The Centre for Finance and Development has the great pleasure to welcome Karen Wilson, who has been leading the OECD work on Social Impact Investment (SII) as part of the Financing for Sustainable Development team in the Development Co-operation Directorate.

Karen Wilson will present the new OECD report "Social  Impact  Investment 2019: The Impact Imperative for Sustainable Development". This publication is a sequel to the OECD 2015 report  "Social Impact Investment: Building the Evidence Base", bringing new evidence on the role of SII in financing sustainable development. It depicts the state of play of SII approaches globally, comparing regional trends, and assesses its prospects, with a special focus on data issues and recent policy developments. Importantly, it provides new guidance for policy makers in OECD and non-OECD countries, as well as providers of development co-operation, development financers, social impact investment practitioners and the private sector more broadly, to help them maximise the contribution of social impact investing to the 2030 Agenda. In particular, it provides four sets of recommendations on financing, innovation, data and policy for delivering on the “impact imperative” of financing sustainable development.

Karen has been working with the OECD since 2009 on topics ranging from entrepreneurship, innovation and finance to impact investment and sustainable development. She is also an Associate Fellow at Oxford Said Business School and visiting lecturer at other institutions, including in the Geneva Graduate Institute's new SDG Investing Executive Education programme.