Our Mission

ImpactAlpha is redefining business journalism around social and environmental value. We work to enable a more just, equitable and sustainable world.

We expose, inform, narrate and critique the impact investment space, while fostering a growing community of agents of impact.

About ImpactAlpha

ImpactAlpha is a subscription-based, multi-channel digital media platform that is redefining business journalism around social and environmental value. Our audience and our beat are “Agents of Impact” working in impact investing, sustainable finance, ESG and entrepreneurship to accelerate a more just, equitable and sustainable world. In this growing marketplace, we are both trusted insiders and skeptical outsiders. We identify solutions worth scaling and balloons that need popping. Our audience includes asset owners (institutional and individual), asset and fund managers, foundations, advisors (including accountants, lawyers, consultants as well as finance), entrepreneurs and advocates.

ImpactAlpha’s daily email newsletter, The Brief, is read by thousands of impact investing and sustainable finance professionals and influencers globally. ImpactAlpha.com features both our real-time newsfeed and other subscriber benefits. Monthly (or more frequent) Agents of Impact (video) calls feature leading voices in the impact investing space. Our podcast feeds include the weekly Impact Briefing, The Reconstruction podcast as well as Agents of Impact interviews and our Returns on Investment roundtables. We maintain active social media feeds across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and host multiple subscriber-only Slack channels. Our open database, ImpactSpace, includes profiles on more than 10,000 impact ventures, funds and deals.

Meet the Team

Monique Aiken

Contributing Editor

Monique co-hosts ImpactAlpha’s Impact Briefing podcast. She is passionate about social change and positive impact after 15 years in investment banking, where she developed her understanding of the capital markets. She is Managing Director for TIIP, The Investment Integration Project. Previously, she served as vice president of programs at Mission Investors Exchange, a peer-learning network for members seeking to deepen their practice of impact investing.  Monique was also a director at Tideline, the impact investing strategy consulting firm, where she focused on client and project management and business development. She served as project manager at the Clinton Foundation for No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a women’s empowerment initiative led by Secretary Clinton, and business development manager for the Clinton Global Initiative. As a vice president in Deutsche Bank’s Commodity Derivatives Sales group, she managed client relationships with oil and gas (E&P), utility, and consumer products companies.

David Bank

Editor and Chief Executive Officer

David co-founded ImpactAlpha to cover impact investing as a serious beat in the expectation it would become one – and it has. A veteran journalist, he has spotted big trends at The Wall Street Journal (and before that, the San Jose Mercury News and other newspapers), breaking stories on technology, social innovation and finance. Harvard Business Review and Amazon.com called “Breaking Windows,” his book on Microsoft, one of the ‘best business books of the year.’ As a foreign correspondent, David reported from Asia and Latin America. His articles have appeared in Wired, Mother Jones, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Out, Stanford Social Innovation Review and other publications. As vice president of Encore.org, he helped establish encore careers as a new stage of work centered on social purpose. A 1996 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, David has an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his husband and son.

Zuleyma Bebell

Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Zuleyma manages ImpactAlpha’s business development and strategic partnerships, providing curated products and services to serve the growing impact investment industry. She launched ImpactSpace, ImpactAlpha’s open-data database of enterprises and investments. She has a master’s degree in Investment and Development from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida. Zuleyma  is fluent in Spanish and Arabic and worked as an analyst for UNDP in Amman, Jordan. Zuleyma’s guilty pleasure is watching reality TV shows. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two young boys.

Cesar Chavez

Marketing Consultant

Cesar spent more than 20 years in broadcast television as a manager and producer, with an emphasis on news marketing, at WGN-TV, CBS Chicago, KTVU-TV and, most recently, KPIX-TV in San Francisco. His media career began as an editor at Test Positive Aware, a Chicago-based nonprofit. He earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a B.A. from Wofford College. Cesar grew up in Spartanburg, S.C. where he was raised on good Southern cooking and anticuchos and ceviche from his parents’ native Peru. He lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his husband and son.

Amy Cortese

Editorial Director

Amy brings to ImpactAlpha deep journalistic experience as well as vital perspective on bottom-up, grassroots finance. She is the author of “Locavesting,” a pivotal book that identified the investment shift toward locally owned enterprises that can deliver enormous economic and social benefits. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz called it ‘an inspiring look at what local businesses can achieve.’ She is also cofounder of investibule.co, an aggregation platform for crowdfunded investments. Amy was an editor at Business Week covering technology and a longtime contributor to The New York Times. She has also covered food, wine and travel – which she continues to enjoy. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her partner Robert.

