1. What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

I am excited to be celebrating IIX’s ten-year anniversary this year, and I am especially proud of how we have embraced innovation across all of our work—as part of our drive to create more inclusive markets and empower underserved women to be at the forefront of sustainable development.
We did this through a unique ecosystem approach that spans the impact economy, and which has enabled us to achieve many firsts. We created the world’s first and largest impact investing crowdfunding platform, Impact Partners, which connects 1,200 global accredited impact investors – US$12 billion assets under management – to high impact enterprises that we work with. We help impact enterprises become investment-ready through our impact assessments and our award-winning accelerator program ACTS, enabling them to overcome growth barriers and scale their solutions that are addressing some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.
Another first is our US$8 million Women’s Livelihood Bond 1 (WLB1), the world’s first impact investing instrument focused on women to be listed on a stock exchange and quoted Bloomberg, reporting both social and financial returns. It is creating sustainable livelihoods for over 385,000 women across Southeast Asia. The soon-to-be-launched Women’s Livelihood Bond 2 (WLB2) builds on the success of the WLB1 and is creating sustainable livelihoods for over 2 million women across Asia. The Women’s Livelihood Bond (WLB) Series – comprising of both the WLB1 and WLB2 – was recently globally recognized for its innovation and impact with the 2019 P4G State-of-the-Art Partnership of the Year and 2019 UN Global Climate Action awards.
Moreover, we have unlocked US$127 million in private sector capital, created sustainable livelihoods for over 77 million lives and avoided over 1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions to date. As defiant optimists transforming the world by mobilizing capital for social and environmental change, we have the mission to impact 500 million lives by 2035.

2. What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

My courage, vision and defiance to build a more inclusive world arose from my personal journey, beginning in the back streets of war-torn Bangladesh. As the first Bangladeshi woman on Wall Street, I understood the immense power of financial markets and grew determined to transform it for social good. Armed with my experience on Wall Street, Grameen Bank, and OneNest, being a woman of color as well as a serial entrepreneur, my contributions were soon recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation who invited me and other thought leaders to come together and innovate a new way to address global inequities (out of which the term “Impact Investing” was coined). With Rockefeller’s support, I founded Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). A decade later, my bold vision to transform financial markets for a more inclusive world has led to many firsts – as mentioned earlier. These successes are due to IIX’s unique ecosystem approach which spearheads the growth of the impact economy and enables everyone to play a role in sustainable development.
What keeps me going is defiant optimism, a belief that a lot of what IIX does is ahead of the curve and comes with the struggles of a pioneer. Whenever I deliver a speech or do a photoshoot, I specifically wear saris because when someone sees a woman in a sari, the immediate reaction is to think that they are provincial. A woman in a sari and finance? No way. But this is exactly why I do this – we need to consciously push the envelope in making people think out of the box, in this case, that a sari worn by women is not a symbol of weakness, which it is most of the time in our culture. It is a symbol of strength.

3. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you face today as a sustainability leader?

As a woman of colour and serial entrepreneur, I understood the importance of building an ecosystem approach to impact investing. Success doesn’t come in a vacuum, you need a whole network of services, metrics, mentors, and partners that bring together high-impact enterprises looking to scale and impact investors ready to invest.
Our approach has been to work with the entire social capital markets value chain. We empower impact enterprises that are addressing the root causes of inequality and conflict; we value and include their most vulnerable beneficiaries in financial markets; we change financial systems to drive sustainable development; and we build opportunities for anyone, anywhere to contribute to a more inclusive world. In practice, we accomplish this through our proprietary impact assessments and catalytic accelerator program ACTS; our crowdfunding platform Impact Partners, which has over 1,200 impact investors worldwide; our innovative and blended financial products like the Women’s Livelihood Bond Series; and our education and advocacy work at the IIX Impact Institute.

1. What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

We recently launched the AVPN Climate Action Platform (CAP), which is the first social investment platform to address the climate crisis in Asia. The Platform seeks to provide funders and resource providers with:

(i) concrete investment opportunities to address specific climate issues
(ii) climate investment trends and best practices to make more informed decisions
(iii) tools to track each individual’s progress to address climate action The goal of the AVPN CAP is to empower capital providers to move more financial and non-financial resources effectively towards impact.

Another initiative that I am really proud of is the AVPN Social Enterprise Development Toolkit, which helps social enterprises grow sustainably and become investment-ready. The Toolkit assesses the social enterprise based on its growth stage before providing relevant opportunities to gain funding or capacity building support. This process helps to not only reduce funding wastes, but also ensure we are targeting social enterprises’ needs to scale effectively.

