Professor Clark is an experienced social investor, foundation executive, consultant and educator. She has worked to found, lead, finance and advise funds and organizations that support social entrepreneurs across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She joined the faculty at Columbia in 2001 to teach the school’s flagship course on social entrepreneurship. She is also founder and Director of Columbia’s Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship (www.riseproject.org), and serves as Faculty Advisor for the Global Social Venture Competition (www.socialvc.net).
Previously, Ms. Clark was founder and Managing Director of the Flatiron Future Fund, a social venture fund, and President of the Flatiron Foundation, both incubated by Flatiron Partners, a JP Morgan Partners affiliate. She managed grants and program-related investments as Vice President of the Markle Foundation in NY, developed early Internet-related national telecommunications policies at The Aspen Institute in Washington, DC, and supported development in Pakistan through work for the US Agency for International Development.
She has been an active advisor to organizations and investors that support nonprofit and for-profit entrepreneurs, including the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, Commons Capital, Investors’ Circle, the Yale School of Management - Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, Springboard Enterprises, and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in Geneva.
Her research interests include: social investing and social capital markets, social entrepreneurship and venturing, venture capital and private equity, philanthropy, nonprofit enterprise development, social value creation, social impact assessment, social return on investment, and any topic that can be found inside Jed Emerson’s Blended Value Map (www.blendedvalue.org).