Laurie Lane-Zucker is Founder and CEO of Impact Entrepreneur, PBC, an impact economy business that hosts the Impact Entrepreneur Network — a large, global network of “systems-minded” entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars of social and environmental innovation — and editor and publisher of Impact Entrepreneur, a digital magazine covering the emerging Impact Economy. For over 30 years, Laurie has been a “pioneer” (Forbes) and recognized leader in sustainability, social enterprise, and impact investing. Laurie was the founding Executive Director of the international environmental organization, Orion Society, which publishes the celebrated Orion Magazine, as well as the founder of a global sustainability think-tank, the Triad Institute, and Hotfrog, a Founding B Corporation, GIIRS Pioneer Company, and the first company ever to complete an equity transaction on an impact investment exchange. Laurie is the bestselling and multiple award-winning publisher and editor of books and magazines on sustainability and social impact — having worked with such acclaimed authors as Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, and David James Duncan — and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing. Laurie is contributing author to the academic textbook from World Scientific, Sustainability: Business and Investment Implications. His new book, The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough: A Field Manual for the Regenerative Economy, will be pubished by Berrett-Koehler in 2026, with global distribution by Penguin Random House.
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Ocean Health: Safeguarding Biodiversity and Resilience
Description
Asia and the Pacific is a global epicenter of marine biodiversity, spanning diverse and interconnected ocean and coastal ecosystems. Globally, the ocean economy generates an estimated $2–$3 trillion annually, supporting jobs, food security, trade, and tourism. Drawing on the Asia-Pacific Climate Report 2025: Unlocking Nature for Development, this webinar examines how ocean degradation and climate change are increasingly reflected in public finances. The loss of coral reefs and mangroves translates into higher disaster recovery costs, reduced coastal tourism revenues, and rising social protection spending. These impacts are not merely environmental – they are fiscal pressures requiring policy response. The webinar will also explore financing solutions that mobilize resources and strengthen incentives for conservation. The global blue bond market has expanded rapidly, helping attract private capital, improve fiscal terms, and support marine protection. Debt-for-nature swaps are likewise gaining traction as instruments to ease sovereign debt burdens while financing environmental investments. Positioning ocean conservation as an economic development strategy can enhance resilience, strengthen competitiveness, and secure long-term prosperity.
Objectives
Webinar attendees will have the chance to engage with the speakers and:
- Examine how to embed ocean health into public financial management, budgeting, and medium-term development strategies.
- Explore innovative instruments that can mobilize resources, attract private capital, and strengthen incentives for marine conservation.
- Discuss practical examples from the region on managing marine resources, mobilizing finance, and aligning conservation with development priorities.
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 PM (GMT+8) / 1:00 AM ET
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The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2026
Join us for a webinar exploring the upcoming findings of The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2026, the latest edition of the GSMA Connected Women programme’s flagship annual report.
The report provides a detailed analysis of the gender gap in mobile ownership and mobile internet use across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), highlighting key trends, the barriers women face and opportunities to further drive women’s digital and financial inclusion.
The upcoming report shows that the gender gap in mobile internet adoption in LMICs decreased slightly last year, continuing a slow but gradual narrowing since 2022. Women across these countries are now 12% less likely than men to use mobile internet. Yet progress remains slow, with a continued need for targeted action to ensure women are not left behind.
In this session, Emma Catalfamo, lead author of the report, will present the latest insights on the mobile gender gap. You will also hear from the Secretary General of the ITU, the CEO of Ethio telecom and the President of Devices and Sales at Reliance Jio, who will share their perspectives on the findings and discuss concrete actions that can be taken to accelerate digital inclusion for women.
Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights and practical recommendations on how to help bridge the mobile gender gap and ensure that everyone can benefit from the power of connectivity.
Time: 13:00 – 14:00 BST / 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM EST
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WHO Health Emergencies EPI-WIN Webinar: Strengthening the Governance of National Public Health Agencies for Emergency Preparedness and Response
Background
National Public Health Agencies (NPHAs) play a central role in preventing, detecting, and responding to public health threats. They contribute to detecting threats early, generate and interpret evidence, coordinate across sectors, support decision-making and communicate with credibility during crises. The ability of NPHAs to perform these functions depends not only on technical capacity, but also on the governance and structural arrangements within which they operate.
Yet, there remains little systematic evidence on how governance arrangements affect their effectiveness. Recognizing this critical gap, the WHO Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (the Alliance) launched a multi-country learning program to examine governance and structural arrangements of NPHAs across diverse contexts—from autonomous agencies to line ministries, and from established to newly formed NPHAs.
