Gwendolyn Zorn

Head of Impact at Acre Impact Capital

Speaker

Gwendolyn is the Head of Impact at Acre Impact Capital, responsible for environmental and social risk management and realising the Firm’s sustainable development impact agenda. She is a member of the Export Finance Fund I Investment Committee and represents Acre Impact Capital on the International Chamber of Commerce Export Finance Sustainability Working Group.

Prior to joining Acre, Gwendolyn was the Head of Sustainability at Phatisa, an African private equity fund manager, investing primarily in the food value chain. Gwendolyn was instrumental in the positioning of Phatisa as an impact investor and developed the Firm’s impact strategy, including an impact measurement and management system and targets. She successfully raised a $1 million technical assistance facility to catalyse impact at scale and unlock new high-impact, commercial business opportunities at the portfolio company level.

Gwendolyn was previously a Senior Socio-Economist for a leading African ESG advisory firm, where she developed the company’s development impact service offerings, including providing strategic sustainability advice to clients in the microfinance and fintech space. She started her career at KPMG South Africa (Advisory), where she led a workstream for the authorship of a climate finance and green economy advisory report produced for the South African National Treasury.

Gwendolyn is a proven thought leader in the development impact field and was recently recognised in Krutham’s Africa Impact Investment Awards for her contributions to sustainable finance. She has contributed to numerous articles, podcasts and webinars on impact investing and served on the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) Gender Lens Investing Advisory Committee, as well as being an Implementation Working Group member for the UNDP’s SDG Impact Standards for Private Equity and a member of the High Ambition Group of UNEP’s Good Food Finance Network. Gwendolyn holds an MA (Distinction) in the Philosophy of Economics and is currently pursuing an MCom in Development Finance through the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business.