Gustavo H. B. Franco

Dr. Franco is considered by many the "intellectual father" of the Real plan, which halted Brazilian hyperinflation in mid-1994.  He has a distinguished career in government, academia, and business, and served as Brazil's Central Bank Governor from August 1997 to January 1999.   Dr. Franco is a Founding Partner and Executive Director of Rio Bravo Investimentos, a leading financial services business in Latin America, which manages several venture capital funds. Rio Bravo has been one of the leading advisors in mergers & acquisitions and financial restructuring transactions in Brazil as well as a pioneer in funds and businesses related to corporate governance and access to financial services for the underbanked. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of Unik, a payroll linked financial services provider targeting low-income clients through pre and postpaid credit cards. Dr. Franco has received numerous prizes and honors, including being named “Central Banker of the Year, 1998”, by Euromoney; Economist of the Year 1997, by the Ordem dos Economistas de São Paulo; and Winner of Haralambros Simionides Prize for best book in economics by Associação Nacional de Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia.

Michael Chu

Michael Chu is Managing Director and co-founder of the Ignia Fund, a newly created equity firm based in Monterrey, Mexico dedicated to investing in and developing commercial and socially inclusive enterprises focused on low socio-economic sectors. Chu also holds an appointment as Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School (HBS). He remains a Senior Advisor of Pegasus Capital, a firm in Buenos Aires dedicated to investing equity capital in Latin America, which he co-founded. At HBS, Chu’ s research focuses on business and low-income sectors and the use of market mechanisms to create economic return and social value. Before Pegasus, as President & CEO of ACCION International Chu worked to develop financial services for the working poor as a new segment of banking capable of outstanding returns. He participated in the founding of several microcredit financial institutions and regulated banks throughout Latin America, including BancoSol, one of the premier microlending institutions in the world, which under his chairmanship has been the most profitable bank in Bolivia.

W. Robert de Jongh

W. Robert de Jongh is Regional Director for Latin America for SNV Netherlands Development Organization. He is a leading social entrepreneur dedicated to accelerating and scaling the impact of public and private sector actors committed to social change in emerging markets. For almost two decades Robert has leveraged social and financial capital and bridged multi-sectoral divides to catalyze impact and performance in diverse sectors ranging from conservation and development to philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. He has developed winning strategies that have generated over $1 billion for sustainable development efforts worldwide while ensuring its sustainable and effective investment through the empowerment, enhancement, and harmonization of local actor efforts. Robert held leadership positions at the World Wide Fund for Nature in Switzerland and Washington, D.C, The Nature Conservancy in Central America, and with private equity from Swiss-Industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny, co-founded Origo, a boutique social enterprise based in San Francisco, California.

Brian Trelstad

Brian Trelstad is the Chief Financial Officer of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that aims to use entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty by building financially sustainable and scalable organizations that deliver affordable, critical goods and services to the poor in the areas of health, water and housing in South Asia and East Africa. As CFO he manages the finance and operations functions, supports the deal structuring and investment process, and leads Acumenís metrics and evaluation work. Before joining Acumen Fund, Brian spent four years at McKinsey & Company as a consultant in the healthcare and non-profit practices and as an editor of the McKinsey Quarterly. Prior to McKinsey, he worked as a case writer at Stanford University's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and advised a number of early-stage technology companies. He was the lead environmental staffer for President Clinton's AmeriCorps program, and co-founded and directed the Center for Environmental Citizenship.

Anil K. Gupta

Dr. Gupta is a professor in the Centre for Management in Agriculture in Ahmedabad, India. In addition he is the Executive Vice Chair to the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and the coordinator of the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) and the Honey Bee Network. Dr.Gupta’s desire to develop a platform to recognise, respect and reward local innovators was the stimulus behind the creation of the Honey Bee network. The name Honey Bee was chosen to reflect how innovations are collected without making the innovators poorer and how connections are created between innovators. Honey Bee network has demonstrated that by building upon a resource in which poor people are rich in, that is their knowledge, a new paradigm of development can be unleashed. SRISTI was established to help provide support structures for grassroots innovators and link formal and informal knowledge systems. SRISTI provides organisational support to the Honey Bee network in over 70 countries.

The Opportunities for the Majority Initiative has validated the premise that the Bank Group has a unique role to play in applying market-based strategies to bring the benefits of economic and social development to the majority in the region. A core element of business development has been to engage partners such as SNV Netherlands Development Organization and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors to organize the market information in ways that will help to identify and create opportunities for the majority

SNV Private Sector Mapping: Carried out in thirteen countries in the region, this study was a ground-breaking effort to gather first-hand information from 520 top management executives of large and medium sized firms that currently work with or are interested in working with majority markets. The purpose of the study was to identify new partners and to understand current trends, strategies, obstacles and incentives for working with majority markets. The SNV study includes a rich data base of company profiles that will serve as an important source of information for originating new business. [ DOWNLOAD STUDY ]

Innovest OM Index: Based on a study of 75 publicly traded firms in the region, Innovest developed an Index to establish a correlation between delivering value to low income sectors and delivering value to shareholders looking for opportunities in majority markets. The criteria examined three topics: (i) Are majority markets on a company’s strategic radar screen? (ii) Does the company have a well designed strategy to engage creatively in majority markets? And (iii) Does the company have mechanisms to enhance its credibility and avoid risks to its reputation? [ DOWNLOAD STUDY ]

Acumen Fund: "Building transformative businesses to solve the problems of poverty".
http://www.acumenfund.org/

Rio Bravo Investimentos: "Rio Bravo is and independent asset management firm based in Sao Paulo that invests across assets classes, including equity, real estate, venture capital and private equity".
http://www.riobravo.com.br/

Ignia Fund: "Ignia seeks to empower entrepreneurship and generate social impact while creating attractive financial returns for its investors"
http://www.ignia.com.mx | IGNIA Partners, LLC