To better understand how governance shapes their capacity to prepare for and respond to emergencies, a cross-country studythat examined ten NPHAs across diverse settings. The study identified three governance models in relation to the Ministry of Health (MOH): MOH-integrated public health units, MOH-overseen NPHAs and an independent NPHA. Across models, structural position influenced but did not determine what NPHAs were able to do in practice. Instead, the governance factors linked emergency preparedness and response (EPR) were the clarity and enforceability of legal mandates, the degree of operational autonomy over staffing and financing, arrangements for accessing, sharing and communicating data and evidence, and financing arrangements that enabled timely action.
This webinar will provide a platform to present the main findings of the cross-country study on governance of NPHAs for EPR and bring country perspectives from different governance models on how governance arrangements shape emergency action in practice. It will bring together global partners to reflect on the implications of these findings for NPHA reform and strengthening, and identify practical lessons on how national leaders, international organizations, and funders can support more effective governance arrangements and translate lessons from recent reforms into actionable strategies across contexts.
Objectives
- Highlight the importance of governance mechanisms in National Public Health Agencies (NPHAs) for emergency preparedness and response by
- Presenting the findings of a cross-country study and reflect on the implications of these findings for NPHA reform and strengthening
- Identify practical lessons on how national leaders, international organizations, and funders can support more effective governance arrangements and translate lessons from recent reforms into actionable strategies across contexts.
Agenda and Speakers
Introduction: EPI-WIN Science and Knowledge Translation, WHO
Welcome and introduction: Kumanan Rasanathan, Executive Director, Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, WHO
Opening remarks “NPHA Reform and Restructuring to Meet Current and Future Challenges”:
Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, WHOIntroductory video (Fiji)
Presentation of study findings: cross-country study on governance of NPHAs: Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, WHO
Panel discussion – Country and partner perspectives: moderated by Sara Hersey, Director, Collaborative Intelligence, WHO
Panelists:
Haftom Taame, Principal Program Lead for NPHI and Workforce, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC)Mahendra Arnold, Deputy Director General, Public Health Services, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka
International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), Speaker TBC
Youngmee Jee, Former Commissioner, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA), Korea
Q&A with the audience: Moderated by Sara Hersey and Kumanan Rasanathan
Closing reflections: Implications for national and global actors and future learning: Sara Hersey and Kumanan Rasanathan
Closing and next EPI-WIN: EPI-WIN Science and Knowledge Translation, WHO
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2X Criteria
Join us for a session on how to apply the 2X Criteria across companies, funds, and financial institutions operating in diverse sectors, contexts, and geographies. Using the 2X Criteria Reference Guide, we’ll walk through approaches tailored specifically to investment transactions. You’ll gain clear guidance, insights, and actionable tools to strengthen gender smart investing in your portfolio.
2X Criteria is the global industry standard for assessing and structuring investments that provide women with leadership opportunities, quality employment, finance, enterprise support, and products and services that enhance economic participation and access. They have been widely adopted by investors, financial intermediaries and companies as well as other stakeholders worldwide to assess and monitor gender-lens investments, unifying investors under one framework and language.
The 2X Challenge, underpinned by the 2X Criteria, has played an important role in building the field of gender lens investing (GLI). Today, hundreds of companies and investors around the world use the 2X Criteria as a global standard for gender finance.
The 2X Criteria is a public good and can be used by anyone in the market to set their own targets for new business and portfolio, and self-report on their alignment with the 2X Criteria. This means, the 2X Criteria are applicable to any kind of investor or financial institution, whether you are an impact investor, development finance institution, international finance institution, multi-lateral development bank, pension fund, endowment, asset manager, private equity firm, individual investor or other capital providers to screen and mark/tag deals as 2X-aligned for their internal reporting and tracking purposes.
The 2X Criteria can also be used by private sector companies to assess their practices against the criteria.
Time: 3:00 AM ET & 9:00 AM ET
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The Digital Product Passport: What It Requires and How to Prepare
Have you ever heard of a Digital Product Passport?
If your company manufactures, exports, or sources from supply chains that touch the EU market, it is worth understanding before enforcement begins.The central mechanism for delivering EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation is the Digital Product Passport: a standardised, machine-readable record covering material composition, carbon footprint by lifecycle stage, substances of concern, and end-of-life information, required for every product placed on the EU market regardless of where it is produced.
On July 21, Boundless is hosting a free webinar covering what ESPR requires and which sectors are affected first, what product-level life cycle data manufacturers need to produce, and how to prepare before enforcement begins.
Time: 11:00 AM ET
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Webinar on Digital Procurement Opportunities
You are warmly invited to join a webinar on digital procurement opportunities. This is a dedicated session to help industry suppliers tap into new Multilateral Development Bank (MDB)-financed opportunities in the energy sector.
Hear from the World Bank Group (WBG) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) about procurement opportunities available in select, high impact digital projects.
You can view the recording and presentations from a previous webinar focused on transport opportunities here. You can also view the recording and presentations from a previous webinar focused on energy opportunities here.
