COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

TEDxKL-Dureen Shahnaz- Perception vs Reality, Can Capital Market be used for Social Good?

Durreen Shahnaz is the Founder and Chairperson of Impact Investment Exchange, a social stock exchange for Asian social enterprises to raise growth capital. Durreen is also Head of the Programme on Social Innovation and Change and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Durreen has been a change maker throughout her career which has spanned both the social and private sector. As a successful social entrepreneur, Durreen founded, ran and sold oneNest, a New York-based social purpose business which operated a marketplace for products produced by microfinance, micro enterprises and artisan groups from all over the world.

Durreen began her career in the social sector at Grameen Bank (Bangladesh) where she played a critical role in the bank's first major capital raising exercise. At World Bank (Washington, D.C.) Durreen evaluated non-performing loan portfolios for the East Africa Department and at the International Finance Corporation she assisted in selling Ashanti, the largest gold mine in the world for the Ghanian government.

In the private sector, Durreen worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley (New York) and Merrill Lynch (Hong Kong) before moving to the media sector. As the head of three regional media companies (Asia City Publishing Group, Hearst Magazines International and Reader's Digest Asia), Durreen worked vigorously to incorporate social responsibility into these companies' work.

Durreen holds a BA from Smith College (double major in Economics and Government); and a joint graduate degree — MBA from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Finance) and MA from School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (International Economics and International Relations). Recently Durreen was nominated as one of the Young Leaders of Asia by Asia Society.

Durreen was also selected as one of the 25 TED fellows, which spoke at TED 2010 in Long Beach, California.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)