership, Morgan Stanley continues to develop innovative sustainable and impact investing opportunities, delivering custom solutions to institutional and individual investors, as well as developing sustainable and impact investing solutions for individuals. In a constantly evolving market, Hilary’s understanding of clients’ distinct and complex financial and impact objectives drives the ongoing development of leading edge solutions.
 
Prior to Morgan Stanley, Hilary was Operating Partner at JVP, a leading Israeli venture capital fund with over $900 million under management. Previously, Hilary worked at Goldman Sachs & Co.; helped manage the growth of Fort Point Partners, an internet consulting and integration firm; and served as a change management consultant at Andersen Consulting. Hilary holds a Masters in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Science from St. Lawrence University.  
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Michael brings 20 years of experience applying entrepreneurial approaches to addressing global social challenges. Michael serves as Senior Director of the Social Ventures team at the global humanitarian agency, Mercy Corps. Michael leverages his experience launching early stage enterprises to help Mercy Corps identify, invest in, and accelerate impact-oriented, for-profit businesses.  Prior to Mercy Corps, Michael was Co-Founder of Simpa Networks, a venture-backed solar energy services company with a bold mission: to make modern energy simple, affordable, and accessible for everyone. Michael has led Arc Finance’s research into micropayment approaches for financing pro-poor clean energy and water enterprises and consulted to the social venture capital fund, Acumen Fund, mapping private sector investments across east Africa.  Michael was on the founding team of the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company, the Institute for OneWorld Health, whose goal is clinical development and distribution of affordable new medicines for diseases of poverty in the developing world. Michael spent his early career with the Social Development Department of the World Bank and holds degrees from Duke University (CASE Scholar) and Vanderbilt University (Ingram Scholar) and has studied at the Universidad de la Habana in Cuba.
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Tom Mitchell has two decades of experience integrating and applying business and market-based solutions to social sector challenges. Currently, he is a Managing Director of Cambridge Associates, where he serves as an investment adviser to institutions and families with assets that range from $35 million to $4 billion. Tom is a founding member of Cambridge’s Mission-Related Investing (MRI) Practice, and specializes in developing and implementing investment strategies that integrate environmental and social objectives and seek holistic returns. While his primary role is to build and manage investment portfolios, he also dedicates time to investment sourcing and diligence, producing research, and engagement with the larger community of impact investors.
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