Advisory Board
Genevieve Ryan Bellaire
Founder + CEO, Realworld
Genevieve is the Founder and CEO of Realworld, a platform to navigate adulthood and its life moments. A lawyer by training, Genevieve began her career at Goldman Sachs and started Realworld to tackle the critical knowledge gap and societal need to prepare young adults to navigate decisions around personal finance, health care, and insurance - what the team calls "real world readiness". To date, she and her team have helped thousands of young adults set themselves on a path to success in early adulthood.
Genevieve has a B.A. from Princeton and a J.D./M.B.A. from Georgetown. Beyond her work in tech, she’s passionate about women’s empowerment and democratizing educational opportunity, and loves exploring new cities, culture, cuisine, and wine.
Amit Bouri
CEO + Co-founder, GIIN
Amit Bouri is the CEO and co-founder of the GIIN. His work in impact investing began when he was a strategy consultant with the Monitor Institute, where he helped produce the Investing for Social & Environmental Impact report. He left Monitor to co-found the GIIN in 2009.
Amit previously worked as a strategy consultant with Bain & Company. He also worked in the corporate philanthropy units of Gap Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. Amit holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and an MPA from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
John Hope Bryant
Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, Inc.
John Hope Bryant is an American entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and prominent thought leader on financial inclusion, economic empowerment and financial dignity. Mr. Bryant is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, Inc. the largest non-profit, best-in-class provider of financial literacy, and economic empowerment services in the United States for youth and adults. He is also the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Bryant Group Ventures, and Founder and Principal of The Promise Homes Company, which is the largest minority-controlled owner of single-family rental homes in the United States. Mr. Bryant is referred to as the “Conscience of Capitalism” by the CEO’s of Delta Air Lines and First Republic Bank. He is named as Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “The Power 100: Most Influential Atlantans in 2020”, and American Banker magazine's 2016 “Innovator of the Year”. He is also one of Time magazine’s “50 Leaders for the Future”. Five former U.S. presidents have recognized his work, and he has served as an advisor to three sitting U.S. presidents from both political parties. He is responsible for financial literacy becoming the policy of the U.S. federal government. He has received hundreds of awards and citations for his work, including Oprah Winfrey’s Use Your Life Award, and the John Sherman Award for Excellence in Financial Education from the U.S. Treasury. He is the author of bestselling books Up From Nothing, The Memo, How the Poor Can Save Capitalism and Love Leadership.
Allie Burns
CEO, Village Capital
Allie joined Village Capital in 2016 and was named CEO in January of 2019. In her role at VilCap, she’s responsible for overseeing a team dedicated to creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs who have been traditionally overlooked by early-stage investors.
Prior to joining Village Capital, Allie spent seven years working directly with technology pioneers Steve and Jean Case, supporting their work in venture capital, philanthropy and impact investing. As a senior executive at the Case Foundation, Allie was responsible for oversight of the organization’s communications, marketing and partnerships functions. She was also part of the team that co-created the Startup America Partnership, a private sector initiative of the Case and Kauffman Foundations created in response to President Barack Obama’s cross-agency effort to promote entrepreneurship around the country. Within two and a half years, the Startup America Partnership helped launch 32 startup states, cultivate corporate partners and resources, and build a network of more than 13,000 startups across the country.
Allie’s work on helping to build entrepreneurial ecosystems outside of major venture capital hubs extended to her role as Chief Communications Officer at Revolution, the venture capital firm created by Steve Case, where she served as part of the core team who created and launched the Rise of the Rest initiative.
Catherine Clark
Faculty Director, CASE and CASE i3 at Duke University
Named Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year 2020, Cathy Clark has over 30 years of experience in using business for good. Cathy serves as Faculty Director at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and as Founding Director of the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing.
Cathy is globally recognized as a collaborative visionary and pioneering influencer in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing. In 2001, she created Columbia Business School's first course and research initiative on social entrepreneurship. In 2007, she helped create the standards for B Corporations, used by over 100,000 companies globally, and joined B Lab’s standards advisory council. In 2017, she received the B the Change Champions Award.
