SRI SERVICE AWARD WINNER: HEAD OF INVESTMENT FUND FOR LOW-INCOME SOUTH AFRICANS AWARDED SRI INDUSTRY’S MOST HONORED DESIGNATION
Responsible Investors and Investment Professionals Select Shared Interest Executive Director, Donna Katzin, as SRI Industry’s Most Influential Leader of 2015
NEW YORK, NY AND COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (November 19, 2015) – Donna Katzin, executive director of Shared Interest, is the recipient of the 2015 SRI Service Award, the SRI industry’s most vaunted award.
The SRI Service Award recognizes one individual each year who demonstrates a range of contributions to the Sustainable, Responsible, Impact (SRI) investment field, including: industry leadership, significant innovations, high standards of ethical conduct, cooperation and communication, and success in expanding the influence of investing for a sustainable future.
The 620 investors and investment professionals who attended The SRI Conference had an opportunity to cast a ballot for the recipient of this prestigious award. Votes were counted and the award was presented at The SRI Conference by the 2014 SRI Service Award recipient, Barbara Krumsiek, former chair, president, and CEO of Calvert Investments.
SRI Conference Producer and First Affirmative Financial Network President Steve Schueth, said: “As founding Executive Director of Shared Interest, Donna Katzin was an excellent choice for the 2015 SRI Service Award. Having helped lead mission-driven investors to apply economic pressure to accelerate the peaceful end of apartheid, Katzin turned from disinvestment to reinvestment in 1994 when the new South Africa was born and Nelson Mandela was elected president. Through Shared Interest, she has built a vehicle for U.S. investors to forge international relationships with South Africa’s economically excluded entrepreneurs, farmers, and homeowners.”
Shared Interest provides loan guarantees and technical support, helping the country’s commercial lenders to make yesterday’s “unbankable” people today’s “ordinary business.” The SRI Service Award also recognizes the rapid growth of Katzin’s and Shared Interest’s work in South Africa, and its initial replication across its borders.
Katzin said: “This is an historic time for our work and for Southern Africa. In countries such as South Africa and Mozambique, we see lenders with whom we work beginning to appreciate that the vast majorities of their populations constitute a powerful potential market. During the past year alone, in partnership with the Thembani International Guarantee Fund, we have more than quadrupled our number of loan guarantees—without ever losing a cent of any investor’s interest or principal.”
Katzin has been a powerful voice in the social and impact investment communities—first as director of South Africa Programs for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and then as executive director of Shared Interest. Katzin has written extensively on South Africa and investing in its communities, and has been honored with the North Star Fund’s Frederick Douglass Award, and Face2Face Africa’s inaugural Ubuntu Award for extraordinary service to humanity. In 2014, she received the South African Embassy’s inaugural Siyabonga Friend of South Africa Award.
About Shared Interest
Shared Interest (http://www.sharedinterest.org) is a leading non-profit investment fund that guarantees Southern African commercial loans to low-income communities of color. Founded in 1994 and headquartered in New York City, it has facilitated more than $21 million in guarantees that have leveraged $103 million in commercial loans to the region’s black population’s small enterprises, farms, and cooperatives. In the process it has benefited 2.3 million economically marginalized South and Southern Africans.
About The SRI ConferenceThe SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing (formerly SRI in the Rockies, http://www.SRIconference.com), is the premier annual gathering of investors and investment professionals working to direct the flow of investment capital for positive impact. The 26th annual SRI Conference was held November 3-5, 2015. Looking ahead, the 27th annual SRI Conference will be November 9-11, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center.
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