Dan Keeler

Contributing Editor

Dan is Senior Editor at ImpactAlpha with a focus on smaller emerging markets, the impact of new technologies such as cryptocurrencies, government or multilateral support for impact investing and advances in impact measurement. Prior to joining ImpactAlpha Dan was an editor at the Wall Street Journal where he created and managed frontier- and small-emerging-markets coverage, as well as a number of successful events and editorial partnerships. He also has a deep interest in the power of digital money to transform the global economy and served as editor-in-chief at Blockworks, an institutional-investor-focused news resource on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Dan has a deep love of travel and a determination to help educate potential investors about the opportunities to contribute to the growth and development of countries that are generally overlooked by capital allocators.

R. Todd Johnson

Board Member

Todd is the founder and CEO of iPAR, an impact reporting and data analytics platform facilitating transparency for capital deployed to encourage human flourishing. Previously, during nearly 30 years at Jones Day, Todd founded the firm’s Northern California presence, led its Silicon Valley office and founded and served as global head for Jones Day’s Renewable Energy and Sustainability practice, where he advised and represented companies, funds, family offices, multi-family offices and nonprofits focused on renewable energy, sustainability, and those using “for-benefit” models to help the planet and people flourish.

Jessica Pothering

Senior Editor

Jessica started her career in financial journalism on the fateful day in 2008 that Lehman Brothers collapsed. She took that as a signal that legacy finance’s days were numbered; she has been on the impact investing beat since 2012. She loves getting into the weeds of new and wonky financial structures and impact tech, and meeting the creative minds behind them. She manages ImpactAlpha’s daily Dealflow news and emerging markets coverage, meaning she knows far too much about poop charcoal and anaerobic digestion. Jessica is a native Charlestonian, and a Baltimorean and Amsterdammer by choice. 

Dennis Price

Chief Impact Officer

Dennis leads content direction at ImpactAlpha and helps shape and drive business development and subscription growth. He has focused his career at the intersection of markets and global development. Prior to ImpactAlpha, Dennis co-founded 118 Capital and worked with the Media Development Investment Fund and the Global Impact Investing Network. He began his career as an institutional fundraiser for the national headquarters of Big Brothers Big Sisters and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia. Dennis is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Boston College. He grew up in New Jersey and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and four small children.

Imogen Rose-Smith

Contributing Editor

Imogen pens an occassional column on institutional investing for ImpactAlpha. She is the co-founder of Combinate Capital, a financial services firm focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. She serves as an advisor to investment managers and asset owners on sustainable investments, business development and communications. Imogen is also an affiliate partner of IoTask, a management consulting company focused on technology and innovation. From 2017-2019, she was a fellow of the Office of the Chief Investment Officer, University of California Regents. Imogen has worked as a journalist for more than 15 years. She earned an M.A. in American Studies from Columbia University and a B.A. from the University of East Anglia, Englan

Roodgally Senatus

Reporter

Roody is a New York-based reporter-producer for ImpactAlpha’s editorial team. Before joining ImpactAlpha, he served as the property markets reporter and later senior reporter for Real Estate Fund Intelligence. During his time at REFI, Roodgally covered the top 100 largest global private equity real estate asset managers, primarily institutional capital allocation to their funds and investments. He was also a writer and digital producer intern for ImpactAlpha out of journalism school. Roodgally has a B.A. in Journalism & Communications from Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. During his free time, he teaches and mentors teenagers to help them get ready for college and internships. Roody also loves going to the gym.

Isaac Silk

Executive Producer

Isaac is a podcast editor and producer, composer, writer and climate organizer. He attended Wesleyan University where he received the Leavell Memorial Prize for undergraduate scholarship in their highly regarded music department, where he studied ethnomusicology, sound design, and composition. He has produced radio pieces for KQED and KALW in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has embedded with activists fighting mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia. He ran the Bay Area communications team Sunrise Movement, and serves on the advisory board for 350 Bay Area. Other podcasts he edits include Loam Listen, Gratitribe, Green and Red, Listen for a Change, and Sunrise Bay Radio. To listen to these shows, visit isaacsilk.com.

