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Five UBS Global Visionaries pitched their vision for positive social and environmental impact to an expert jury and UBS employees around the world.
UBS Global Visionaries are outstanding impact entrepreneurs, addressing the world’s most pressing challenges related to education, health, inequalities, and climate change, by implementing innovative solutions. Their example is inspiring other clients and businesses to do the same; paving the way to unlocking impact at scale.
Recently, five of these impact entrepreneurs took to the stage at our inaugural Pitch for Purpose event in Zurich to vie for a CHF 50,000 prize from the UBS Optimus Foundation. The Global Visionaries, who are also UBS Optimus Foundation grantees, showcased how we connect people and ideas for a better world. All Global Visionaries featured at the event have not-for-profit or hybrid business models.
Prepping to pitch for purpose
One of our support pillars to our Global Visionaries is to help them to build capacity. These social entrepreneurs are looking to build elevator pitch skills to help them mobilize capital to scale their positive change. So, the five Global Visionaries pitching were all coached by UBS volunteers who worked on polishing their presentation skills and communicating the potential social and environmental impact of their venture. The Pitch for Purpose event offered the platform to put those newly honed skills to practice.
Kicking off the event
Before inviting the Global Visionaries to the stage, Tom Hall, Global Head of Social Impact & Philanthropy Services, celebrated these changemakers for being a part of a new culture where businesses are more resilient and economies are more inclusive, sustainable and impactful. Tom added that ventures like Education Partnerships Group, Perkins International School for the Blind, Jan Sahas, Earth Security and Afriscout that are directly addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals will help to create USD 12 trillion of market potential and 380 million new jobs worldwide.
Meet the Global Visionaries
Kate Dooley, CEO, Education Partnerships Group, stood up first to pitch on education. “We’re in the business of upscaling governments,” she said, as part of a broader approach to achieving education success through national-scale and evidence-based policy reform. More than five million children have benefited from Education Partnerships Group’s work.
Katherine Holland, Executive Director, Perkins International School for the Blind who told the judges that as the first US school of its kind, founded in 1829, Perkins has nearly 200 years experience training teachers, and a global footprint across 180 countries. Their solution is “a ripple of impact,” where teachers train teachers, described by Holland as a model that’s ready to scale.
Addressing the issue of underprivileged communities in India, Shalmoli Halder, Strategy Director for Jan Sahasexplained that her venture works with members of the Dalit community. The future for Jan Sahas, which means ‘People’s Courage,’ is in scaling towards being a “convener” and “hub” for the larger tree of organizations that support the community on a wider range of different issues from forced labor to helping survivors of sexual violence.
Alejandro Litovsky, founder and CEO, Earth Security is taking on the challenge of how to value nature and ecosystems and how to turn that into an investible pipeline. “Unless we can drive sustainable solutions that provide alternative livelihoods and create local impact communities, and local impact economies we’re not going to succeed in this journey,” he told the judges. Scale for Earth Security could arrive in the creation of an investment platform that would connect local business models to capital at scale.
To close out the pitches, Christopher Bessenecker, founder of Afriscout how they’re helping to lower the 25 percent loss of livestock that 270 million pastoralists face across Africa through satellite data to provide accurate and timely information on pasture and water to pastoralist communities for their animals. “This information is helping [pastoralists] make better decisions for both the land and their livestock,” he said.
View their pitches here: Katherine Holland, Shalmoli Halder, Alejandro Litovsky and Christopher Bessenecker.
Drum roll, please!
The winner was determined by a combined vote of a jury of experts, impact investors and philanthropists, and the audience. The judges noted that all those pitching demonstrated impact, scalability and polish during their pitches and announced the winner of the Simon Smiles Award, named in memory of the Global Visionaries program founder, as Kate Dooley, CEO, Education Partnerships Group.
Kate thanked voters for being open to what they do, admitting that working with governments, “Isn’t always an easy sell!”
Reach out to your Client Advisor or to our team here if you’d like to meet a Global Visionary, get inspired, and make an impact.