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Bottlenecks, Blind Spots, and Blended Finance

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Bottlenecks, Blind Spots, and Blended Finance with Dr. Gillian Marcelle

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

  • Bottlenecks, blind spots, blended finance — an original framework for moving capital from promise to performance.
  • Place-based architectures — designing country and regional platforms that de-risk pipeline, reduce transaction costs, and build local execution capacity.
  • Braiding financial and non-financial capital — aligning policy, knowledge, networks, and culture with investment flows.
  • Governance and accountability — approaches to ground accountability though addressing frameworks and practices that shift power, expand access, and accelerate SDG-aligned outcomes.
  • Operating amid headwinds — maintaining mission integrity as ESG and DEI come under attack in the United States, and avoiding impact-washing.
  • Overlooked deal sources — Diaspora capital, community wealth vehicles, trapped capital in insurance companies, pension funds and SWFs, and public-interest tech as pipelines for investable opportunities.

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Featuring

Gillian Marcelle

Gillian Marcelle

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.

Host

Laurie Lane-Zucker

Laurie Lane-Zucker

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 academic textbook from World Scientific, Sustainability: Business and Investment Implications. His new book, The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough: A Field Manual for the Regenerative Economy, will be pubished by Berrett-Koehler in 2026, with global distribution by Penguin Random House.

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