2. What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

Even though we are seeing a promising trend as people are becoming more aware of the climate crisis, investors find it hard to identify concrete investment opportunities in the sector with good track records. I believe the AVPN Climate Action Platform can help to lower investment barriers and raise awareness amongst private sector stakeholders on where the opportunities lie in investing in climate solutions.

Another prevalent challenge that persists when building cross-sector partnerships is the lack of a common language framework to discuss pain points and goals. A frequent frustration we hear is the lack of a strong pipeline of investible deals while social purpose organisations find that funders do not understand them. To address this two-pronged issue, AVPN recognises the importance of a common language framework that establishes an understanding of key requirements needed at different stages of funding. As such the AVPN Social Enterprise Development Toolkit incorporates the Venture Investment Readiness and Awareness Levels (VIRAL) pathway that allows social enterprises and investors to have a common language to talk about the company’s current stage and what type of investors are best suited for the company at a given point in time.

3. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you face today as a sustainability leader?

Some of the biggest opportunities I see are in the climate crisis – once of the biggest challenges any sustainability leader is facing. In Asia, AVPN’s members and the wider network are putting in immense efforts to ensure we address this global issue:
a. In 2017, the first ever green sukuk, green bonds that are compliant with Islamic finance standards, was issued in Malaysia. The following year, Indonesia issued the first sovereign green sukuk with a second tranche issued in 2019.

1. What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

Poverty in Palawan is a rural phenomenon in food in-secured communities. Although respectable growth rates in the provincial economy, 2.4% in 2015-2016 and 5.6% for 2016-2017, were achieved, these does not benefit the poor owing to their isolation and hard to reach communities. In order for rural poverty reduction efforts to be sustainable, policies, strategies and programs are needed to promote the creation of decent jobs and employment opportunities for the rural poor. My top achievements along this line are:

A. Empowering the rural poor through the formation of Grassroots Peoples Organizations (GPOs). So far, 236 GPOs were organized with an average of 20 members per GPO or a total of 4,720 families involved and actively participating in community-driven development initiatives.

B. Unleashing the season potentials of rural women through the formation of Barangay Gender and Development Monitors (BGM) to support women in the rural areas based on the principle of equal opportunity. BGMs are trained and assigned in the different barangays (communities) to help primarily women in agriculture and in rural development. There are 256 rural women trained and capacitated as BGMs.

C. Creating Decent Jobs and Employment for the marginalized sector through the implementation of Community-Based Gender and Development Program that provides livelihood capital assistance to poor rural families who are members of Grassroots Peoples Organizations (GPOs). There were 134 GPOs provided with livelihood capital assistance benefiting a total of 2,100 poor families.

2. What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

The challenges of mobilizing and making the rural poor part of community planning, project implementation and decision-making and in forming them into a network or federation of GPOs or a larger civil society organizations network were among the difficulties I faced along the way.

For me, it is necessary to mobilize the rural poor if any changes in their living conditions are to occur. It is necessary to make the rural poor part of political life for their voices to be heard. It is necessary to open up and let the rural poor into civil society if they are to become part of society at large. These challenges were overcome through constant dialogues, consensus building, capacity building and mutual understanding.

What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

I consider the following as my top achievements from a professional perspective : Integrating sustainability into the organization’s everyday business by incorporating sustainability strategies, KPIs into the organization’s overall strategies & KPIs.

Coaching & empowering a Team of high performing sustainability experts in the organization who drive strategies & act as change agents.

Introducing in house child care for white collar workers in the organization & promoting child care in the wider organization ( an activity to drive Gender equality strategy)

Introducing flexible work arrangements into the office environment & facilitating & promoting flexible work in the organization. ( an activity to drive Gender equality strategy)

Introducing mental & emotional wellbeing to MAS Active in 2009 thereby internalising a culture of emotional wellbeing through counselling & other activities.

All of these have been achieved with support from the leadership & others in the organization.

As an individual I volunteer my time at the Alumni association of my Alma mater as Joint Secretary. ( 2017 June – 2020 June) I Believe I have helped create a culture of deep collaboration between the Alumni Association & the school administration to make the partnership more efficient. I have personally supported through coaching, mentoring & as a role model to empower many working women in the organization to choose to continue to work despite their many challenges. I was made aware of the impact I have made as a role model upon receiving the award when I received many congratulatory messages from women who have been inspired by me.

What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

As a mother of 2 young children it has been extremely challenging to work full time in a demanding job that requires frequent traveling. The support system available with the support of the husband, parents, In Laws & paid help has enabled me to continue my work. The workload and many demands of managing the work has been made easier by investing time to coach and develop the Team who is able to take on much of the operational work. Convincing everyone around to do the right thing – Whenever decisions have to be made, ensuring that the right decision is taken from a sustainability angle has been a challenge. I feel walking the talk & credibility that I have built has supported me in this aspect.

