SRI360 | Sustainable & Responsible Investing, Impact Investing, ESG, Socially Responsible Investing

Most investors assume an ESG rating tells them how sustainable a company is. It doesn’t. An ESG rating measures the financial risk environmental, social, and governance factors pose to the company — not the company’s actual impact on people and the planet.
That distinction sits at the center of this episode of SRI360. I’m joined by Samantha Duncan, Founder and CEO of Net Purpose, a data platform now supporting clients managing approximately twenty trillion dollars in assets and built to measure what ESG ratings don't.
Samantha's story starts at Goldman Sachs, where she worked on healthcare M&A through the 2008 financial crisis, watching transactions that changed the cost of pathology and shut down rural medical centres get evaluated on one metric and one metric only: earnings per share. Reading about Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank at the height of that disconnect was the thing that finally pulled her toward the door — and in 2009 she resigned and moved to Trujillo, Peru, to run a microfinance program for a children's NGO — an experience that taught her, counterintuitively, that charging the women she worked with commercial interest rates was more empowering than giving them aid on charitable terms.
From there she joined LeapFrog Investments as Head of Impact, building one of the industry’s first rigorous frameworks for measuring social and financial performance together. It was there, buried in spreadsheets manually extracting numbers from PDFs, that she hit what she now calls “Excel hell” — the realization that the industry lacked the data infrastructure to make its sustainability commitments real. That realization became Net Purpose, founded in 2019 to do for sustainability data what Bloomberg and FactSet did for financial data.
In this episode we discuss:
• Why ESG ratings measure financial risk to the company, not the company's impact on the world
• How Net Purpose calculates the percentage of a company's revenue that is genuinely sustainable
• What it means that only 16% of a global index is truly sustainable — and why the other 84% is a financial risk problem, not just a moral one
• The October 2025 acquisition of the SDI Asset Owner Platform, co-founded by APG, PGGM, AustralianSuper, and BCI
• Why sustainability, impact, and ESG still need clearer shared definitions
• What it will take for impact measurement to become as mainstream as profit

Featured guest:
Samantha Duncan, Founder and CEO of Net Purpose

Listen Next:
• Tamer El-Raghy — Acumen ARAF: Investing for Impact in Frontier Markets: https://sri360.com/podcast/tamer-el-raghy/?utm_source=episode&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=136

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What does it take to build a multilateral development bank from scratch — and then lead one of the world's oldest DFIs through a structural reset of the entire development finance system?
In this episode, Leslie Maasdorp traces a career that begins in a South African prison cell and runs through Nelson Mandela's government, Goldman Sachs International, and thirteen years in global investment banking, before arriving at the founding team of the New Development Bank in Shanghai — where he spent nine years building a $40–45 billion balance sheet institution with a AA+ credit rating from S&P and Fitch.
He breaks down how BII's newly launched 2026–2031 strategy is designed to crowd in pension funds, insurers, and sovereign wealth capital at scale — and why perceived default risk in emerging markets is systematically overstated relative to actual performance.
If you work in institutional capital allocation, blended finance, or emerging market infrastructure, don't miss Leslie's practitioner case for why the donor-recipient model is broken and what the next architecture of development finance needs to look like.
Featured guest: 
Leslie Warren Maasdorp, CEO and Executive Director of British International Investment (BII), the UK's publicly-owned development finance institution
 
You can reach out to Leslie through:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/leslie-maasdorp-874424352
Website: www.https://www.bii.co.uk/en/

Listen Next: 
Conversation with Mohamed Okasha : Africa’s Unbanked: Where FinTech Is Finding the Most Resilient Returns
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Here’s what you’re in for:
00:00 – Intro & Trailer
01:06 – Guest Introduction & Scott's Framing
03:09 – Goldman Sachs & Early Investment Banking Career
06:58 – Lessons from the 2008 Financial Crisis
08:15 – Building the New Development Bank in Shanghai
11:24 – NDB: Mission, Structure & AA+ Credit Rating
16:07 – Personal Life, Covid & Russia-Ukraine at NDB
19:40 – Arrested Under Apartheid: Detention Without Trial
21:59 – Prison, Solitude & Graduating with Distinction
25:08 – Growing Up in Bethelsdorp & the Road to Activism
32:15 – Trade Unions, London Scholarship & Joining the ANC
38:53 – Building Post-Apartheid South Africa
44:42 – Joining BII: The World's Oldest DFI
46:51 – What BII Does & How It Deploys Capital
53:31 – BII's Mandate to Experiment & the Case for Reform
57:17 – BII's 2026–2031 Strategy: Mobilizing Private Capital
01:02:22 – First-Loss Structures & the Allianz ACE Fund
01:05:53 – Inside the Investment Machine: Growth, Catalyst & Kinetic
01:09:17 – Risk, Returns & Crowding In UK Pension Capital
01:15:11 – Climate Finance: The Ayana Case Study
01:17:22 – Mission 300: Electrifying Africa by 2030
01:20:13 – Growth Investment Partners Zambia & BII's Entrepreneurial Model
01:24:56 – The Big Picture: $2.4T Climate Gap
01:26:48 – Rapid Fire
01:29:44 – Closing & How to Connect with BII