Brian Walsh

Senior Advisor

Brian co-hosts ImpactAlpha’s Impact Briefing podcast. As head of Impact at Liquidnet, a New York-based global fin tech company, Brian works at the intersection of finance and social good. He works to apply Liquidnet’s core strengths – using technology to improve the capital markets – to both philanthropy and impact investing. Brian also oversees opportunities for Liquidnet employees to make a meaningful impact, both in the local communities where they work and live, and through a unique partnership with the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) in Rwanda, an innovative nonprofit that empowers orphaned and vulnerable Rwandan youth to build lives of dignity and contribute to a better world.

Five ways to connect with ImpactAlpha: Subscribe to ImpactAlpha. Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Dig into ImpactSpace. Subscribe to the Returns on Investment podcast: iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud. Join our Slack channel (subscribers only).

ImpactAlpha is redefining business journalism around social and environmental value.

Our Mission

We work to enable a more just, equitable and sustainable world. We expose, inform, narrate and critique the impact investment space, while fostering a growing community of agents of impact.

Our audience and our beat are “Agents of Impact” working in impact investing, sustainable finance, ESG and entrepreneurship to accelerate a more just, equitable and sustainable world.

Our Story

ImpactAlpha is a subscription-based, multi-channel digital media platform that is redefining business journalism around social and environmental value.

In this growing marketplace, we are both trusted insiders and skeptical outsiders. We identify solutions worth scaling and balloons that need popping. Our audience includes asset owners (institutional and individual), asset and fund managers, foundations, advisors (including accountants, lawyers, consultants as well as finance), entrepreneurs and advocates.

ImpactAlpha.com features both our real-time newsfeed, podcasts, and other subscriber benefits like The Brief, and The Call. 

Meet our Team

David Bank

Chief Executive Officer & Editor

Zuleyma Bebell

Co-President & Chief Operations Officer

Dennis Price

Co-President & Chief Product Officer

Amy Cortese

Editorial Director

David Bank

Chief Executive Officer & Editor

Dennis Price

Co-President & Chief Product Officer

Amy Cortese

Editorial Director

Jessica Pothering

Senior Editor

Roodgally Senatus

Senior Reporter

Isaac Silk

Executive Producer & Project Manager

Monique Aiken

Contributing Editor

Rob Brown

Contributing Editor

Sherrell Dorsey

Contributing Editor

Rob Goodier

Contributing Editor

Lucy Ngige

Contributing Editor

Andrea Riquier

Contributing Editor

Imogen Rose-Smith

Contributing Editor

Julian Kraus-Polk

Contributing Editor

Brian Walsh

Contributing Editor

Zuleyma Bebell

Co-President & Chief Operations Officer

Maricarmen Gonzales

Director of Subscription Growth

Cesar Chavez

Social Media Strategist

Mike Dobransky

Digital Marketing Consultant

Jennifer Cruz

Creative & UX Designer

Roxanna Calderon

Customer Support

R. Todd Johnson

Board Member

Aaron Samuels

Board Member

Roy Swan

Board Member

Lindsay Zizumbo

Board Member

David Bank

Chief Executive Officer & Editor

Zuleyma Bebell

Co-President & Chief Operations Officer

Join the conversation

David Bank

Chief Executive Officer & Editor

David co-founded ImpactAlpha to cover impact investing as a serious beat in the expectation it would become one – and it has. A veteran journalist, he has spotted big trends at The Wall Street Journal (and before that, the San Jose Mercury News and other newspapers), breaking stories on technology, social innovation and finance.

Harvard Business Review and Amazon.com called “Breaking Windows,” his book on Microsoft, one of the ‘best business books of the year.’ As a foreign correspondent, David reported from Asia and Latin America. His articles have appeared in Wired, Mother Jones, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Out, Stanford Social Innovation Review and other publications.

As vice president of Encore.org, he helped establish encore careers as a new stage of work centered on social purpose. A 1996 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, David has an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his husband and son.

