In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Anita Ramachandran, Executive Director of MicroMentor at Mercy Corps. MicroMentor, the world's leading online community for free business mentoring, reaching nearly 200 countries worldwide is an online community of entrepreneurs and small businesses with virtual mentoring. Anita is an entrepreneur, problem-solver, and changemaker, passionate about mentoring and personal growth. In our conversation we cover her personal and professional...

Delighted to launch the 1st episode of Season 3 of the Nour Podcast, welcome back! Our theme this season is identity and belonging. Kicking the season off, is a deep and beautiful conversation with Dr. Khetsiwe Dlamini, a local, regional, and global gender specialist. She is the Executive Director and Founder at Triple C Advisory, an African-originated and women-owned global gender lens and impact advisory services firm. Her background in development finance runs deep with previous roles...

In this last episode of Season 2 of the Nour podcast, under the theme of Courage, I have an incredible conversation with the inspirational, generous and extraordinary, Carey Bohjanen. She is Founder and CEO of The Rallying Cry. Carey operates at the interface between finance, business and society to build more inclusive, equitable and sustainable economies. She drives transformational change, leveraging collective wisdom and untapped potential of people and capital. Carey connects leaders to...

In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Simba Marekera, Head of Investment Management at Brightlight Group and a long-standing advocate and active community member in the gender finance field. This beautiful conversation dives into place, belonging, and how courage can also mean using your privilege, and speaking up for those who can't be in the room. We speak about the reframes needed in economics, finance and the power of ancestral wisdom, as well as the role of more...

This is the first episode of Season 2, where we build off Season 1's theme of Leadership, and dive further into the topic of Courage. What follows are very interesting discussions on how we even define courage, whether certain actions are about courage or stubbornness, and what it takes to fill up the tank to show up courageously. In this delightful first episode, the incredible Lisa Witter and I have a lush and deep dialogue on how she perceives what courage is and isn't, and how she has...

In this episode of the Nour Podcast, I talk to a female leader in the gender-smart and broader impact community whom I deeply admire and look up to: Kanini Mutooni , who is Managing Director at Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. I love so many things about this episode- from the deep human sharing, to the leadership insights and how Kanini and her team are deploying impactful capital on the African continent. We also meander into identity and belonging (#spoiler alert-future season!), and how...

In this episode I speak with Chintal Barot, Founder & Director of CoSustain Consulting, which focuses on climate and gender-smart investing in emerging markets. Chintal has a 15-year consulting career, the past ten spent collaborating with global companies, multilateral institutions and civil society on sustainable economic growth. Her breadth of experience in the financial, agriculture, retail, energy, natural resources and ship recycling sectors across multiple countries reflect her...

This is the second episode in the Nour podcast's inaugural series on the theme of leadership.  In this episode I have a great conversation with Banks Benitez, who is a dear friend and was most recently the CEO of Uncharted, where he spent the last 10 years supporting early-stage entrepreneurs through Uncharted/Unreasonable Institute, and led Uncharted to merge with a larger national organisation, Common Future, in 2022. Since Uncharted, has been advising multiple climate tech startups,...

In this first episode of Nour, I am joined by the one and only Laurie Spengler. I have come to know Laurie through my work at GenderSmart where she has been on our Advisory Council, and a prominent and eminent thought leader in the field of gender finance. She is an impact investment banker, board member and active contributor to the impact investing industry. Laurie is CEO of Courageous Capital Advisors, LLC, an impact investing advisory firm dedicated to generating outsized positive impact...