Is Employee Development Key for Effective Democratic Elections?
How Alternative Investment Strategies Can Drive Sustainable Solutions
In our rapidly evolving global landscape, we are increasingly facing a complex set of interrelated social and environmental challenges, often referred to as a “polycrisis.” These challenges demand innovative and systemic solutions that go beyond traditional approaches. As we grapple with these multifaceted problems, there’s a growing recognition of the critical role that financial mechanisms can play in addressing and potentially solving aspects of the polycrisis.
In this Luminaries Series webinar, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Courtney Birnbaum from Corbin Capital Partners. Drawing on findings from Corbin’s recently released white paper, “Investing in Tomorrow”, Courtney will share her perspectives on how non-traditional, alternative investment strategies like private credit and hedge fund strategies, largely untapped up to this point, can be effectively deployed to invest in solutions that foster meaningful, positive social and environmental change, all while delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns. We’ll delve into some of the megatrends that these strategies are designed to capture as well as specific examples of how they can be used to deliver impact outcomes in areas such as litigation finance and opioids, carbon credits, and affordable housing.
Courtney Birnbaum serves as the Director of Sustainability at Corbin Capital Partners, a New York-based woman-led independent alternative asset management firm that specializes in multi-strategy hedge fund and opportunistic credit investing. Corbin has experience creating and managing differentiated commingled and bespoke portfolios for investors globally. As of January 1, 2024, Corbin has $8.70 billion in assets under management.
Courtney leads Corbin’s ESG integration and responsible investing programs. Prior to formally joining Corbin in January 2022, Courtney served as a consultant for a year during which time she helped shape Corbin’s proprietary ESG materiality framework within the investment process. She also led the firm’s manager engagement efforts. Courtney is a member of Corbin’s Sustainability Committee, Multi-Strategy Investment Committee, and Credit Investment Committee. Previously, Courtney was a senior advisor and portfolio manager at several family offices and the Director of Marketable Investments for the Bowdoin College endowment. Before joining Bowdoin, Courtney spent approximately seven years at Goldman Sachs where she was a Vice President in the Alternative Investments and Manager Selection group (AIMS). In this role, she was responsible for manager selection and seeding within hedge funds. Prior to Goldman, she was a director at Sterling Stamos, a multi-family office, for four years. Courtney began her career in Investment Banking at Merrill Lynch and Rothschild. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Laurie Lane-Zucker is Founder and CEO of Impact Entrepreneur, PBC, an impact economy business that hosts the Impact Entrepreneur Network — a large, global network of “systems-minded” entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars of social and environmental innovation — and editor and publisher of Impact Entrepreneur, a digital magazine covering the emerging Impact Economy. For over 30 years, Laurie has been a “pioneer” (Forbes) and recognized leader in sustainability, social enterprise, and impact investing. Laurie was the founding Executive Director of the international environmental organization, Orion Society, which publishes the celebrated Orion Magazine, as well as the founder of a global sustainability think-tank, the Triad Institute, and Hotfrog, a Founding B Corporation, GIIRS Pioneer Company, and the first company ever to complete an equity transaction on an impact investment exchange. Laurie is the bestselling and multiple award-winning publisher and editor of books and magazines on sustainability and social impact — having worked with such acclaimed authors as Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, and David James Duncan — and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing. Laurie is contributing author to the recently published academic textbook from World Scientific, Sustainability: Business and Investment Implications (2023).