Steering Committee

Lev Plaves is Kiva’s Senior Investment Manager for Refugees & Displaced Populations, leading Kiva’s efforts to provide economic opportunities to displaced populations around the world. In 2017, Plaves spearheaded the launch of the World Refugee Fund, an innovative effort to utilize Kiva’s crowdfunding platform to extend access to financial services to forcibly displaced populations. Kiva, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform for social good, has facilitated over $8 million in loans to refugees and IDPs in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa since 2016.

Amy Slaughter is Chief Strategy Officer of RefugePoint – an NGO with a dual mission of state- of-the-art direct services and systems change in the refugee solutions sector. Since the early 1990s, Slaughter has worked and consulted for a variety of refugee NGOs as well as UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration, working in refugee situations in the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East. With a Master’s degree in human rights from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Florida, Slaughter is a frequent panelist at refugee conferences and has published several articles on refugee protection.

Justin Sykes is a social investment specialist with over 15 years of experience in the structuring and implementation of innovative and large-scale impact investments, which have positively impacted hundreds of thousands of lives across a diverse range countries in Africa and the Middle East. He serves as a board member and adviser to several international charities, and local grassroots financial institutions, that are engaged in supporting the livelihoods of low-income communities.

Suma Swaminathan joined the DWM private equity team in 2017. Swaminathan previously worked at Empire Valuation Consultants, a boutique consulting firm in New York City. Swaminathan started her career in data analysis at Infosys Ltd where she worked with clients like Capital One Auto Finance on loss forecasting and data governance. She also has experience working with partner weaver cooperative societies in the handloom industry in India to promote strategies for financial self- sufficiency.

Warren Valdmanis joined Bain Capital Double Impact in 2017 after working for the firm’s private equity business for over 11 years. During his tenure with Bain Capital Private Equity, Valdmanis spent five years in Asia and Australia where he helped to extend the Asia Fund’s capabilities and opened the Bain Capital Sydney office. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Valdmanis was a Manager at Bain & Company covering a wide variety of industries across Bain Capital’s North American, European and South African operations, with a particular focus on private equity clients.

Diana Won is the Program Manager for the Pershing Square Foundation, where she is responsible for program management, grant administration and communications. Won joined the Foundation from Seoul, South Korea where she was a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar at MYSC, a social impact consulting company. At MYSC, she helped manage a program to train entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, lectured at universities on Design Thinking, and helped adapt frameworks to measure social impact.

David Young works closely with the leaders of BCG’s Social Impact Practice to help clients navigate opportunities and challenges at the intersection of social impact, the firm’s Public Sector Practice, and the private sector. He also engages with BCG’s Grow Africa Team, tapping the vast experience he gained in that region during his time at World Vision and his exposure to Africa since 1976. At World Vision, Young served as COO, leading a comprehensive transformation effort and overseeing the organization’s global field operations, emergency response, technical support teams, microfinance, and strategic support functions.

Matt Zieger leads US Ventures at Village Capital, a group that finds, trains, and invests in entrepreneurs solving real-world problems. As a past foundation president, senior state policy official, early stage investor and small business owner, Zieger worked for more than 15 years to use market forces to drive positive social outcomes. Most recently, he served as vice president of The Forbes Funds, a regional philanthropy focused on social innovation and capacity building.