40+ years seeking the path less travelled, with experience in various forms of structured finance in the emerging and high growth markets around the world. During the '80s and '90s, I lived in Toronto, New York then London, which was a springboard for developing relationships and offices across Asia. This broadened to Eastern Europe with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the more recent focus on the demographic opportunity in Africa.

With the creation of Cordiant in 1999, I've now overseen 200+ private equity and credit investments in 75 emerging countries around the world and helped lead the path on the creation of a new asset class.

The next chapter is about crowding-in institutional investment alongside subordinated capital from aid agencies and philanthropies, creating attractive investments across these high-growth markets. At the launch of the Sustainable Development goals in 2015, UN highlighted a funding gap of $2+trn for the building of infrastructure, financial services, agriculture etc, across the emerging markets, Blended finance has begun to move that needle. Sharing this experience through my involvement with Convergence Blended finance and lectures at McGill and Wharton will help the next generation navigate the path.