The Power of Now: Investing for Gender and Climate

Laurie is President and CEO of Courageous Capital Advisors LLC, an impact investing advisory firm. Among her current board engagements, Laurie serves as a non-executive director of the CDC Group (the UK DFI) and the UK Impact Investing Institute. A Senior Fellow and Advisory Council member of Casei3 at the Fuqua Business School, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, Laurie was CEO of Enclude Ltd and Enclude Capital Advisory UK Limited. Prior to building Enclude, Laurie was founder and CEO of Central European Advisory Group; she also worked as an attorney with the New York, Brussels and Prague offices of White & Case. Laurie has a JD from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from Stanford University.

Suzanne is founder of Catalyst at Large and Co-Founder of GenderSmart. She is a globally recognised expert on gender-smart investing. Her work has influenced hundreds of funds and institutional investors, and billions of dollars of capital to move with a gender lens. Her work is a mix of research, field building, and consulting on gender-smart investing.

Suzanne is Senior Adviser at Wharton Social Impact Initiative, is a Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and she teaches Getting Gender Smart at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She sits on the Investor Advisory Council for the Equality Fund, and on advisory boards including Cornerstone Capital, The Boardroom Africa, SheEO, Invest for Better, and others.  She is the co-founder of Women in Social Finance in the UK. She is also an adviser on gender lens investing to the B Team.

Suzanne co-led the DFI Gender Finance Collaborative, has been deeply involved in the 2X Challenge, has consulted to CDC, DEG, FMO, DFC, IDB Invest, and other institutional MDBs and DFIs on gender lens investing over the past 3 years, and works with UBS and a number of other institutional investors on their gender lens investing strategies.

She has been the recipient of many awards in philanthropy, business, and impact investing, including the UK’s Beacon Award. In a prior life she was CEO of e-learning company IEC, which she and her partner grew and then sold to Wolters Kluwer in the late 1990’s.

She is a graduate of Wharton Business School and the University of Pennsylvania. She and her team are based in London.

Tim Radjy is the Founder and Managing Partner of AlphaMundi Group in Switzerland, President of the SocialAlpha Investment Fund (SAIF) in Luxembourg, Investment Committee Chair of the  of the AlphaJiri Fund in Mauritius, Treasurer of the AlphaMundi Foundation in Washington DC, Vice-President of Sustainable Finance Geneva and Chair of the Gender Lens Initiative for Switzerland. Tim previously worked at UBS Wealth Management where he became a founding member of UBS Philanthropy Services for UHNWI clients. He also spent time in Bolivia, assessing microfinance programs on behalf of the Swiss Development Agency, and served as an advisor on major donors to WWF International. Tim holds a Degree in Political Science from the University of Geneva and a Private Banking Diploma from UBS, and is fluent in French, English and Spanish.

Julie Gorte is Senior Vice President for Sustainable Investing at Impax Asset Management LLC, the North American division of Impax Asset Management Group and investment adviser to Pax World Funds.

She oversees environmental, social and governance-related research on prospective and current investments as well as the firm’s shareholder engagement and public policy advocacy. Julie is also a member of the Impax Gender Analytics team.

Prior to joining the firm, Julie served as Vice President and Chief Social Investment Strategist at Calvert. Her experience before she joined the investment world in 1999 includes a various number of roles. Julie spent nearly 14 years as Senior Associate and Project Director at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Additionally, she has held the roles of Vice President for Economic and Environmental Research at The Wilderness Society, and Program Manager for Technology Programs in the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy office and Senior Associate at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

Julie serves on the boards of the Endangered Species Coalition, E4theFuture, Clean Production Action and is the board chair of the Sustainable Investments Institute.

Julie received a Ph.D. and Master of Science in resource economics from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Science in forest management at Northern Arizona University.

Courtney Thompson is an Executive Director in Morgan Stanley’s Global Sustainable Finance group, supporting development of sustainable investing products and solutions across the firm’s Institutional Securities, Investment Management and Wealth Management divisions. She also contributes to thought leadership from Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing. Courtney began her career in economic consulting at Analysis Group, followed by a strategic advisory role at Next Street. She graduated with a B.A. in Economics from Williams College and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. Courtney currently serves as Board Co-Chair of Microlumbia, a student-led impact investing fund, and as a member of Columbia University’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing.