In this episode I speak with Shalaka Joshi, a friend, fellow traveller and leader in the field of finance. She is one of the fore runners of the gender lens investment movement globally and has had a rich a beautiful journey. From setting up and leading the Gender & Economic Inclusion practice for the IFC across South Asia, to serving on the Board and Investment Committee for the Equality Fund, in addition to multiple mentoring and board roles .

We talk about impact investing, advancing gender finance, bold and creative leadership, as well as other ways to build sustenance for this work.

Show notes

• Books: i) The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami and ii) Dante's Inferno
• Poem: We Alive, Beloved by Frederick Joseph

In this episode and to launch the fourth season of the Nour podcast, I am delighted to chat with a friend, fellow collaborator on all things system change and deeply inspirational leader, Vicki Saunders.

She is the Founder of Coralus, a seasoned and serial entrepreneur, mentor and advisor. In this episode, Vicki and I dive into the uncertain and heavy times we live in, and how leading with curiosity, collaboration, a learning and abundance mindset can all be deeply transformative. She shares with vulnerability and how she uses her power to show up for others and help to move the system collectively. We speak about how we need to redesign from the root and how in this moment when " we are in a journey with no maps, how we can stay in the question and stay open to receiving". Her calm, courageous and grace is essential for all leaders in these times. Enjoy!

Show notes

• More on Coralus
• What she is reading/listening to: i) Half breed by Maria Campbell , ii) the Wild podcast featuring Indy Johar
• Quote: "“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”― Buckminster Fuller

It's such a pleasure to chat with the incredible Tara Murphy Forde in this episode, where we go deep on:

Show notes

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 journey of growth, leadership and belonging. By diving into some of the nooks and crannies of her beautiful, meandering life she highlights how she has grown, values she holds close and what it means to her to be her whole-hearted whole self.

Show notes

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 as Chief of Staff at UN Women, Principal Operations Officer at the IFC and World Bank for more than 15 years.

Work-Related highlights

Favourite quote: "Everything is possible. Impossible just takes a little longer" by Wendy Ackerman

Books she is reading

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 purpose and passion to develop catalytic, forward-looking responses to our planet’s greatest challenges.

In this beautiful conversation, Carey shares her journey and the times in life her inner voice has guided her, and how she has come to understand that one version of courage is the deepest connection to purpose and that sweet spot of heart, heart and gut alignment. We also talk about the incredible work that Carey does at the intersection of gender and climate finance, and how her innovative organisation and team at the Rallying Cry are at the forefront of catalysing new leadership and investment approaches to scale private sector climate and gender solutions in Africa. We unpack how to unlock more gender-smart climate finance and the systemic shifts needed for sustained change.

As Carey says " Complex problems require complex solutions, and while its messy, murky and muddy, we have to overcome the fear to build bridges, connect the dots, and act with dignity and respect for everyone". This is also collective courage, and against the backdrop of our biggest societal challenges and climate change, " there is no time for no courage right now ".

Show Notes

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 proximate knowledge in investment decision making. We also discuss privilege and the role of men in gender-smart investing.

Simba Marekera is the Head of Investment Management at Brightlight Group, an impact investing fund manager dedicated to investing with the goal of transforming lives. He specialises in innovative financing and blended finance across a variety of Private Markets asset classes including infrastructure, real estate and credit/private debt both in developed and developing markets. Simba is active an philanthropist and social entrepreneur focused on empowerment of beneficiaries. He co-founded New Africa Foundation (www.newafrica.foundation) a charitable organisation that empower African communities through targeted philanthropy and investments in education, healthcare and entrepreneurship. He is also a co-Founder of EdFin (www.edfin.com.au), a fintech company that is a pioneer in providing affordable and responsible international education financing in Australia and Ignition Impact (www.ignitionimpact.com), an Angel Network that invests in high growth and high social impact African SMEs.

Show Notes

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 created her path in life and work. Lisa Witter is a serial political and policy entrepreneur. She’s the co-founder of ⁠Apolitical⁠, a global peer-to-peer learning platform for public servants and the CEO of the ⁠Apolitical Foundation⁠. She’s a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She is a former public servant with deep experience in gender and behavioral science and has founded numerous political leadership incubators over the last 25 years. We dive into examples in the political sphere that Lisa is immersed in, and speak about intersections with the broader gender equality space. I appreciate Lisa's candour in the examples she shares as well as the different life moments that have shaped her.

Show notes

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 knowing one's full self allows us to show up in our full "Nour" aka light and radiance.

As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she plays a lead role in sourcing new investments, deploying capital and helps execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals, while contributing to its thought leadership and external outreach for the African continent from the DRK office in Nairobi. She was was previously MD for Toniic, the global action network for impact investors, is an active Board member for a number of organisations, and has worked at the Board level in leadership positions at investment banks in London and the US, such as Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson.

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 varied insights, experience, and networks. Sharing her time between the UK and India she leads diverse teams to design and successfully deliver complex, global partnerships and programmes in Asia and Africa. Her recent projects have been in Nigeria, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and India.

We dive into Chintal’s professional and personal journey of finding meaning at work and in life, what it means to be an emotionally intelligent leader and how to nurture our creativity as radiant, whole-hearted humans.

Show notes