Creating Impact – Panel Discussion

Neil Gregory

Chief Thought Leadership Officer, International Finance Corporation
Editor of the report

Neil Gregory is Chief Thought Leadership Officer of the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank Group. Neil leads IFC’s outreach to impact investors and led the development of the Operating Principles for Impact Management.  He has held a range of senior strategy and management roles at IFC, including research, business planning, investment and advisory functions. He was previously Adviser to the UK Executive Director of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and an Economic Adviser to the UK Government. He has extensive work experience in South Asia, China, Africa and the Caribbean. A British national, Neil has MA and MSc degrees in Economics from Cambridge and Oxford and an MBA from Georgetown.

Victoria Fram

Co-founder and Managing Director, VilCap Investments
Member, GSB Impact Fund Investment Committee

Victoria Fram is the Co-Founder of Village Capital and the Managing Director of its affiliated global seed-stage investment fund, VilCap Investments. Village Capital is a system to back the entrepreneurs of the future–a future where business creates equity and long term prosperity. As the founding fund manager, Victoria is responsible for all fund activities including fund strategy, new investments, portfolio support, and investor relations. Prior to Village Capital, Victoria was on the Program Related Investments team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; previously she was on the investment team at Metropolitan, a private equity fund-of-funds acquired by Carlyle. Victoria started her career in international development and conflict resolution.

Victoria received a BA and MBA from Stanford University. She is a Kauffman Fellow, serves as a board member for several companies and non-profits, and is an independent investment committee member for Stanford GSB’s Impact Fund and Gray Matters Capital coLABS. Originally from Colorado, she now lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

Kenneth Singleton

Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Stanford GSB
Member, GSB Impact Fund Investment Committee

Kenneth Singleton is the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He has published widely on financial risks and their impacts on economic decision-making, including books on credit risk and dynamic asset pricing. His professional awards include the Smith-Breeden Prize (Journal of Finance), Frisch Medal (Econometrica), and the Stephen A. Ross Prize in Financial Economics (Foundation for the Advancement of Research in Financial Economics), and he is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the Journal of Econometrics, and the Society for Financial Econometrics.

Ken is currently a faculty advisor to, and serves on the Investment Committee of, the Stanford GSB Impact Fund; and is a faculty advisor to Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs. He was the Executive Editor of the Journal of Finance from 2012 to 2016; served as a Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Stanford GSB from 2005 to 2008; was a special advisor to the chief economist at the IMF during the crisis in 2009; and co-led the Fixed Income Research group of Goldman Sachs, Asia while on leave from Stanford in the early 1990’s.

He is President of the Board of the 501(c)3 nonprofit 1 Grain to 1000 Grains that leads programs for low-income communities through which families discover intuitive and actionable plans for more healthful eating and for building financial capacity.

Ken holds a BA in Mathematics from Reed College and a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Paul Brest

Professor Emeritus, Stanford Law School

Paul Brest is Former Dean and Professor Emeritus (active), at Stanford Law School, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and co-director of the Stanford Law and Policy Lab. He was president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation from 2000-2012.

He is co-author of Money Well Spent: A Strategic Guide to Smart Philanthropy (2^nd ed 2018), Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment (2010),and articles on constitutional law, philanthropy, and impact investing. His current courses include Problem Solving for Public Policy and Social Change, Measuring and Improving Social Impact, and Advanced Topics in Philanthropy and Impact Investing. He also is the instructor in an online course, Essentials of Nonprofit Strategy, offered by Philanthropy University.

Professor Brest is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary degrees from Northwestern University School of Law and Swarthmore College. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1969, he clerked for Judge Bailey Aldrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice John M. Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court, and did civil rights litigation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Mississippi.