Speakers

Zina is an Innovative Finance Advisor at the International Committee of the Red Cross, where she develops blended financing solutions to support the ICRC’s health interventions, while seeking to ensure sustainable transitions to development partners.

She specialises in development finance, impacting investing, private equity, and project management, with a particular emphasis on Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. Over the past 20+ years, Zina has worked with the World Bank Group, UBS, Bamboo Capital Partners, the World Economic Forum, and Banque Audi SAL.

She has led the development, structuring and execution of a wide-ranging investment portfolio in the financial inclusion space across emerging markets. She served on the Board of Directors of multiple banking institutions in East Africa and Central Asia, working to support their strategic development. She has also advised private wealth management clients on building private equity, debt and real estate investment portfolios. She started her career in corporate banking in Lebanon.

Zina is an MBA graduate from IMD in Lausanne Switzerland, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and speaks Arabic, English, French and Portuguese.

Serena Guarnaschelli is an expert in innovative finance, impact investing and inclusive business models across many sectors. Serena has more than 20 years of work experience advising international organizations, development finance institutions and private investors on the design, structuring and evaluation of impact investment strategies and vehicles, blending private, public and philanthropic capital.
She brings more than 5 years of experience at McKinsey & Company and 8 years at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where she led the Access to Finance practice globally.
She oversees KOIS’s advisory work globally. Serena holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Caltech, with a specialization in Behavioural Finance.

Catherine Savoy is the current ICRC health coordinator for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo since August 2020.

Catherine joined the ICRC in 2002, and until 2008 she was on fixed-term contract and alternate mission with hospital work in Switzerland or with other organizations. She served many years as health delegate and other functions within the health unit before pursuing her career in coordination positions (2007), mainly in Africa – CAR, Senegal with regional coverage and DRC.

At the ICRC Headquarters, she worked in the health unit as head of health sector for Africa region between 2016 to June 2020 before going back to the field.

Catherine was born in Switzerland and graduated in nursing care from Lausanne, with Tropical medicine specialization (Antwerpen), holding a MAS on humanitarian action and lately completed a diploma (DAS) on quality and security of care from Geneva University

Mara is the Academic Co-Director of the Government Outcomes Lab at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Mara has two decades’ experience in connecting academic insights to decision making for social impact. She has provided input for decisions on Outcome funds and Outcomes Contracts in the UK, the EU, foundations, and international development agencies working in LMICs. In her previous posts she has worked with health policy makers and healthcare providers in the UK, Italy, Ontario and the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria as well as policy makers at the Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Office of the Deputy Prime minister in the UK.

Mara is an economist and experienced decision modeller with an interest in impact metrics and the use of data to inform better decisions. She is particularly passionate about the ways in which governments can work with the private and non-for-profit sector to accelerate progress towards shared goals. She loves making sense of data and currently works on nurturing the INDIGO data collaborative.