Suggestions
Hannah Levinson
Growth & Venture Building @ Accenture Song • Impact Investment Advisory @ Lahayim • Oxford MBA
Hannah Levinson is a values-driven consultant, founder, investor, and operator known for successfully scaling impact and revenues across various sectors including business, education, humanitarianism, philanthropy, and policy.
Currently as of January 2024, she is overseeing portfolio development and value management within the Generative AI team in Accenture's Office of the CIO, focusing on GAI asset/use case mapping, strategy development, advising for clients, thought leadership, and Responsible AI integration.
In her EIR role at Accenture, Hannah leads transformational innovation projects and drives new venture development for major companies, demonstrating expertise in entrepreneurial capability-building, impact finance integration, innovation strategy, intrapreneurship, and more.
Hannah Levinson's academic background includes a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on Change & Crisis Leadership, Impact Investing, and Responsible Business from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, as well as a Master of Arts (MA) in Ethics and Applied Philosophy and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Philosophy and Theatre.
Throughout her career, she has held various roles in organizations such as Entrepreneur in Residence at Accenture, Global Shapers Alumni at World Economic Forum, Managing Director at Lahayim Cooperative, Investment Advisor at Graça Machel Trust, and more, showcasing her diverse skill set and experiences.
Highlights
Across the many highlights from the The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG)'s annual #GSGSummit this week, wanted to quickly share a high-level synthesis of some of my core takeaways.
🎯 While there are perhaps more lessons about "what not to do" from publicly traded companies for social and sustainable entrepreneurs and financiers, one data-driven reality is that "double and triple bottom line" and "impact-aligned" companies and funds require independent assurance for both their capital allocation strategies, and the operations of their portfolio companies.
🔗 Reaching the level of accuracy and trust needed hinges on near-term and longitudinal fiscal and outcomes reporting, the latter of which are critical to resetting broken asset allocation and management paradigms. It's also crucial to differentiate between assurance, evaluation, and verification of impact performance. Without these shifts at scale and with urgency, we risk casting a "business as usual" shadow over this growing asset class/investment lens.
📣 What we need most: leaders willing to model the commitment and courage to acknowledge, learn from and publicly speak to their and their funds' failures — whether falling short of desired return profiles, impact-washing, or obscuring collateral damage from bad actors.
💥 Otherwise, the glamorous world of "impact investing" will reify the worst behaviours of elite institutions and financial systems - maintaining predominant incentive structures and regulatory paradigms that both need ground-up resets.
🫂 Especial thanks to Tracey (pictured), Paul, LAURA, Alexandra, Laurie, Elodie, and others who refueled my sense of positive pragmatism, and my deepest desire // motivation for pursuing this work: to keep after ways to contribute to and realize tikkun olam ✨
🗓️ Coming soon: share-out from the The Global Impact Investing Network's #GIIN23 in Copenhagen 🇩🇰 (today and tomorrow).
Onward!
Grateful to be in Málaga, Spain this week for the The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG)'s annual meeting. Thanks to GSGII for having me, and for the opportunity to further the international discourse on and strategies for driving #impacttransparency, and more capital into #impactinvesting and #sustainablefinance.
Sharing a link here to a report I co-authored for GSG last year on impact-weighted accounting standards, with a focus on harmonizing #impactmeasurement and management systems. Tagging collaborators and friends Edward Yee, Noah Law, Takeshi Igarashi, and Zhilin X. - each of whom is advancing effectiveness and innovation across the global #impactinvestment landscape through their passionate dedication and work.
