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Gretchen Wilson-Prangley

Gretchen Wilson Prangley is a kickstarter connector and social entrepreneur who has a proven track record of creating meaningful relevant and values driven non profit organisations from the ground up. She thrives at the frontier and is passionate about innovation. As founder and CEO of Play Africa Gretchen is creating one of Africa s first major play and learning institutions for children and families in Johannesburg South Africa. Play is widely understood to enhance creativity and problem solving capacities promote teamwork and instill empathy for others and Gretchen started Play Africa as part of a global movement that promotes play in learning. With a talented dedicated team Play Africa creates opportunities for play and self directed informal and multi generational learning as powerful vehicles for positive change in South Africa. Between 2004 and 2012 Gretchen worked in Johannesburg as an award winning journalist covering globalisation innovative business and social entrepreneurship. She was Africa correspondent for American Public Media s Marketplace a daily radio program in the U.S. with 8 million listeners. Her reporting featured regularly on CBC News The Los Angeles Times The Daily Beast PRI s The World Slate IRIN News and CNBC Africa.Gretchen is co author with Beulah Thumbadoo of the 2007 book From Dust to Diamonds Stories of South African Social Entrepreneurs (Macmillan). Prior to becoming a journalist Gretchen was a founder of the WashTech a non profit start up and the first labor union for new economy workers in the United States.Gretchen holds a master s degree in journalism from Columbia University s Graduate School of Journalism in New York NY USA and a bachelor s degree in sociology and multi ethnic studies from Bard College in Annandale NY USA. She graduated from the Social Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme (SECP) at GIBS the graduate business school of the University of Pretoria in Johannesburg.

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Lisa Glover

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Tara Murphy Forde

Managing Director Capital & Impact Global PartnershipsTara leads Global Partnerships Capital and Impact Team. In this capacity she oversees GP s work in investment research impact management investor communication and investor relations.Tara joined GP in 2009 and during her tenure at the organization she has worked across the Social Investment Research and Impact and Social Venture Fund teams. Her approach to impact investing is informed by academic professional and entrepreneurial experience addressing the issues of poverty gender and conflict. As a Fulbright Scholar Tara researched the gender differentiated effects of the armed conflict in Colombia and was part of a start up tackling the socio economic reintegration of displaced families. Tara holds a B.A. in political science from Vassar College and a certificate in executive leadership from the Albers School of Business at Seattle University.

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Rys Fairbrother

New social entrepreneur and am amazed at the activity in this space. Just learned of IMPACTSPACE today not sure if I was supposed to be referred by someone to be listed here...or do it myself so I did it myself! I have an exciting project WhatIfWeCould a crowdsourcing platfrom for local nonprofits but I'd love to meet and learn of others activities here please feel to reach out and say Hi!

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Kevin Owino

Social Entrepreneur Market Innovator

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Justin Kulla

Partner at TZP Group a $1.6 billion lower mid market private equity firm leading impact investing and ESG and focused on education employment and financial inclusion. Justin had previously been founding member and principal at Weld North an education technology investor backed by KKR. His past portfolio has included Edgenuity Imagine Learning Performance Matters The Learning House Voxy and collectively have been valued at over $1 billion.

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Corey James

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Christoph Freytag

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Arnaud Blanchet

Arnaud Blanchet is the co founder and CEO of Last Mile for BoP a social business based in South Africa that improves the distribution of FMCG and social innovations in townships and rural areas via a mobile application dedicated to informal traders called Shopit. Shopit won the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge Africa in 2019. Prior to starting this business Arnaud advised social businesses in 20 countries and was for 5 years the CFO of the Women s Forum (in Paris & Shanghai) a Publicis group company. Arnaud studied corporate finance at Icade (Madrid Spain) and at Edhec Business School (Lille France) and holds a Master in Management. He is a French African Foundation Young Leader (2017 promotion) and an Alibaba UNCTAD eFounder Fellow (2018 cohort). https//www.linkedin.com/in/arnaud blanchet/

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Corey James