What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

Brought sustainability as a board level agenda and made the agenda as a critical matter of business strategy in companies I am involved.

What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

To have management team understand criticality of the matter for each companies own business.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you face today as a sustainability leader?

Sustainable value creation is not so simple as black and white but need to review from multiple angle. How to make consensus of groups and people who have different interest and priorities is most difficult.

1) What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

Being a passionate advocate of social and green causes, I have led decarbonisation and circular economy initiatives at Tata Power since 2004. Also this has enabled business integration of 10 prioritised UN-Sustainable Development Goals making Tata Power a thought leader in the Sustainability space.

I was instrumental in launching and spearheading award-winning social brand properties to drive conservation such as Club-Enerji, Act for Mahseer and Greenolution. Club-Enerji, in the past decade has established a network of 533 schools in 14 cities where 7.2lakh school children have sensitised over 23.8million citizens in India to save 25MillionUnits till date leading to mitigation of over 25000tonnes of CO2. Act for Mahseer, the biodiversity conservation effort for endangered species of freshwater Mahseer has successfully released 10million fingerlings bred in captivity and Greenolution is an employee participation initiative which has mobilised and recognised over 2300 Green-Heroes for their achievements in resource recycling, reuse and optimization.

In community development space, scalability and replication of CSR initiatives has positively impacted 2.24million lives. The efforts made to champion women empowerment through the flagship micro-enterprise initiative called Dhaaga helped transform lives of 1050 women who are suppliers to multiple brands with an order value exceeding 0.5 Million INR till. Also, vocational training more than 1400+ women(Abha Members) has resulted in augmenting their income. In addition, I was spearheading Arpan-Employee volunteering initiative which clocked 1.5lakh volunteering hours by employees and family members in last 3 years. In fact, the per employee volunteering hours in 2018-19 was 13 hours annually which is 2nd to Global Benchmark of 14 hours by Dell. Also the purpose of professional life includes bringing diversity and sustainability issues to the fore at Board level. I am privileged that I mentor young talent as part of leadership building within the organization.

Beyond Tata Power, I am actively enageged with UNGC, NITI Aayog-Women Entrepreneurship Program, National CSR Award Jury panel-ICSI. At the Tata Group level, I am actively collaborating within Tata Network Forum for sharing best practices with other companies and is a faculty for training programs at the Tata Group level.

I have represented causes like resource conservation, women empowerment and business responsibility at various national and international forums such as Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership, United Nations Global Compact, TEDx-IIMA, NITI Aayog, ESG Matters-Asia Panel Series(Bank of Merrill Lynch) and CSR Live Week.

Many of the initiatives incubated by me at Tata Power now have scaled to have a national level impact. 2017 Mini Clubs under Club-Enerji now operate independently across India though a network of energy champions and ambassadors. Tata Power Skill Development Institute is meeting the emerging skill requirements of the sector by amplifying the outreach to other organizations and Government agencies in skilling youth through a Hub and Spoke Model while also leveraging E-learning.

My efforts have been instrumental in Tata Power strategic partnerships with WBCSD, ICSI, IABC, ABCI, UNDP, NABARD, Government agencies, Civil Society and Corporate in the themes of Sustainability, CSR and Communication. Also, engagement with academia has benefited students of many colleges including London School of Economics, Berkeley University, IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Indore. The students have been involved in creating solutions to address sustainability and social issues in the larger interest of stakeholders.

2) What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

Traditionally, power sector workforce requirements across the country has been a story of men being part of the workforce at shopfloor level. The paradigm has not been challenged so far due to the complexities involved in the nature of work as claimed by some practitioners and experts of this domain from safety point of view. Tata Power Skill Development Institute is another case of national building. These centre of excellence was dedicated to the nation across Maharashtra, Gujarat and Jharkhand with 5 institutes established in 2015 with an objective of skilling youth for meeting the power sector requirements with focus on upcoming business avenues including rooftop solar and various industrial trades. One of the observations was hardly finding girls/women being part of the skilling courses. However, the team was motivated to challenge this notion and bring about a shift in the paradigm of including women for such training. Personally, I felt that women are competent to work in all spheres of life. If women can make it to the space, then why not power sector. The team realized the objective and this led to launch of Abha- flagship initiative to empower women through skilling. Today Tata Power Skill Development Institute has been able to skill 300 women on various power sector skills including soft skills like communication, customer orientation and safety. Further these women are now successfully placed in various jobs and working shoulder to shoulder with men counterparts and earning the due respect. Some of the employers were initially hesitant but post their performance, these employers have reposed their faith in them and look forward to next batch of Abha Training at TPSDI. The huge personal learning for me was to challenge the paradigm and convince the team about the possibilities and being a game changer rather than run of the mill kind of skilling. Being a differentiator in skill sector is the key and Tata Power Skill Development Institute has taken a big leap in this direction..