Zuleyma Bebell

Chief Operating Officer & Co-President

Zuleyma manages ImpactAlpha’s business development and strategic partnerships, providing curated products and services to serve the growing impact investment industry. She launched ImpactSpace, ImpactAlpha’s open-data database of enterprises and investments. She has a master’s degree in Investment and Development from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida. Zuleyma is fluent in Spanish and Arabic and worked as an analyst for UNDP in Amman, Jordan. Zuleyma’s guilty pleasure is watching reality TV shows. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two young boys.

Dennis Price

Executive Editor & Co-President

Dennis leads product development at ImpactAlpha and helps shape and drive business development and subscription growth. He also writes regularly on the inclusive economy and impact in private markets. Prior to ImpactAlpha, Dennis co-founded 118 Capital and worked with the Media Development Investment Fund and the Global Impact Investing Network. Dennis is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Boston College. He grew up in New Jersey and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and four children.

Amy Cortese

Editorial Director

Amy brings to ImpactAlpha deep journalistic experience as well as vital perspective on bottom-up, grassroots finance. She is the author of “Locavesting,” a pivotal book that identified the investment shift toward locally owned enterprises that can deliver enormous economic and social benefits. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz called it ‘an inspiring look at what local businesses can achieve.’ She is also co-founder of investibule.co, an aggregation platform for crowdfunded investments. Amy was an editor at Business Week covering technology and a longtime contributor to The New York Times. She has also covered food, wine and travel – at least two of which she continues to enjoy during the pandemic. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her partner Robert.

Jessica Pothering

Senior Editor

Jessica started her career in financial journalism in 2008, the day Lehman Brothers collapsed. She took that as a signal that legacy finance’s days were numbered. She has been on the impact investing beat since 2012. Jessica manages ImpactAlpha’s daily Dealflow news and emerging markets coverage. She loves getting into the weeds of new and wonky financial structures and impact tech, and meeting the creative minds behind them. Jessica grew up in Charleston, SC and currently lives in Lisbon. Her real home, most often, is her suitcase.

Roodgally Senatus

Senior Reporter

Roodgally (aka Roody) is a Philadelphia-based senior reporter for ImpactAlpha’s editorial team. Before joining ImpactAlpha, he served as the property markets reporter and later senior reporter for Real Estate Fund Intelligence. During his time at REFI, Roodgally covered the top 100 largest global private equity real estate asset managers, primarily institutional capital allocation to their funds and investments. He was also a writer and digital producer intern for ImpactAlpha out of journalism school. Roodgally has a B.A. in Journalism & Communications from Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus and a Business Journalism certificate from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Isaac Silk

Executive Producer & Project Manager

Isaac is a podcast editor and producer, composer, writer and climate organizer. He attended Wesleyan University where he received the Leavell Memorial Prize for undergraduate scholarship in their highly regarded music department, where he studied ethnomusicology, sound design, and composition. He has produced radio pieces for KQED and KALW in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has embedded with activists fighting mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.

Monique Aiken

Contributing Editor

Monique Aiken is Managing Director at The Investment Integration Project (TIIP). She is also a co-founder of Make Justice Normal, a growing collective seeking to open space for people working to move capital towards justice and host of their podcast, “Into the Record”. She is cofounder of the ReStarter Fund, an economic and climate justice initiative aiming to be a small business lifeline in these unique times. Monique serves on the boards of Responsible Alpha and the Institute for Nonprofit Practice. She is also a member of the Steering Committee for the Intentional Endowments Network, the Investment Committee for the NYU Impact Investment Fund and the Advisory Board for the Global Bio Fund, focused on gender smart biotech and wellness. Monique is a proud Toigo, SEO, and INROADS alum and holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a B.Sc. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Sherrell Dorsey

Contributing Editor

Sherrell Dorsey is an award-winning data journalist, entrepreneur, speaker, and author teaching the world to redefine who gets to create and participate in the future. She founded The Plug in 2016, the first Black data-driven tech news publication to syndicate on the Bloomberg Terminal, which was acquired in 2023 by ImpactAlpha. As the TED Tech podcast host, Sherrell provides her in-depth analysis and commentary on technologies changing society, and how these advancements can provide opportunities for more underserved Americans to participate in an increasingly automated and digital world. Her work has been featured in VICE, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, The Information, Columbia Journalism Review, and more.

