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Systems change requires reimagined “blended finance” — an approach to investing that mobilizes all forms of capital, financial as well as non-financial.
If money alone could fix it, we would be further along. From a sobering SDG scoreboard — with less than one fifth of targets on track — to mounting evidence of climate stress and democratic backsliding, the pattern is clear: our bottleneck is not capital availability but capital architecture, allocation, and accountability. In this timely Luminarias session, we move past optics and acronyms to examine how impact capital actually gets mobilized and deployed where the mainstream is ill equipped to assess real risks or strengthen ecosystems.
Our featured guest, Dr. Gillian Marcelle, argues that progress stalls when we ignore three realities: structural bottlenecks, cognitive and organizational blind spots, and the need for reimagined blended finance that braids financial and non-financial capital — knowledge, networks, policy, and cultural and social capital — to unlock durable change. As ESG and DEI face political headwinds in the United States and “impact” rhetoric risks drifting into complacency, this conversation offers an imaginative and challenging approach to investing that begins with root causes and includes recommendations for getting capital unstuck — and for establishing the trust and execution capacity the global impact economy requires.
Topics to be covered
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Gillian Marcelle, PhD leads Resilience Capital Ventures LLC (RCV), a boutique capital advisory practice specializing in blended finance. Dr Marcelle developed the Triple B Framework to improve flows and allocation of capital in its multiple forms; this provides a platform for engaging in the finance and investment world, where her contributions and perspectives on diversity, inclusion, accountability, and alignment with the SDGs are becoming influential. Dr Marcelle was recently included in the 2025 Black Women Give Back List, recognizing 10 extraordinary philanthropic leaders across the global Black diaspora. In 2024 she earned inclusion in the fourth annual Forbes Fifty Over Fifty: Investment list.
Her decades long track record includes attracting investment and structuring deals. Her sectors of focus are telecoms, fintech, renewable energy, regenerative agriculture and health systems. Her specialty is the design and implementation of blended finance strategies that involve partnerships, ecosystem strengthening and architectures to facilitate transformational change. Dr Marcelle includes among her clients and partners: The Bahamas; Open Society Foundations; MPC Energy Solutions, PolicyLink, Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), AfricaBio and the Clinton Foundation. She serves on the Advisory Boards of New Majority Capital and African Venture Partners, and was appointed to work with UNDP Africa as part of the Concilium of Advisors, a team that will be deployed across Africa, providing independent advisory services to improve access to affordable financial capital. Additionally, she has guided numerous ventures in the role of Senior Advisor. She is also an LP in Outside Ventures.