In this session, you will:·
- Discover upcoming digital procurement opportunities
- Hear directly from experts from the WBG and EBRD on the status of these projects and updates to procurement regulations to put more emphasis on quality and innovation
- Get your questions answered in a dedicated Q&A
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The Augmented Practitioner: Putting AI to Work for the Impact Economy
The Augmented Practitioner: Putting AI to Work for the Impact Economy
For most of the impact economy, the conversation about artificial intelligence has been dominated by anxiety — about bias, opacity, displacement, and the concentration of power in a handful of technology companies. Those concerns are real and worth taking seriously. But they are only half the story. The other half is about agency: what happens when entrepreneurs, investors, and changemakers stop treating AI as a threat to be managed and start treating it as a capability to be mastered. Sateesh Nori has spent his career on the side of agency. After two decades on the front lines of New York City Housing Court, standing between families and eviction, he became one of the most credible voices arguing that AI is not a luxury for the well-resourced but a force multiplier for those working at the margins — the difference, as he puts it, between matching the scale of our tools to the scale of the need.
In this Luminarias conversation, we move from diagnosis to practice. Sateesh will share how he actually uses these tools — not in the abstract, but concretely: how to prompt large language models to think alongside you rather than merely answer you; how to encode your own judgment, voice, and analytical frameworks into AI systems so they extend your expertise rather than dilute it; and how a single practitioner, properly augmented, can now do work that once required a team. For impact entrepreneurs designing new ventures, for investors weighing finance and diligence decisions, and for organizations stretched thin against rising demand and constrained resources, the practical question is no longer whether to engage AI, but how to engage it well.
This is a session about reclaiming initiative. Drawing on his book The Augmented Lawyer and his work building direct-to-people justice tools, Sateesh brings a rare combination — frontline service experience, hard-won ethical clarity, and genuine technical fluency — to the question that matters most for our community: how do we wield increasingly powerful tools in service of systemic change, equity, and human dignity, rather than waiting to see what these tools do to us? Join us for a pragmatic, optimistic, and unusually hands-on exploration of AI as an instrument of empowerment in the Impact Economy.
Featured Guest
Sateesh Nori is a legal innovator, author, and access-to-justice advocate who has spent more than twenty years on the front lines of civil legal services. For two decades he represented tenants across New York City as a housing-rights attorney and managing attorney at The Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC, work that earned him recognition including the Technology category of the 2022 American Legal Technology Awards. He served as a commissioner on New York City’s 2019 Charter Revision Commission and is a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Homelessness and Poverty.
Today, Sateesh serves as the first-ever Chief Legal Futurist at LawDroid, a justice-tech company building AI solutions for legal aid, courts, and government, and as a Senior Research Fellow in AI and Access to Justice at NYU School of Law’s Center on Civil Justice, where he also teaches. He is the author of The Augmented Lawyer: AI and the Future of Legal Practice (American Bar Association) and the memoir Sheltered: Twenty Years in Housing Court, writes the Substack newsletter The Augmented Lawyer, and delivered the TEDx talk How a Chatbot Can Save Someone From Homelessness. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and NYU School of Law, he is widely regarded as one of the field’s most pragmatic and hopeful voices on AI’s potential to expand justice and opportunity at scale.
Host
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The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough with Laurie Lane-Zucker
The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough: A Field Manual for the Regenerative Economy — A Deep Dive with Laurie Lane-Zucker
Something has shifted beneath the headlines. As of 2025, the regenerative economy manages $1.6 trillion in impact assets—growing roughly four times faster than the broader asset-management market—and the movement of Certified B Corporations has passed one million employees worldwide, with Danone becoming the largest company ever to achieve full B Corp certification. The question is no longer whether a civilizational alternative to extraction is possible. It is how fast it can scale, and whether the people building it have the architecture they need to do so with integrity. In this Deep Dive, Laurie Lane-Zucker—who coined the term “impact entrepreneur” in 2011 and now leads a global network of more than 70,000 practitioners across 200+ countries—introduces the IE community to his forthcoming book, publishing September 1st from Berrett-Koehler: the first comprehensive field manual for the regenerative economy.
This will not be a conventional book talk. Laurie will walk us through the operational architecture at the heart of the Breakthrough—organized across its five parts of Foundations, Possibility, Protection, Integration, and Reclamation—and the new frameworks it introduces: Defense as a Service™, the Prevention Dividend™, and the Five Pillars of Real Security. The conversation will examine why this is, by deliberate design, not an introduction: it is written for a movement that no longer needs to be told it exists, and for a generation of founders, capital allocators, faculty, and policy leaders who need something more than awareness—an integrated blueprint for how enterprise design, ownership, capital, markets, security, narrative, and culture fit together.
Join us a month before release for an exclusive, first look inside the book, an unguarded discussion of what the movement has become—and what it has yet to become—and an invitation to step into a present that is no longer a future we are waiting for.
About Our Deep Dives
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live presentations and Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the author(s) or subjects of a book or Magazine article and our members.Time: 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM ET
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