Investor Perspective

Anne Bahr Thompson is a 2020 Superbrands Top 10 Branding Leader, a Trust Across America 2018 Top Thought Leader in Trust, and the author of “DO GOOD: Embracing Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit.” With more than 25 years of international experience in global brand strategy and purpose, Ms. Thompson is a former executive director and head of consulting at Interbrand, the world’s leading brand consultancy, and the founder of Onesixtyfourth, a strategic and creative consultancy. Today, Ms. Thompson is focused on cultivating a new consciousness for business by guiding business and nonprofit leaders to navigate brand development and business strategy with purpose, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and political activism.

David Grossman is a 10-year veteran of developing sustainable international commerce startups in the Latin American marketplace. He has hands-on experience processing and exporting native Nicaragua sea cucumbers, which inspired him to locate an aquaculture operation in the Caribbean. Thus, PanaSea Global, based in Linton Bay, Panama, was born.

Mr. Grossman launched multiple sustainable businesses in Latin America with over 250 employees. He has also been developing a sustainable platform for sea cucumber production in Central America since 2011.

Mr. Grossman graduated from St. John’s University School of Law and has a B.S. in Business Management degree from Northwestern University.

Diane Kaldany is the co-founder of The CSG Group. After obtaining her B.A. in Philosophy from Fordham University, Diane embarked on professional self-discovery via the real estate, banking, and insurance sectors as a business development executive. She was compelled to make a difference, joining nonprofit boards; curating art shows; and organizing discussions on a variety of topics, such as economic inequality, women and children’s issues, and education. During her tenure as the U.S. Development Director of a Lebanese NGO, Diane came to understand the challenges of grassroots organizations and the communities they serve.

In 2018, Diane realized that systemic change takes time and commitment and that enterprises have the capital and resources to make an impactful difference, especially through private-public partnerships. To that end, she co-founded The CSG Group with the mission to encourage and help enterprises lead through purpose and values by incorporating more transparent social and sustainable business practices into their operations.

Gabriel Alves is the co-founder and CEO of Rede Decisão, having been a student of the school and a family member of Colégio Decisão’s founders. He started his career at Fama Investimentos (2009-2010) and later was a partner at Victoire Investimentos (2010-2015), dedicated to investment-related activities as well as contributing to business development.

With an extensive family background in education, having visited schools around the world, Mr. Alves has a dream of changing the country’s reality through education. His work with education began early in his life, at his parents’ school, helping them in many activities. In 2016, Mr. Alves founded Rede Decisão, a school network that provides quality education at a high scale, transforming the lives of thousands of students by enabling them to pursue their dreams.

Mr. Alves holds a Communication and Marketing degree from ESPM and a postgraduate degree in Finance from Insper.

With global expertise in economic development initiatives and community impact, Kwame Marfo has over a decade and half of experience in business, government, civil society, and media sectors across four continents. He has been involved in strategy and business model analysis at the Bank of England, investment in small and medium-sized enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa, human rights activism in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a sustainable rubber plantation in Ghana. Mr. Marfo has written for the Business and Financial Times, Citi Business News, Africa at LSE, Modern Ghana, ZNews Africa, Applause Africa, the Africapitalism Institute, and MyJoyOnline.

Mr. Marfo is the international executive producer of the award-winning documentary “When Elephants Fight,” which was executive-produced and narrated by Robin Wright (Netflix’s “House of Cards”). He is on the boards of Birthright Africa; Impact Capital Forum; Infoview Data Solutions Limited; and Business Center for New Americans (BCNA), where he is the Board Chair. Mr. Marfo has a B.S. (Hons) from Binghamton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and an MBA from the University of Michigan (Ross).

Rashad Kaldany is CIO, partner, and founder of Blue like an Orange (BlaO) Sustainable Capital. (BlaO’s first fund is focused on investing in private debt products in the Latin America region. In December 2018, BlaO announced its first two investments.) Previously, Dr. Kaldany was the executive vice president of Growth Markets for Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (CDPQ), an institutional investor that manages public and para-public pension plans and insurance programs in Quebec Province.

As executive vice president, Dr. Kaldany built and implemented the strategy to double CDPQ’s assets in growth markets to $35 billion; opened offices in Singapore, New Delhi, and Mexico City; and increased investments from $0.5 billion to $4 billion from 2013 to 2016. He spent 25 years at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where he held senior positions managing global teams; structuring cross-border transactions; and leading investments across emerging markets in sectors such as infrastructure, energy, financial institutions, and healthcare.

Dr. Kaldany’s most recent position was vice president and COO, where he led IFC’s investment and advisory services and realized profits of over $1 billion in FY ‘13. He also served in numerous vice presidential capacities, which included overseeing Global Industries; leading advisory and investments in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Middle East/North Africa; and managing IFC’s global investments in infrastructure, telecoms, oil, gas, mining, power, transportation, agriculture, and financial services.

In his earlier career at IFC, Dr. Kaldany served as director of the Infrastructure and the Oil, Gas, Mining, and Chemical departments. He is currently co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Infrastructure. He also served as director of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA).

Dr. Kaldany is a graduate of State University of New York at Purchase and subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Columbia University and MBA from Stanford University.

Rene Bonomi pursued his MBA at Cornell University and has a degree in Industrial Engineering from UFSCar in Brazil. He brings years of experience both in business development, for startups as well as corporations, and in financial advisory, structuring M&A and capital-raising transactions. Rene has international business experience working in Latin America, United States, and Europe. His industry expertise includes industrials, renewable energy, healthcare, biotechnology, agriculture, food production, and social and environmental impact.

Rene is passionate about environmental finance and impact investing, venture capital, and startup acceleration. He has a consulting business focused on supporting entrepreneurs, startups, and corporations on financial strategy, business modeling, and business strategy in the fields of social and environmental impact. Rene’s business has a collaboration partnership with The CSG Group to work on these projects globally. He also collaborates with Idea Lunchbox, an U.S. accelerator that internationalizes and expands deep tech startups to the U.S. market.