Speaker Biographies

Catherine Clark

CBS '98, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia Business School

Catherine Clark is an experienced social investor, philanthropist and educator. In 2001, she joined the faculty of Columbia Business School to shape social venture and social entrepreneurship activities for Columbia’s Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise Program. She teaches the school’s flagship course on social entrepreneurship, and founded and directs Columbia’s Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship. Clark also serves as Faculty Advisor at Columbia for the Global Social Venture Competition, a joint project among Columbia, UC Berkeley, London Business School and the Goldman Sachs Foundation to identify and reward exemplary nonprofit and for-profit social ventures with involvement by MBA students across the US and abroad. In addition to her work at Columbia, she acts as a consultant to social enterprises, investment firms and foundations and is currently serving as Co-Director of the Double Bottom Line Project for the Rockefeller Foundation.

Ms. Clark has worked across the private, public and nonprofit sectors for over 13 years to support and build organizations and companies with a public purpose.

Previously, Ms. Clark was founder and Managing Director of the Flatiron Future Fund, a social venture fund, and President of the Flatiron Foundation, both incubated by Flatiron Partners, a JP Morgan Partners affiliate. She managed grants and program-related investments as Vice President of the Markle Foundation, developed early Internet-related national telecommunications policies at The Aspen Institute in Washington, DC, and supported development in Pakistan through work for the US Agency for International Development.

She serves on the boards of Investors’ Circle, a national membership organization of individual and institutional social investors, and MOUSE, which improves the use of technology in New York City public schools, and as advisory board member for Commons Capital, LP, a social venture fund. She has been an active advisor to organizations that support nonprofit and for-profit entrepreneurs, including the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in Geneva, the Yale School of Management - Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, and Springboard Enterprises. Ms. Clark holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School.