For years prior to the pandemic, Cathy has been working to expand her reach through professional online education. Her first online training, CASE Smart Impact Capital, is a professional impact investing program that has been in continuous use since 2016 by over 95 accelerator, fund, and university cohorts, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, LBS, and ESADE. Her second online training on Coursera, in partnership with the UN Development Programme in September 2021, helps enterprises and investors enhance their practices around Impact Measurement and Management for the Sustainable Development Goals.
Previously, Cathy was an investor at Flatiron Partners, a philanthropist at the Markle Foundation, and a policy convener at the Aspen Institute. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from the University of Virginia.
Rosie Rios
CEO, Red River Associates, Co-Host, Unicorn Hunters, and 43rd Treasurer of the United States
Rosie Rios is the CEO of Red River Associates, an investment management consulting firm and co-host of Unicorn Hunters, a reality series focused on pre-IPO investments. She served as the 43rd Treasurer of the United States with oversight over 4,000 employees and a $5 billion budget. She also initiated and led the efforts to place a portrait of a woman on U.S. currency. Prior to her presidential appointment in Treasury, she was Managing Director of Investments for MacFarlane Partners, a $22 billion real estate investment management firm based in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Harvard University and was selected as the first Latina in Harvard’s 385-year history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. She currently serves on the board of American Family Insurance, Ripple Labs, Inc., and Fidelity Charitable Trust. She is also an Executive Committee member of America 250, the Congressional Commission responsible for planning the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. Her personal passion includes EMPOWERMENT 2026, a non-profit that highlights historical American women and women in positions of money and power.
George Serafeim
Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has presented his research in over 60 countries around the world and ranks among the top 10 most popular authors out of over 12,000 business authors on the Social Science Research Network. He is currently teaching the course "Risks, Opportunities and Investments in an Era of Climate Change" that he designed for the elective curriculum of the MBA program and the course "Financial Reporting and Control" in the required MBA curriculum. Before that he taught the award-winning course “Reimagining Capitalism: Business and Big Problems.” George’s research focuses on corporate purpose, sustainability, and the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in business strategy and investing. His work has been published in the most prestigious academic and practitioner journals, such as Management Science, The Accounting Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Harvard Business Review. He has received multiple awards for his research and has held several positions of leadership. He currently serves on the board of directors of Liberty Mutual, a Fortune 100 company, and is an academic partner at State Street Associates. Previously he served on the Standards Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and on the first ever decarbonization advisory panel for the New York Common Retirement Fund, one of the largest US pension funds.
Sonal Shah
President, TAAF
Sonal Shah is the founding President of TAAF. One of the foremost global leaders on social impact and innovation, Shah has started and led social impact efforts in academia, government, and the private and philanthropic sectors for over twenty-five years. Prior to her appointment at TAAF, Shah founded and led Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, a cross-disciplinary center that provided students a first-hand opportunity to work on social impact projects in the public, private and social sectors.
Shah has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. She served as Deputy Assistant to President Obama and Director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, where she was tasked with creating innovative approaches to using technology for social programs across the federal government and with building public private partnerships at scale. Previously, she worked as an international economist at the Department of Treasury, setting up the central bank in Bosnia, working for post-conflict reconstruction in Kosovo, and implementing poverty reduction strategies in Africa. In the private sector, Shah led technology initiatives for civic voice and impact investing as the head of Global Development Initiatives at Google.org.
Prior to her time at Google.org, she developed the environmental strategy and ran the initiatives for investing in clean technologies at Goldman Sachs. Shah serves on the boards of Oxfam America, the UBS Optimus Foundation, and The Century Foundation. She also serves as an adviser to the Democracy Fund and is coordinating the Initiative on Tech & Society at Georgetown University. In 2020, she served as the National Policy Director for Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.