Curt Lyon is the Executive Director of Transform Finance, a nonprofit organization that creates insights and actionable strategies for financial ecosystem actors to challenge legacy investment approaches and seed transformative investment models. Originally from the Boston area, Curt began working at the intersection of finance and social justice with the New Economy Coalition, a national network of Solidarity Economy organizations, and the Boston Ujima Project, a community-controlled capital fund. He joined Transform Finance in 2017 to help mobilize capital providers towards investments that reconsider the distribution of risk, wealth, and power. Since then, he has led major initiatives that mobilize investors, funders, changemaking organizations, and others towards Transform Finance’s vision, becoming Executive Director in 2023. He is co-author of several flagship reports, including Grassroots Community Engaged Investment and Alternative Ownership Enterprises. Outside of Transform Finance, he organizes for local elections and fundraises for local Solidarity Economy initiatives in his home of New York City.
.JPG)
Julie is Program Director at Transform Finance. Her work focuses on challenging traditional investment practices and mobilizing support for Alternative Ownership Enterprises through research, investor education, community building, and more.
Previously, Julie served as Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer at New Media Ventures, where she built a best-in-class portfolio of startups working to strengthen democracy. Earlier in her career, she was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting where she has worked with large companies to redefine what good business means.
Julie is also a co-founder and Board President of the GreenerMind Summit, a retreat for changemakers in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is originally from France where she received her MBA. She lives in beautiful Oakland, California and loves imagining a better world by reading science-fiction and nurturing life in her garden.
Julia Parker is the Community Owned Real Estate (CORE) Program Manager at Transform Finance. Julia has worked across the public and private sectors in community development and impact investing, with a passion for financing and supporting BIPOC enterprises through non-extractive debt capital and equity financing. Her focus on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) investing has guided her work with mission-aligned institutions.
A trained community-based lender, Julia began her career in city government in the mayor’s office before transitioning to a nonprofit addressing the impact of poverty on Black youth. She fell in love with the nonprofit sector and eventually moved into consulting with her firm Park4029 Consulting. Julia holds fractional consulting roles at several nonprofits, including Boston Ujima Project.
With almost two decades in lending, Julia thrives on collaborating with clients and organizations that prioritize Black and Brown wealth creation and support nontraditional entrepreneurs. She holds a BA from Creighton University, an MS in Urban Studies from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Boston College.
Andrea Armeni, Associate Clinical Professor of Social Finance and Public Service, directs the Social Impact, Innovation, and Investment Specialization (SI3) at NYU’s Robert F.Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He also serves as the MPA/MBA FacultyDirector, as co-director of the university-wide Social Entrepreneurship minor, and leads the student-run NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF).
A corporate lawyer by training, Andrea co-founded and directed TransformFinance for a decade, exploring how capital can be made more equitable.
His current research focuses on distributed governance and ownership mechanisms at the enterprise level as a fairer alternative to shareholder primacy and on the connection between impact investing strategies and broader transformation of the role of capital in society.
Andrea holds a B.A. in analytic philosophy, summa cum laude, from Columbia University and a Juris Doctor from the Yale Law School.
.jpg)
Susan is an economist, policy advocate and social impact investment expert. Her background is in economic policy, corporate responsibility, regulation, and investment vehicles that drive social and environmental impact. Previously, as an independent consultant, she advised early-stage founders and non-profits. Before that, Susan worked exclusively in socially responsible investments at Registered Investment Advisors and Broker-Dealers as a wealth manager, investment advisor and portfolio manager, most recently as the Senior Portfolio Manager of over $230 million in public and private investments at Impact Investors where she served on the Investment Committee Member of a private impact fund focused on regenerative agriculture and social equity. Susan introduced shareholder resolutions at Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon and organized shareholder campaigns on issues related to human rights, public risk and social impact. She previously worked in federal and state policy on economic and financial issues and for non-profits on labor, human, migrant and women’s rights and disaster relief, trafficking in women and children and environmental justice. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the New School for Social Research and a B.A. in Women’s Studies and Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz.
Sophie moved from West Virginia to New York in 2013 to attend Barnard College, where she studied economics and mathematics, learning the models of our current economic system and ways impactful change can be made within them. Her senior thesis examined the rise of the coal industry and historical patterns of labor exploitation and poverty in Central and Southern Appalachia. Since graduating, she has gained professional experience in communications, research, and data analysis. As the Operations Associate, she manages the logistical and administrative components of Transform Finance's projects, events, campaigns, and networks.
Aner is Founding Partner of Candide Group, a Registered Investment Advisor. Aner is passionate about redefining the role of capital in communities and over the past seven years he has been at the forefront of pioneering multi-stakeholder governance and ownership models that ensure more equitable and fair outcomes for workers and communities.
Before starting Candide, Aner was a Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked with clients in the energy, water and transportation sectors. Prior to that, he worked at Israel's leading Project Finance consulting firm. Aner holds an MBA with honors from the Kellogg School of Management and a BA in Economics and History (magna cum laude) from Tel Aviv University.
Aner became the Chair of the Board of Directors of Transform Finance in 2019. He currently also serves on the board of Solar Holler, a solar developer bringing solar power to Appalachia, and Complete Solar, a technology-enabled solar developer in California.
Cathy co-founded Partners for Dignity & Rights (formerly National Economic and Social Rights Initiative) along with Sharda Sekaran and Liz Sullivan in order to build legitimacy for human rights in general, and economic and social rights in particular. She is committed to a community-centered and participatory human rights approach that is locally anchored, but universal and global in its vision.
Cathy has a background in constitutional and human rights, and significant expertise in reproductive justice, corporate accountability and economic and social rights. She has published extensively and served on boards as diverse as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the International Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Network, and the Center for Social Inclusion, among others. She clerked for the Honorable Mitchell Cohen in the District of New Jersey. She received a BA from the University of Miami and is a graduate of Columbia Law School.
Chid co-founded Liberty & Justice, Africa’s first Fair Trade Certified™ apparel manufacturer, after working in entertainment, technology, and finance. He was born in Liberia, West Africa, but left as an infant when his father became the nation’s ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, with residence in Bonn. His family was later exiled in the United States. In 2009, Chid returned to Africa after 28 years abroad. Inspired by the Nobel Peace Prize winning Liberian Women’s Peace Movement, Chid co-founded Africa’s first Fair Trade Certified apparel factory to provide economic opportunities for internally displaced women, who on balance, were vulnerable to rampant unemployment and economic exclusion. He is currently leading L&J’s rapid expansion in Liberia and throughout the region. In addition to his work at Liberty & Justice, Chid served as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Liberia’s Monrovia Business Startup Center (BSC). The BSC was founded by Spark, a Dutch NGO, for whom Chid manages the Ignite Fund (Liberia) – an equity investment fund that makes strategic investments in Liberian Pico-cap companies with high growth potential. He also speaks internationally on social entrepreneurship and impact investing – recently at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton Universities, as well as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and IE in Madrid, Spain. Chid was recognized by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in her 2011 State of the Nation Address for his leadership in shaping trade policy and indigenous Liberian entrepreneurship. He is a recipient of the 2014 Salzburg Global Fellowship, 2014 Global Innovation Summit Ecosystem Award, 2013 New African Press 50 African Trailblazers under 50, the 2011 SVN Social Innovation Award, 2010 Cordes Fellowship, and a Yoxi Portfolio SIR (Social Innovation Rockstar).
