Who we are

A global membership network and field-building organisation for investors, capital providers, and intermediaries working in public and private markets, across both developed and emerging economies.

Our story

Climate change, COVID-19 and the current economic crisis have highlighted the needs and opportunities for investing with a gender and broader diversity and equity lens. 2X Global is the new name for two
long-standing leaders in the field: GenderSmart and 2X Collaborative, whose respective field building and membership clout have helped to catalyse billions of gender-smart investing dollars since 2018.

Our team

We are a dynamic, purpose-driven, and fully remote global team committed to transforming systems of finance for good. Want to join us?

  • Jessica has a track record in originating, structuring and executing debt, mezzanine and equity deals in emerging and frontier markets with a strong focus on inclusive innovation.

    Prior to her current role, Jessica was Vice President for Private Equity & Venture Capital Investments at DEG/KfW. She was also a Member of the Management Board at ProCredit Bank Nicaragua responsible for the Business Clients Division and managed the Africa Regional Office of MicroFinance Transparency.

    Jessica holds a double degree in International Business Management from ESB Business School and Dublin City University. She is a PhD candidate at University of Siegen, researching the transformative potential of gender lens investing under the supervision of Prof. Friederike Dr. Welter.

  • Marijn has over 20 years of sustainable development experience and has worked in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. As the founder of Zambia’s first private nursing school, she knows what it takes to do good and make money as a female entrepreneur. Marijn has lived on three continents, travelled to eighty-eight countries, worked in thirty-five and is a mother of four. She is a Dutch national and a South African resident. Marijn has worked for the United Nations, PharmAccess, FMO, and BII, where she was the Interim Gender Finance Lead.

  • Rob is a seasoned philanthropy, non-profit and corporate social impact leader with diverse global experience in gender-lens investing, financial inclusion, and humanitarian response. Most recently, Rob co-led the build-out of Visa Foundation and served as its inaugural Head of Programs, deploying $200m in grants and investments using the 2X criteria. Prior to Visa, Rob worked in the microfinance sector with Opportunity International, partnering with leading foundations to provide access to capital for women entrepreneurs.

    Rob is an Aspen Institute First Mover Fellow and former educator who can often be found hiking the mountains and coastlines of California.

  • Stella is an experienced strategist and facilitator with over a decade of experience building and leading international teams. 

    Stella has been working in the field of gender lens investing since 2019, and previously was the Project Lead for the DFI Gender Finance Collaborative, led the research and design of Project Sage 3.0 and 4.0 alongside Suzanne Biegel and Wharton Business School and played a critical role in the delivery of the GenderSmart Investing Summit as Head of Programmes at GenderSmart.

    Stella's interest in finance as a tool for social change was seed whilst studying for an MA in Peace Studies where her research explored the role of micro-businesses run by female entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict contexts. She is currently based on the edge of the Peak District National Park in Northern England.

  • Ashish is an accomplished professional adept in finance and technology management across diverse emerging markets. With expertise in Finance, Treasury, Business Transformation, and Trading desk operations, he drives organizational excellence. Passionate about leveraging technology for growth, he advocates for automation, analytics, and data science. As a former Asia Pacific CFO, he excels in multicultural environments. Ashish holds Chartered Accountant and Certified Public Accountant qualifications, complemented by executive education in FinTech, Data Science and AI.

  • Liebe is a gender lens investor and impact investment professional with extensive experience in venture capital, impact investing and private client wealth management with companies including Akazi Capital, responsAbility AG and BMO Private Banking. Her career has always focused on having impact at its core, and she is passionate about transformative finance, entrepreneurship and technology. At 2X Global she leads initiatives to advance gender-smart investing standards. She is a CFA charter holder, has lived and worked on three continents, and loves to travel to new countries.

  • Jo is an impact investment professional with extensive experience advising funds and asset owners to embed impact into their strategy and operations. She has worked across the investment lifecycle and spans both gender and social impact, and climate and environmental. Jo has lived and worked across Africa, South America and Europe and has a background in international development and sustainability consulting with PwC and others. At 2X Global she leads the 2X Challenge and the Investment Practitioners Community of Practice.

  • Demetrio has extensively worked on climate projects and programmes, collaborating with a diverse range of public and private institutions, from private funds to multilateral organizations. He possesses a good level of professional exposure to ESG standards, nature-based solutions, and carbon markets.

    Throughout his journey, Demetrio navigated every facet of the climate investment and project activities cycle, from project origination to appraisal and evaluation. He is adept at using a variety of financial instruments, with a geographical expertise spanning Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

    He reads every book he can find in his father's never-ending library and can sometimes be spotted tasting cheese and wine in some remote towns in Tuscany.