I joined Ayala Corporation in September 2013 as its Head for Group Risk Management and Sustainability Unit. I report to the Chief Finance, Risk and Sustainability Officer. As the head of group risk management and sustainability, I develop programs and activities that will increase/strengthen risk awareness in the organization and across the group, equip my co-employees so that they will have the confidence to identify, assess and manage risks, communicate to the board about the organization’s and the group’s risk profile and advocate for the embedding of risks in the day-to-day operations. I also champion the sustainability reporting across the group.

My role continuous to expand as we become more mature in our risk management and sustainability reporting practices. My risk management role continues to expand as it now includes business continuity and groupwide insurance. On the sustainability reporting, we expanded our scope to include all business verticals. We shifted to the integrated reporting adopting the framework of IIRC. I believe that reports should be actionable otherwise there is no value to the report. Hence, we are continuously developing programs across the group that will address our sustainability issues.

What do I consider as my top achievements in sustainability since I joined Ayala in 2013?

Positioned sustainability as an effective collaboration platform where people work together towards a shared vision. It effectively broke down silos and developed synergies across the group.

Transitioned from a stand-alone sustainability reporting to an integrated reporting since 2016 todate. Ayala Corporation is the first conglomerate to adopt the reporting framework. Its major publicly-listed companies such as Ayala Land, Globe Telecom, Bank of the Philippine Island and Manila Water Company also transitioned to reporting framework in the same year. As we mature in our sustainability journey, our sustainability philosophy uses Michael Porter’s creation of shared value concept where we look at societal gaps and within our resources and capabilities develop an innovative solutions, and come up with a business model and bring it up to scale. With the advent of the UN SDGs in 2015, we anchored our creation of shared value concept with the 17 goals. And three years into this journey, we launched our Sustainability Blueprint: Bridging the Filipino to 2030, which uses the language of the SDGs.

What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

The Ayala group is very diversified – hence coordination and data collection and analysis are things that we need to improve on. We have a functional council that meets quarterly – for alignment and other coordination activities. We developed a common template for everyone to use.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you face today as a sustainability leader?

• The urgency of climate change impact as well as other CSR issues are crystal clear in front of us, but actions slow among organizations, many are reluctant of change, and the awareness of people is also very low. How to accelerate the right actions and improve awareness of the general public is the challenge and opportunity for sustainable business. In short, businesses and governments have made some visible progress. The next step is to move towards driving action from consumers who are also the stakeholders to accelerate the further improvements to face the critical and urgent challenges. Thus how to appropriately get the right actions coupled with good results is the real challenge nowadays.

What have been your top achievements in sustainability so far?

Cloversoft has developed a lot over the years and we have changed quite a few things to make our business more sustainable. For instance, recently, we rolled out a coreless toilet paper product in an attempt to reduce waste. Also, we aim to eliminate plastic packaging in our products. As such, we replaced plastic with a more sustainable and environmental paper packaging that can be subsequently recycled and repurposed. These highlight the extra mile that we are willing to go to improve our sustainability efforts as a business.

In the last two years, my company has also received the most eco facial tissues and the most eco-friendly toilet rolls award from Women’s Weekly. The awards are selected based on votes from readers and editors. They are genuine awards with no financial sponsorship.

What challenges have you faced along the way and how have you overcome them?

The biggest challenge was our lack of experience in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. We had an ideal and the passion, but the lack of experience was daunting for us. We stuck it out, did our due research and connected with people of similar passion. This had helped us to continue working towardsfulfilling Cloversoft’s mission.

Also, when we first started promoting eco-friendly household products, many Singaporeans are not as receptive to the idea of utilizing environmentally friendly household products. This served as a challenge to us, but my team and I worked hard to communicate the value of our environmentally friendly products which are also safe for human and pet usage.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you face today as a sustainability leader?

The biggest challenge that we have would be to introduce the idea of breaking norms and habits that people are already used to. For instance, many might find it difficult to let go of the convenience associated with using plastic bags. Thus, we have to understand the barriers that are keeping these people away from changing their habits and introduce them comfortable alternatives to lower their barrier towards utilising sustainable products and practices. Cloversoft offers quality products with competitive pricing that offers a low entry barrier towards a sustainable lifestyle. We would also have to start the practice as sustainable leaders and communicate effectively to the public about our vision so that these people will be confident enough to abandon their old practices and take on new ones.