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What does it take to build a billion-dollar fintech company and then walk away from it to start over during a global pandemic? 
In this episode, Mohamed Okasha shares the story behind helping to build Fawry into Egypt’s first tech unicorn—and then leaving shortly after its landmark IPO to launch DisrupTech, a first-time venture capital fund during COVID-19. 
He breaks down what matters more than big ideas and what is often the ultimate competitive advantage in Africa’s startup ecosystem. 
If you're curious about what helps founders grow stronger companies, don’t miss Mohamed’s practical lessons on investing, leadership, and decision-making from both an operator and investor perspective. 

Tune in to learn more about:
[00:03:30] Why Mohamed decided to leave Fawry after its billion-dollar IPO to start a venture fund during COVID.
[00:05:05] The importance of making decisive moves during pivotal moments in life.
[00:08:54] The role Mohamed’s parents played in encouraging risk-taking.
[00:18:53] How routine and discipline help Mohamed succeed.
[00:20:45] What Mohamed saw at Vodafone that no one else could see.
[00:25:45] How his team built trust with their clients.
[00:31:27] Why Fawry kept “one leg in the physical world and one leg in the digital world” during the transition to digital payments.
[00:52:30] What makes a good founder in Africa versus a good founder in the USA.
[01:03:00] The importance of advisory rather than relationships.
[01:06:40] How Mohamed builds startups that make each other stronger.
[01:09:15] How he encourages collaboration between founders without forcing partnerships.
[01:15:00] What backseat leadership looks like to Mohamed.
[01:21:37] What people should expect as an investor in African companies.
[01:30:16] Why many global investors could be overlooking major opportunities in underserved markets.

Resources:
Mohamed Okasha: LinkedIn
DisrupTech Ventures
Fawry

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Scott Arnell’s Book: Sustainable & Responsible Investing 360

Impact investing is entering a more disciplined, outcomes-driven phase, and it’s more complex than it first appears. In this episode of Sustainable & Responsible Investing 360, I sit down with Amel Karboul, Founder and CEO of the Education Outcomes Fund, to explore how capital can be tied directly to measurable results.
Drawing on her experience working with governments, philanthropies, and impact investors, Amel explains why traditional funding models often fail to deliver real impact, and how outcomes-based financing aims to realign incentives across the system. Rather than paying for activities, this model pays for results, introducing both greater accountability and new challenges.
We explore the tensions at the heart of this approach, from balancing different stakeholder expectations to addressing concerns around investor returns in low-income markets. We also discuss the risk of narrowing impact to what can be measured, and how thoughtful design can mitigate those trade-offs.
Looking ahead, we examine what it will take for outcomes-based models to scale, from simplification and standardization to the potential emergence of more tradable forms of impact.
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Scott Arnell’s Book: Sustainable & Responsible Investing 360
Amel Karboul on LinkedIn
Amel Karboul: Ted Talk
Education Outcome Fund Website

Impact investing is entering a new phase, and it’s more nuanced than the headlines suggest. In this episode of Sustainable & Responsible Investing 360, I sit down with returning guest Eric Rice for his third appearance to unpack what’s really happening across global markets.
Drawing on his experience at Wellington Management and BlackRock, and now in private markets with SEAF (Small Enterprise Assistance Funds), Eric explains why this moment reflects divergence rather than decline. While the US has stepped back from ESG language, Europe, Japan, and other regions are accelerating capital deployment and regulatory support.
We explore the limits of impact capital in replacing development aid, especially in the wake of shifts at USAID, and why commercial discipline remains central to the model. We also discuss the growing role of pension funds, the expansion of investable opportunities, and the shift toward financial materiality.
Looking ahead, we turn to climate adaptation and resilience as emerging areas of focus, offering opportunity, but still evolving in terms of scale and structure.
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Eric Rice Episode 009: https://sri360.com/podcast/eric-rice/ 
Eric Rice Episode 088: https://sri360.com/podcast/eric-rice-2/ 
Scott Arnell’s Book: Sustainable & Responsible Investing 360