Rob Goodier

Contributing Editor

Rob Goodier began adulthood as a serial over-explainer, annoying friends and family before channeling his habit into a pursuit that seems to put up with it: journalism. He began his career as a professional explainer reporting for a weekly paper in Costa Rica. A weird mix of beats that included natural disasters, financial crimes and hotel reviews led to a communications gig with the Rainforest Alliance. Then it was back to the States where he earned a masters of journalism with a focus on science and technology. Now Rob writes and edits news about engineering and design in sustainable development for Engineering for Change. He has reported on medical advances with Reuters Health and he has written for Popular Mechanics, The Scientific American and a dozen other publications. Impact investment is a tangent that fits, and Rob is motivated to divulge what he learns through his work at Impact Alpha, saving his family from long explanations at the dinner table.

Lucy Ngige

Contributing Editor

Lucy Ngige is a contributing writer at ImpactAlpha, where she supports Africa reporting, with a focus on climate, energy and agriculture. She brings over four years’ experience reporting on the African startup ecosystem and was previously the solo Africa Reporter at AgFunder News where she covered Africa’s growing agrifoodtech ecosystem. Her other previous roles were research analyst and content creator at an online media company. Lucy holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from the University of Nairobi. Out of the office, you can find her volunteering and participating in community development projects.

Andrea Riquier

Contributing Editor

Andrea Riquier has spent over a decade as a journalist, with an emphasis on public finance and the municipal bond market, as well as the U.S. housing market. She’s broken news, won awards for deep-dive projects, and led national coverage of emerging trends, but she is proudest of her ability to distill complex topics into accessible narratives that make people understand the “so what.” Andrea spent over six years at Dow Jones MarketWatch on a variety of beats, and two years covering the macro economy and central banks for Investor’s Business Daily in Washington.

Imogen Rose-Smith

Contributing Editor

Imogen pens an occassional column on institutional investing for ImpactAlpha. She is the co-founder of Combinate Capital, a financial services firm focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. She serves as an advisor to investment managers and asset owners on sustainable investments, business development and communications. Imogen is also an affiliate partner of IoTask, a management consulting company focused on technology and innovation. From 2017-2019, she was a fellow of the Office of the Chief Investment Officer, University of California Regents. Imogen has worked as a journalist for more than 15 years. She earned an M.A. in American Studies from Columbia University and a B.A. from the University of East Anglia, Englan

Julian Kraus-Polk

Contributing Editor

Julian is a climate justice activist focused on finance and policy interventions for near-term emissions reductions, and systemic shifts toward distributive and regenerative economics. Julian brings a global justice lens to his work, weaving social and racial justice with climate mitigation objectives.

At Project Drawdown, Julian coordinated engagement with business partners and mapped high-impact opportunities for the private sector to accelerate climate solutions. Mobilizing Project Drawdown’s research to create resources that inspire and enable businesses to go well beyond “net zero”.

Julian also has a background in life-cycle analysis, climate-smart agriculture and institutional food procurement policy. Previous to Project Drawdown, he worked with Friends of the Earth U.S. to develop their Healthy, Climate-Friendly Food program; engaging with universities, K-12 school districts and municipalities on multi-benefit food shifts. Julian has consulted multiple NGOs on food carbon footprinting, including the World Resources Institute, Center for Good Food Purchasing and the Real Food Challenge.

Outside of work, Julian is an active organizer with the Sunrise Movement, where he supports grassroots mobilization to elect climate justice champions. He is also a passionate rock climber, who loves to explore the Sierra Nevada mountains or the coastal crags near his home in Oakland, CA.

Brian Walsh

Contributing Editor

Brian co-hosts ImpactAlpha’s Impact Briefing podcast. As head of Impact at Liquidnet, a New York-based global fin tech company, Brian works at the intersection of finance and social good. He works to apply Liquidnet’s core strengths – using technology to improve the capital markets – to both philanthropy and impact investing. Brian also oversees opportunities for Liquidnet employees to make a meaningful impact, both in the local communities where they work and live, and through a unique partnership with the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) in Rwanda, an innovative nonprofit that empowers orphaned and vulnerable Rwandan youth to build lives of dignity and contribute to a better world.