  • Amanda is a communications strategist and storyteller with 20 years of experience in media, finance and international development. She has worked at the Caribbean Development Bank, the U.S. State Department and Scotiabank on communications, media engagement and philanthropy.

    Amanda believes in the power of a well-told story and has spent much of her life reading, writing and chasing stories, first as a journalist and presently as a communications professional.

    She is passionate about service and outside of the office, works for women and girls’ empowerment as a member of the Soroptimist movement and is a past President of Soroptimist International of Barbados.

    Amanda is a politics and media nerd, a long-suffering cricket fan and loves carnivals and soca music. She currently lives in Barbados.

  • Natalie has worked with financial institutions, family offices and foundations, PE/VC funds, and policymakers across Asia to build towards a more equitable and sustainable system of finance.

    Prior to her current role, Natalie was Senior Associate at Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN), Asia’s largest network for social investors with 600+ member organizations. Natalie led AVPN’s gender lens investing work, collaborating with partners to develop gender lens training for asset owners and fund managers as well as to establish industry practices and policy commitments that will improve women’s access to capital. She also supported management of the Asia Gender Network, the pan-Asia community of philanthropists and thought leaders moving capital to causes for women and girls in the region.

    Natalie is an Obama Foundation Leader: Asia-Pacific and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. Natalie holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was first introduced to the transformative field of gender lens investing as a student fellow at the Wharton Social Impact Initiative. Natalie is based in Hong Kong and Singapore.

  • Elena has extensive experience in impact investing, and designing and deploying innovative finance solutions for development. She is passionate about enabling the private sector to become an effective vehicle for impact. Elena is specialized in the cycle of early stage finance and has worn different hats along this cycle: from coaching entrepreneurs to become investment ready, investing directly in SMEs and startups, all the way to designing and deploying fund of funds and coaching programs focused on emerging fund managers. She is a reformed lawyer and an avid cheese and dance enthusiast.

  • Edna is a project management professional with extensive experience, success and familiarity with emerging markets across the African region. She has engaged with both local and international private and social sector clients, national governments, and other stakeholders to spearhead business and market development processes. Over the years, she has combined her expertise and passion to advocate for impact investing and social innovation and is keen on advancing the field of gender finance. At 2x Global, she drives project management and provides content support for a number of central global programmes and communities of practices. Outside of work, she loves being outdoors and is adventurous in trying out new foods!

  • Nafisa brings extensive management consulting and implementation experience in international development to her responsibilities. Previously a Senior Associate at Dalberg, her project work included sustainable finance, gender, and climate resilience. Nafisa also worked at UNOPS, where her role included assessing private sector investments into sustainable and resilient infrastructure aligning with the SDGs. Nafisa holds a BSc in Civil Engineering and an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge. Outside work, Nafisa is an avid traveller and sportswoman.

  • Alyanna is a designer, entrepreneur and social innovator. In the Philippines, she has designed circular systems and products for the country’s Design Center to boost the agricultural sector. With the United Nations Development Programme, she worked closely across national and local government agencies to develop unified and inclusive policies, programmes and activities towards circularity. She is deeply committed to uplifting women and girls and aspires to amplify gender equality in the global south

  • Deepika is a Chartered Accountant with 10+ years of experience leading finance functions for non-profits, impact funds and for-profit entities. She believes in profit with purpose, which has informed all her professional decisions. She is passionate about angel investing and is an investor in a few start-ups across the education, health & fin tech sectors. She is also a small business owner. Her role at 2X Global marks her first attempt at a non-finance role and she works with the broader team on organization priority projects including membership growth.

    Deepika lives in Chennai, India and is an avid art collector and hopes to be an art investor someday.

  • Rutendo is a development professional who comes with a background deeply rooted in advancing social justice. She has eight years experience shaping and contributing to change through roles at the Ford Foundation, Constitutionalism Fund and the UK Foreign Commonwealth Development Office in South Africa. Her expertise is in grant making, institutional strengthening particularly driving sustainability initiatives. Her work has been focused on supporting civil society organizations with a mission of reducing and reversing inequalities by addressing structural barriers that exclude groups from the mainstream especially those that persist along gender lines. She has a certificate in Human Rights from Witwatersrand University, South Africa and a Master's in Development Studies from Boston College, USA. She lives between Abu Dhabi and South Africa.

