Noortje Verhart is a Gender Advisor at the Dutch Royal Tropical Institute (KIT). Her focus area is mostly gender and the cocoa producing communities, but she has also worked on projects concerning gender together with Dutch development organisation Oxfam Novib and ICCO, as well as with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Suzanne is the founder of Catalyst at Large Consulting and is a catalyst in impact investing, philanthropy, and early stage social impact business. She serves principally as a Senior Adviser for ClearlySo in the UK and founded its Clearly Social Angels, a UK angel group focused on social impact business and enterprise. She is the Investment Director for SPRING, a new venture accelerator focused on ventures that positively affect the lives of women and girls, sponsored by DFID, Nike Foundation, and USAID. She also co-founded and runs Women in Social Finance, in the UK and she was founding co-chair of the Values Led Investing circle within Women Donors Network. She serves on the Board of Directors of Confluence Philanthropy, and on the advisory boards of several nonprofits focused on women/girls. She brings more than 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor, board member.
Margriet van der Linden is a journalist and currently the Women’s Representative in the Netherlands delegation to the United National General Assembly 2014. Her statement to the UN was about sexual violence against women and girls. Prior to her role with the UN she was Editor-in-Chief at the women’s magazine Opzij. She previously also worked for several Dutch TV and radio shows.
Ted van Hees is a policy advisor at Oxfam Novib, a Dutch development organisation, with a focus on the internationalization of the BankWiser, or Fair Bank Guide. BankWiser International (BWI) is a project that organizes and aims to create additional civil society capacity in seven countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Indonesia, Japan, Netherlands and Sweden) to evaluate and monitor commercial banks’ policies and practices, and to mobilize bank clients to request and press for a more responsible banking sector.
Steven Lee is fund manager of IGNITE Fund, Stichting Spark’s newly launched 25Million Euro target closed ended private equity investment vehicle investing in SMEs in fragile and conflict affected states where Spark works. Before joining Spark, Steven worked in impact investment space with LGT Venture Philanthropy and Work Together Foundations in Africa and South East Asia. Steven has MBA from INSEAD and Master of Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Nelleke van der Vleuten works for both ICCO and the BoP Innovation Center. At ICCO, a Dutch development organisation, she is Specialist Private Sector Cooperation. At the BoP Innovation Center, which helps businesses that serve the demand of low-income groups at the base of the pyramid with affordable, quality products and services, her work focuses on the role of NGOs and gender awareness in inclusive business and fostering new initiatives for inclusive business together with ICCO Cooperation.
Lindy van Vliet is Manager ON Impact Investments at Oxfam Novib, a world-wide development organisation that mobilizes the power of people against poverty. Her areas of expertise include social enterprise development, gender and impact investing. She is currently responsible for the management of the ON Impact Investment facility which provides services to small and medium enterprises with a social heart in Africa and Asia: investment capital (debt and equity), business development and impact measurement services.