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Contact
Us
Catherine
Clark
Director,
RISE
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Columbia Business
School
Email: cathy@cathyhc.com
Mailing Address:
317 Uris Hall
New York, NY 10027
Catherine Clark is a leading authority in the field
of social entrepreneurship,
social investing and social impact assessment and an experienced
social investor, consultant and educator. She has performed pioneering research
into the field of double bottom line investing and for-profit social
enterprise and regularly consults to entrepreneurial organizations,
foundations and investment firms that aim to achieve significant impact
on deep social problems.
Ms.
Clark’s primary career focus has been as a professional social
investor. Over the last 18
years, she has been founder and Managing Director of the Flatiron Future Fund, a social
venture capital fund and founder and President of the Flatiron Foundation, both
incubated by Flatiron Partners, a JP Morgan Partners affiliate. Formerly, she was Vice President at
the Markle Foundation,
helping to manage the foundation’s portfolio of grants and
program-related investments focused on the social benefits of media and
communications technologies. She worked directly for two Markle
Foundation presidents: one was Lloyd Morrisett, co-founder of Sesame
Street. She has also worked with or consulted
to a diverse list of nonprofit and forprofit organizations, foundations
and investment groups, including:
The Aspen Institute, the
Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Investors’ Circle, Net Impact,
Springboard Enterprises, the Schwab Foundation for Social
Entrepreneurship, and The US Agency for International Development.
Her
secondary focus has been on educating a new global generation of social
entrepreneurs and investors. Ms. Clark joined the faculty of Columbia Business School in
2001 to teach Columbia’s MBA
course on social entrepreneurship, and founded and directs Columbia’s Research Initiative on Social
Entrepreneurship (RISE) (www.riseproject.org). In a short time, RISE has become a leading
voice in the study of social enterprise, social impact assessment, and
the capital markets aiming to create social, developmental and
environmental change. Ms. Clark also serves as
Faculty Advisor at Columbia
for the Global Social Venture
Competition (www.socialvc.net), and has worked since inception with
its student volunteer staff to build it into the only international
business plan competition that teaches entrepreneurs to define their
social returns alongside financial returns, and provides mentorship and cash prizes
to social ventures across the globe.
Ms.
Clark also works closely with others leading the movement to expand and
enhance professional double bottom line investing. She is currently
Acting Co-Chair of Investors’ Circle (www.investorscircle.net) , a national membership
organization of angel and institutional social investors, and Advisory
Board Chair of Commons Capital, LP (www.commonscapital.com), a venture fund investing in
health, clean energy, the environment and education. Ms. Clark has
co-authored several papers about Social Impact Assessment, the practice
of measuring the intangible social and environmental value of
mission-driven companies and has spoken widely on national platforms
about nonprofit and for-profit capital markets and social
entrepreneurship.
Ms.
Clark earned her BA in French and Russian literature from the University of Virginia
and her MBA from Columbia
Business School. After 13
years in the New York area, she moved
in late 2005 to Charlottesville,
VA with her husband and
son. She currently commutes to New
York weekly in the spring term (January to
April) and monthly through the rest of the year.
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