Catherine Munyua

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Village Capital Partner: Invested Development

Catherine, a Kenyan national is currently pursuing an MS. in Environmental Policy at Bard College in New York. She graduated from Lafayette College with degrees in Economics & Business and Public Policy and a certificate in Financial Policy and Analysis. At Lafayette she participated in various activities including organizing a conference to discuss the potential of ICT in fueling development in Africa. She also made a commitment and attended the Clinton Global Initiative University meeting in Miami in 2010. She previously participated in Monterey Institute’s DPMI program in Washington, DC as a Davis Scholar.

Catherine attended the United World College of the Adriatic in Duino, Italy. Here she spent 2 years pursuing International Baccalaureate and interacting with young people from over 80 countries. Having traveled around Europe, United States and Trinidad and Tobago, she hopes to go back to Kenya and explore the beauty of Kenya.

As a Frontier Market Scout, Catherine will join Invested Development as an analyst in their Nairobi office. Her roles will include connecting Invested Development with entrepreneurs in Nairobi, with a focus on alternative energy and mobile technology enterprises. She is a strong believer in the potential of market-based solutions to improve the livelihoods of the world’s poor.

Catherine loves to travel, cook and hopes to learn to sew.

Check out Catherine’s blog, Start-up to Scale!

Gray Robinson

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Village Capital Partner: HUB Istanbul

Gray graduated this May with a BA in Political Science and a minor in Economics from Davidson College, where she focused her studies on international development and international political economy. Gray was also a founding member and the CFO of the Davidson Community Entrepreneurial Fund, a student-run organization providing microloans and business services to small business owners in the Davidson community. Last summer, Gray supported impact evaluations taking place around the world as an Intern at Innovations for Poverty Action’s Small and Medium Enterprise Initiative in Washington, DC.

Gray is excited to enter the field as a Frontier Market Scout in Istanbul, Turkey.

You can read Gray’s blog here!

Carolyn Caton

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Village Capital Partner: HUB Istanbul

Carolyn Caton is a recent MS graduate of the Columbia University
School of Social Work.  Through her coursework at Columbia, and
fieldwork at UNICEF Headquarters in New York, she studied
international social welfare and economic strengthening for women and girls in emergency and development settings. Before graduate school,
Carolyn managed resource and program development for Native Public
Media (NPM), an organization whose mission is to promote independent
Native American communities through media access, control and
ownership.

Check out her blog about Impact Investing in Istanbul!

Aineth Torres

 

Location: Mexico City, Mexico

Village Capital Partner: New Ventures

Aineth started to think about the catalyzing power of businesses since she was very young. She especially started to focus her attention on the impact of businesses from the perspective of sustainability while in college. With a major in Industrial Engineering and minor in Entrepreneurship from a public Mexican university and studies in innovation and natural resources, right now, as a PhD candidate in Industrial Engineering at Penn State, she hopes to generate practical alternatives that help organizations achieve sustainability.

By participating in FMS, she intends to enhance her skill set and effectiveness while networking with knowledgeable people in the area of impact investment but, most of all, through field experience.

In addition to helping businesses generate well-being through good management and operational efficiency, her dream life includes the creation of a few enterprises all of them with social impact.

Be sure to read about Aineth’s experiences in Mexico.

Sites DOT MIISThe Middlebury Institute site network.