  • Elise is a gender studies graduate, experienced in working within the non-profit sector. She is passionate about bringing an intersectional feminist perspective to her work and challenging the status quo. Before joining 2X Global, she supported a variety of international teams to deliver programmes, conferences and supported their overall project coordinations. Raised by French parents and growing up in Germany, Elise is now based in London, U

  • Eleanor is a convener, researcher, and content curator based in London, UK. She has a background in event curation, thought leadership, and communications in sustainability and social issues. She has most notably led the successful curation of multi-day events at COP26 and COP27 for The New York Times, and managed the convening of over 120 investment leaders and influencers to help unlock gender-smart capital at scale.

    Having grown up in a multilingual household and around the world, Eleanor’s main passion lies at the intersection of climate and gender, with a special focus on development and culture.

    Eleanor is also the co-founder of La Scarpetta, a London-based Supper Club reimagining conviviality through community-based food systems.

  • Nathasha is a passionate advocate for youth gender issues, with an academic background in gender and economics and experience in social entrepreneurship. Prior to her work with 2X Collaborative and 2X Global, she contributed to building sustainable economic opportunities for young women and minorities as part of the teams at Milken Institute Asia and Asia Society Korea. Her vision embraces a world where all women can unlock their full economic potential, free from the weight of generational and structural inequality.

Our board

  • Sukhvir Basran is a partner in Cadwalader's Financial Services Group. Combining her substantial experience as a banking and finance lawyer, Sukhvir advises and works with financial institutions on incorporating innovative financing and impact investment structures anchored in rigorous impact outcomes into mainstream transactions. She advises clients on ESG strategies, policies, disclosure and reporting, ESG-related transactions and products as well as integration of ESG into investment processes and systems.

    Sukhvir plays an active role in developing the sustainable finance sector through the creation of strong partnerships and collaborations. Her work extends beyond purely legal including enabling her clients to engage with their customers and clients to create sustainable investment business models. The Sustainability Linked Loans (SLL) Lender Toolkit and Corporates and Sponsors’ Sustainable Roadmap have been shortlisted for The Lawyer Awards (2022) and Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Awards (2021).

    Sukhvir believes that legal advice needs to be provided in the context of the wider ESG landscape, mainstream and impact investing, and she works closely with trade associations and industry bodies, standard setters, and data providers to deliver an end-to-end service for clients. She is involved with several organizations and financial institutions in the Gender Lens and diversity investing space to develop products and deepen engagement to promote gender equality outcomes. She is a member of the LMA’s ESG committee, is Independent Chair of the 2X Global’s inaugural board, is on the Steering Committee of GenderSmart JEDI, is a member of the Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers’ Board and is working on a UN-led Taskforce on the creation of an ESG Board Certification. Sukhvir also launched “Aurora: The Gender Lens Project” with the 2X Collaborative and GenderSmart.

  • As Managing Director and Head of Impact at EQT Group, Jen is focusing on defining and rolling out best practice approaches to impact management, impact selection and impact measurement across Private Capital, EQT Future and EQT more broadly.

    Jen was previously a founding leader of the Impact Group at British International Investment (formally CDC Group) where she was Head of Value Creation Strategies - overseeing advisory teams in driving value creation through an Impact lens across the portfolio (including thematic expert teams on climate change, gender & diversity finance, job quality and skills). Jen has also been an active supporter to the broader field of gender & diversity finance - as a founding non-executive Director of the 2X Collaborative, and a core advisor to GenderSmart Investing and TheBoardroom Africa. Before BII in the UK, Jen was based in Jakarta, Indonesia, serving as Head of Corporate Strategy at Kiron Global, a small business delivering workforce development solutions and skills training in emerging markets. In her early career, Jen was a student of (and witness to) the rapid post-Soviet economic transition across Eurasia, having spent many years living and working in Russia and Eastern Europe, including 10+ years in Tbilisi, Georgia, building and leading Booz Allen Hamilton's practice and presence in the FSU, eastern Europe, SE Asia and Africa.

    Jen is a licensed attorney in the US, and is part of EQT's London office, based in beautiful Cornwall, UK with her family.

  • Borja is Head of Structuring and LATAM Lead at Citi Social Finance. He joined Citi from British International Investment -BII- (former CDC Group), the UK Development Finance Institution, where he spent some years structuring impactful transactions across the financial services sector in Africa and South Asia. He helped BII to set up the Financial Institutions debt business and on the last years of his time in BII he was leading their Risk Sharing/Guarantee Programs and leading Structured Credit transactions, working with financial institutions, special purpose vehicles and private credit and equity funds. He has extensive experience in development finance having worked with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) based in London, and the IDB Invest ( Inter-American Development Bank private sector) based in Washington DC, where he structured debt and capital markets transactions across LATAM. He also worked for Deutsche Bank, also based in London. Borja was the 2X Financial Services Lead for BII and co-led the Investment Officers working group since inception in 2018.

