ESG Member Community

About the EMPEA ESG Community

The EMPEA ESG Community is open to all individuals at EMPEA member firms who have an active interest in ESG in the emerging markets space. This Community provides a platform to share resources and advice for EMPEA members considering how to build and/or expand their ESG management strategy and offers practitioners and experts a forum to advance the development of ESG best practices through information exchange, research and the aggregation and development of innovative resources.

The Community typically meets twice a year with in-person meetings taking place in:

• Washington, D.C. in May, in conjunction with the IFC’s annual Global Private Equity Conference in Association with EMPEA (GPEC)
• London in October, in conjunction with EMPEA’s Sustainable Investing in Emerging Markets Summit

In addition to bi-annual meetings, ESG Community members can volunteer to participate in one or more of the Community’s three Working Groups which convene via conference call as needed:

Governance Working Group

The Governance Working group is developing a resource guide to assist LPs and fund managers in adopting new methods and tools to better incorporate governance in their investment processes and business practices. The resource guide will provide a broader definition of governance and a compendium of practices, procedures, guides, templates and examples to help users achieve best practices in the governance of funds and investee companies.

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Working Group

Responding to the ESG Community’s interest in understanding how to approach the SDGs from an EM PE lens, the SDG Working Group developed the report “Private Equity’s Role in Delivering the SDGs: Current Approaches and Good Practice” and provided an overview of its content during a breakout session of the Global Private Equity Conference in May of 2018. The report is complemented by a compendium of SDG case studies provided by volunteers from the working group and broader ESG Community as well as a SDG resource database that has been populated by members of the working group.

Gender Parity Acceleration Working Group

The Gender Parity Acceleration Working Group was launched at the Global Private Equity Conference in May 2018 and is EMPEA’s first industry initiative aimed at addressing the gender gap in emerging markets private equity. The Working Group plans to leverage the knowledge and experience of the EMPEA membership and lead a collaborative effort to identify the next steps to achieve gender parity.

If you are interested in joining EMPEA’s ESG Member Community and any of its Working Groups, please contact Kyoko Terada at teradak@empea.net or Victoria Carrion at carrionv@empea.net.

Steering Committee

The EMPEA ESG Member Community Steering Committee consists of dedicated and experienced ESG practitioners in the emerging markets private capital space. They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to this peer-to-peer exchange, and all share the same commitment and passion for their profession.

Steering Committee Members

• Hany Assaad, Avanz Capital (ESG Member community Chair)
• Abir Attia, AfricInvest (Governance Working Group Co-Head)
• Walter van Helvoirt, FMO (Governance Working Group Co-Head)
• Mark Eckstein, CDC Group plc (SDG Working Group Co-Head)
• Shami Nissan, Actis (SDG Working Group Co-Head)
• Laura Kemp–Pedersen, LeapFrog Investments (Gender Parity Working Group Co-Head)
• Jim Seymour, Pontefract Global Strategies, LLC (Gender Parity Working Group Co-Head)

View all ESG Steering Committee members