Speakers

Dr Slingers is a medical doctor who has specialised in Family Medicine and has an Executive MBA. She has extensive experience in programme leadership, design and implementation and working with multiple stakeholders in government, civil society, donors and private sector.

She has worked in the Western Cape Department of Health to lead the rollout of antiretroviral services from 2004 to 2006, the Treatment Action Campaign and Re-Action to design and implement Public Private Partnerships, and as the Executive Manager for Resource Mobilisation at the South African National AIDS Council. Dr Slingers is the Executive Manager of the Imagine Social Impact Bond.

Beth has extensive experience in investment banking, from corporate advisory and M&A to strategy and executive support. During her time in Corporate Finance, Beth gained experience in executing landmark transactions across SA’s corporate segment. Since joining the Sustainable Solutions team, Beth has executed a number of sustainable finance transactions, including Namibia’s largest green bond for FNB Namibia and Africa’s first gender-linked bond for Barloworld. Beth’s primary focus is on integrating sustainability into RMB’s advisory solutions and sustainable finance innovation across natural capital and social impact.

Richard is Chief Executive of the Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI). The mission of HBGI is to address the huge global gap in the understanding of, and services targeting, poor mental health (and its causes and consequences). They pool philanthropy to contract and pay for outcomes on mental health programs and also provide technical assistance to governments and other commissioners in outcomes contract/service design and performance management. They look to embed the voice of people with lived experience at every step.

Richard has been the Chair of ten Social Impact Bonds, including homelessness prevention, care for carers, refugee integration and supporting children at risk of failure at school. He is the Chair of a Development Impact Bond for unemployed Palestinian youth, with outcomes funded by the World Bank, and will be chairing a new youth Social Impact Bond in South Africa.

Between 2000 and 2012, Richard set up and ran three for-profit organisations delivering services with outcomes contracts, mainly contracted by the UK government and mostly targeting very long-term unemployment. Over that time his programs assisted around 1 million people.

From 2012 to his start at HBGI in 2022, he worked as a Senior Consultant with the World Bank across multiple countries. His biggest projects were shifting basic and essential health services in Afghanistan to new performance-based contracts and an outcomes-focused program in Ethiopia to connect refugees with jobs. He was also a Senior Advisor for the Global Fund.

Richard had an early career in international education. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford, and Applied Linguistics at Exeter.

María Alejandra is an Associate Director in the International Team of Social Finance UK. She has worked on the feasibility and design of multiple outcomes-based funding mechanisms across various issue areas and geographies, especially Latin America and Spain. María has participated in designing two Education Outcomes Funds in Colombia and Chile, an Impact Bond to improve the socio-residential autonomy of vulnerable populations in Spain, and the design of an HIV SIB in South Africa, among others.

Before joining Social Finance, she managed the Social Impact Bonds Programme in Colombia (SIBs.CO) and supported the government in launching an employment SIB and Outcomes Fund. María has also had the opportunity of leading high-impact projects from the public sectors in entities such as the Ministry of Education and the National Agency for Overcoming Extreme Poverty in Colombia.