  • Jessica has a track record in originating, structuring and executing debt, mezzanine and equity deals in emerging and frontier markets with a strong focus on inclusive innovation.

    Prior to her current role, Jessica was Vice President for Private Equity & Venture Capital Investments at DEG/KfW. She was also a Member of the Management Board at ProCredit Bank Nicaragua responsible for the Business Clients Division and managed the Africa Regional Office of MicroFinance Transparency.

    Jessica holds a double degree in International Business Management from ESB Business School and Dublin City University. She is a PhD candidate at University of Siegen, researching the transformative potential of gender lens investing under the supervision of Prof. Friederike Dr. Welter.

  • Dr. Kshama Fernandes is the Vice Chairperson of the Northern Arc Group and Executive Chairperson of Northern Arc Investment Managers.

    Northern Arc is a leading finance platform in India that connects underbanked institutions and businesses to capital markets investors. Kshama served as the Managing Director and CEO of Northern Arc Capital from 2012 to 2022.

    Deeply respected for her knowledge and commitment towards the cause of unleashing the power of finance for the greater good, Kshama has been a member of various High Powered Committees setup by the Government of India and has worked on consulting assignments for the World Bank, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, and NSEIT.

    Kshama has been featured by FMO as a role model in banking. She is also a recipient of Accion’s Edward W. Claugus award for leadership in financial inclusion.

    She holds a bachelor’s degree in science, a master’s degree as a well as a PhD in management studies. She has over 25 years of experience spanning across management, risk advisory and academia. Dr. Fernandes is a financial risk manager certified by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Prior to joining Northern Arc, she was a professor at the Goa Institute of Management. She has also served as Chief Risk Officer of Northern Arc from 2009 to 2012.

  • Henriette leads the Gender and Economic Inclusion Group at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. She leads gender equality and economic inclusion issues in the private sector and works with IFC’s clients to include underserved populations as entrepreneurs, employees, consumers, community stakeholders and leaders. She leads a global team that is engaged in co-creating gender-smart private sector solutions through research, investments, advice and peer learning platforms. Before joining IFC in September 2013, Henriette was the CEO of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Earlier in her career, Henriette was the UN representative in the Middle East Quartet team advising Tony Blair in Jerusalem. She also worked for the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO). She has held positions as governance advisor with the European Commission Delegation to Tanzania, the German Technical Cooperation Agency in Germany, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Tanzania, where she worked on conflict reduction, civic education, and socioeconomic issues in East Africa.

  • Andia is the Investment Director at Graça Machel Trust. She has over 20 years’ experience in fund management and 10 years of driving women economic empowerment goals. She is one of the first female fund managers in Africa and a global thought leader in gender lens investing. Andia is an entrepreneur and has served at senior executive and non-executive levels for investment and fund management companies, government entities, women economic empowerment institutions and civil society organisations.

    Andia has been instrumental in supporting women’s leadership and advocating for gender diversity and equality in the workplace. She has designed and implemented research and technical assistance programs and created partnerships with financial and development finance institutions to innovate products and drive more capital to women entrepreneurs in Sub Sahara Africa.

    Andia is passionate about impact investing and supporting grassroot communities in emerging markets. She has designed and launched two fit for purpose investment funds in Kenya and advised other Pan African and global funds, benefitting over 1 million women. She is currently leading the development of a $30 million Pan African gender lens impact investment vehicle called 'Afrishela' at the Graca Machel Trust where she serves as Investment Director.

    She is an advisory board member of Kenya’s Women Enterprise Fund, Chair of the investment advisory council for Canada’s Equality fund and Founding Chairperson of New Faces New Voices Kenya.

    Andia has an Economics degree with honours from York University in Toronto Canada and a Masters in Business Administration with merit from Bayes (formerly Cass) Business School in London. In 2018 she won the National DIAR inclusion and diversity ‘Business executive champion’ award in Kenya and was also recognised for being the most influential women in Africa in Financial services by CEO Magazine in the same year.

    Andia continues to work within fund manager and women networks to co-create mutually aligned solutions.

  • Najada Kumbuli is the Head of Investments for Visa Foundation. She leads all investment efforts across asset classes on behalf of the endowment and in support of the Foundation’s mission to empower gender diverse and inclusive small businesses globally. Previously, Najada was an Investment Director for Calvert Impact Capital where she led the development and execution of investment strategies with a gender lens, structured and originated investment opportunities with other private and public investors, and managed the investment quality and impact performance within the financial inclusion and renewable energy portfolios globally. Najada holds a BA in Economics from Macalester College. Originally from Albania, Najada has lived and worked across emerging markets and the U.S., and speaks five languages fluently.

