ABOUT US

The mission and people behind Social Finance Academy

What drives us

Empowering impact entrepreneurs to scale

The Social Finance Academy (SFA) was incubated by Roots of Impact with a clear mission: to empower impact entrepreneurs on their journeys with the help of practice-driven knowledge and high-quality capacity-building. We are very grateful for the early support we received from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation: This allowed us to develop and provide state-of-the-art courses, toolkits and programs for impact enterprises and their service providers across the globe -> CHECK OUT OUR CORE EXPERTISE: IMPACT INTELLIGENCE

Click to learn more about Roots of Impact and its initiatives

Our journey to date

From incubation in 2017....

The kick-start to our Academy was a co-creation with VIVA Idea in Latin America in 2017: our course “Access to Impact Investment for Social Enterprises”, the first-ever online learning opportunity for entrepreneurs focused on social finance. After running it successfully on Novoed, combined with in-person training by select Impact Hubs across the globe, we gradually expanded our train-the-trainer offers in impact finance, investment readiness and impact management -> LEARN MORE

...to programs across the globe

A big step in our scaling is the cooperation with the B-BRIDDHI program that started in 2020. Since then, we provide our entire scope of expertise to this unique impact ecosystem building program in Bangladesh. The state-of-the-art toolkits, capacity building components and bootcamps that we have co-created on the way are increasingly plugged into other programs world-wide. One example: our Impact-Linked Finance Readiness Bootcamp for the ILF for WASH-> VISIT THE PROGRAM PAGE

Our core team

Maxime Cheng

Academy Lead

Maxime Cheng is the driving force behind SFA, leading its evolution and strategic positioning since the beginning. An IMPACT MEASUREMENT & MANAGEMENT nerd herself, she is very passionate about empowering impact entrepreneurs on their journeys and also manages the impact ecosystem building program B-Briddhi on behalf of Roots of Impact. When not fully immersed in her mission, she loves grabbing her surfboard and riding the waves.

Melanie Siow

Technical Assistance Portfolio Manager

Melanie Siow is the IMPACT MEASUREMENT & MANAGEMENT wizard in our team. She brings several years of experience in the environmental sustainability and social impact sectors and has a huge dedication to additionality and entrepreneur-friendly approaches to IMM. When she is not creating or running our top notch IMM trainings, she loves to indulge in her visual art.

Christina Moehrle

Content Creator

Christina Moehrle is the finance veteran at SFA, designing tools and courses on her favorite subjects INNOVATIVE IMPACT FINANCE and IMPACT INVESTMENT READINESS. With 20+ years of venture capital, structured finance, investor relations and writer/journalist experience in her bag, she loves making complex matters easy to understand. Besides work, Christina enjoys living her geek side and passion for SciFi reading and writing.

Fannely Mbewe

Team Assistant

Fannely Mbewe is a great support for our entire SFA team, especially when it comes to our new learning platform. With a lot of dedication to marketing and digital formats, she has been passionate about social entrepreneurship for a very long time before joining our team. Originally from Zambia, Fannely masters 4 languages and enjoys going fishing around her new home in Germany.