Maricarmen Gonzales

Director of Subscription Growth

Maricarmen Gonzales is a seasoned marketing professional with 10+ years of experience driving successful customer acquisition and reacquisition strategies. Maricarmen is passionate about using data to drive innovation and growth. Prior to joining ImpactAlpha, Maricarmen led the subscription growth team at Business Insider and The Economist after having made her transition from the Events industry in which she served as a marketing strategist for B2B conferences and virtual events. Maricarmen resides in Morristown, NJ with her husband and goldendoodle, Willow.

Cesar Chavez

Social Media Strategist

Cesar spent more than 20 years in broadcast television as a manager and producer, with an emphasis on news marketing, at WGN-TV, CBS Chicago, KTVU-TV and, most recently, KPIX-TV in San Francisco. His media career began as an editor at Test Positive Aware, a Chicago-based nonprofit. He most enjoys creating compelling content focused on social justice and inclusion. He earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a B.A. from Wofford College. Cesar grew up in Spartanburg, S.C. where he was raised on good Southern cooking and anticuchos and ceviche from his parents’ native Peru. He lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his husband and son.

Mike Dobransky

Digital Marketing Consultant

Mike has 15 years of experience helping businesses grow with digital marketing strategies. Mike specializes in combining analytics with marketing strategy to make informed decisions and ensure the best return on marketing spend. He has an MBA from the Rady School of Management at UCSD and lives in San Diego with his wife and three daughters.

Roxanna Calderon

Customer Support

Roxanna Calderon is head of customer support for ImpactAlpha. Her background in guest service and customer relations has given her the skills to provide the best assistance with subscriber inquiries. Born and raised in South Florida she is fluent in reading, writing, and speaking in Spanish. When she’s not answering questions Roxanna enjoys laying in bed unwinding with a couple rounds of candy crush. She currently lives just outside of Orlando Florida with her husband, two kids, 4 cats, and 3 dogs.

R. Todd Johnson

Board Member

Todd is the founder and CEO of iPAR, an impact reporting and data analytics platform facilitating transparency for capital deployed to encourage human flourishing. Previously, during nearly 30 years at Jones Day, Todd founded the firm’s Northern California presence, led its Silicon Valley office and founded and served as global head for Jones Day’s Renewable Energy and Sustainability practice, where he advised and represented companies, funds, family offices, multi-family offices and nonprofits focused on renewable energy, sustainability, and those using “for-benefit” models to help the planet and people flourish.

Aaron Samuels

Board Member

Aaron Samuels is Founder and Managing Partner of Collide Capital. Prior to Collide Capital, Aaron began his career as a spoken word artist before working at Bain & Co. as a strategy consultant and TeleSign as a Product Manager. Combining his love for storytelling, strategy, and technology, Aaron co-founded and served as COO at Blavity, the largest global Black Media company, and AfroTech, the largest Black Tech conference in the world. Born and raised in Providence, RI to a Black & Jewish household, Aaron’s exposure to intersectional communities influenced him to share his experiences through writing and entrepreneurship. Aaron is a Forbes Under 30 list member, a Cave Canem fellow, and a nationally-acclaimed spoken word artist.

Roy Swan

Board Member

Roy Swan leads the foundation’s Mission Investments team, managing Ford’s portfolio of mission-related investments (MRIs) and program-related investments (PRIs), and working to expand and strengthen the impact investing field.

Before joining Ford, Roy served as managing director and co-head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley. Among his prior experiences, he was the founding chief investment officer of New York City’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a federal initiative to bring new resources to distressed urban communities which played a key role in Harlem’s economic rebirth. He also served as CFO at Carver Bancorp, a Harlem-based publicly traded financial institution and the nation’s largest African American managed bank.

Roy serves on several nonprofit boards, including the Dalton School, Enterprise Community Partners, Low Income Investment Fund, and the Partnership for After School Education. He also serves on the advisory boards of several private equity funds.

Lindsay Zizumbo

Board Member

Lindsay Zizumbo leads the team at Sorenson Impact, an investing platform focused on making transformative investments in high-potential, but underserved markets around the world. Lindsay oversees a team of dedicated professionals grounded in the thesis that superior returns and measurable impact are not mutually exclusive. Lindsay manages relations with intermediaries, investors, government partners and entrepreneurs to drive both long-term value creation and positive outcomes in communities. Lindsay has a diverse background and more than 20 years of experience in fundraising, strategic communications, asset management and public policy. Lindsay graduated from the University of Utah and lives in Salt Lake City with her husband Devin and two sons.