  • She had, for 22 years, extensively leveraged her deep networks in finance, philanthropy, development, research, and entrepreneurship to connect public and private investors to the people and information they needed to move their capital in a gender-smart way.

    Suzanne’s mission was to increase the flow of global capital to gender-smart investments and initiatives, to make sure this capital was used in ways that will generate the most impact, and to ensure that it reached the investment managers, entrepreneurs and innovators who needed it in the most efficient way possible. To do this, she worked with actors spanning the entire spectrum of investment to forge catalytic relationships, build collaboratives, and transform the entire system of global capital. Click this link to read more about Suzanne’s legacy. .

  • Sonia Jordan-Kirwan is the Head of Gender & Diversity at British International Investment (BII). In this position she leads the organisation’s work to positively impact women and girls across the value chain; and drive forward efforts to increase investments into Black-owned and -led businesses and GPs within sub-Saharan Africa.

    Beyond her role at BII, she has also led several cross-DFI and MDB efforts on gender, including developing and aligning the impact investing industry around a suite of harmonised 2X and GIIN-aligned gender metrics; and more recently leading DFI efforts – in collaboration with 2X Global – to further strengthen the 2X Framework.

    Sonia started her career at the European Commission where she specialised in integrating gender and social chapters into Economic Partnership Agreements with emerging economy partner countries. She subsequently spent 8 years working in international development consultancy, both within PwC’s International Development Practice and Adam Smith International where she established and led the organisation’s Women’s Economic Empowerment work, spanning countries as diverse as Timor Leste, Malawi and Nepal.

  • Alec is a Director in at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation’s Social Enterprise Finance Team, where he originates transactions with gender responsive companies in emerging markets. He also served as the inaugural Chair of the 2X Challenge Working Group. Alec is admitted to practice law in the State of New York and is a CFA Charterholder.

Our advisors and ambassadors

  • Chintal has a 20-year consulting career, the past ten spent working with investors, global companies, multilateral institutions and policy-makers on sustainable economic growth. Her focus over the past decade has been on climate and gender finance in emerging markets. She has worked in the financial, agriculture, retail, clean energy, natural resources and ship recycling sectors. She leads diverse teams to design and deliver complex, global partnerships and programmes in Asia and Africa.

    Chintal has been part of the advisory team to help set-up and establish 2X Global. Over the past five years, Chintal has worked with hundreds of investment practitioners across the globe to drive capital with a climate and gender lens, delivering strategies and action plans, training and peer to peer learning sessions, and tools and resources.

  • Sana is a seasoned finance and investment professional, gender-smart investing specialist and global changemaker. Sana’s career has spanned gender finance, mission venture capital, development finance, impact investing and equity research. She is focused on leveraging capital as a tool for social change and to support deep and intersectional systemic shifts.

  • Chris is a strategy & transformation advisor to companies, innovation clusters and governments around the world.

    Over the past four years, a large part of his work has gone into exploring, researching and building Innovation Superclusters. This work has taken him to Asian Governments, European ecosystems and Norwegian growth industries post-oil & gas. He is currently involved with Innovation Supercluster projects in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia.

    Chris has been closely involved in the design and structuring of 2X Ignite and played a key role in shaping its offers including the GP Sprint and Digital Academy.

  • Tatjana is a sustainable investment practitioner with FMO - the Dutch Development Bank and serves on the Advisory Board of the Ukrainian professional ESG association ASDE.

    With 20 years of professional experience, she is passionate about making a business case for gender equality in the corporate environment and ensuring access to finance for female entrepreneurs. She has a strong interest in impact investing in Japan and a background in researching Japanese environmental and social policy in Saitama University and setting up sustainable procurement initiatives with Japanese companies.

    Previously, she led sustainable business programs in WWF - World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the world’s largest NGOs, specialising in reducing human impact on the environment.

2X Forum

The 2X Global Forum shall serve as a long-term engagement pillar to bring in the voices, inspiration, concerns, and perspectives of 2X Global’s broader and more diverse stakeholders to 2X leadership, constructively, strategically and in a timely fashion.

The Forum is designed for discussion, network and engagement, bringing together stakeholders such as gender specialists, local actors, representatives of women’s groups and feminist civil society organisations, target audiences of GLI (those who GLI seeks to positively impact), and collaborating partners. It creates opportunities for transparent and mutual learning, network building, peer exchange and to cement field building activities.

Our supporters

Our ability to mobilise key stakeholders, expand the field’s capacity, and ultimately facilitate the deployment of more gender-smart capital to greater effect is only possible thanks to the generous support of a wide, growing range of funding partners.

If you have an enquiry about joining our network of supporters and funders, please contact us.