The SVT Team

Executive Management

Sara Olsen is the founder of Social Venture Technology Group, and has led the firm to become a world leader specializing in the development of frameworks for measuring the value of intangibles, and communicating this value in terms practical for entrepreneurs, managers and investors. Most recently Sara worked with the Environmental Investment Advisor to CalPERS, Environmental Capital Group, to design and pilot the Environmental Performance Reporting System used in its $1Bn environmental technology private equity portfolio; and has teamed with HIP Investor to develop and launch the Human Impact + Profit (HIP) Framework for investors, publicly-listed corporations and other institutions.

Sara views strategic impact analysis to be an emerging management discipline and works to promote its awareness and spread its adoption. She co-wrote Social Return on Investment: a Guide to SROI Analysis (Lenthe Publishers, 2006), “Social Return on Investment: A Standard” (California Management Review, May 2004), and “The Double Bottom Line Methods Catalog” (The Rockefeller Foundation, February 2004).

Sara is a co-founding steering committee member of Xigi.net (pronounced “ziggy”), a community-driven network and map of the emerging capital market that funds good, and is an advisor to Calvert Foundation’s Social Enterprise Fund, ChangingthePresent.org, Mobile Media and Aflatoun: Child Savings International. In 1999, Sara co-founded the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) and has conducted workshops on SROI analysis for the GSVC each year since.

Sara holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, an MASW from the University of Chicago and a BA from Dartmouth College. She lives and works in San Francisco.

Brett Galimidi (partner) brings to SVT Group an expertise in using information technology and market-based approaches for solving environmental and social problems.

In his prior work, he founded a consultative group within an internet marketing firm that designed emerging media and new technology strategies. While leading this group's work with a broad range of clients from start-ups to Fortune 500 firms, he brought together numerous (and often disparate) groups of experts and stakeholders and devised innovative metrics for measuring technology projects that had little or no precedent.

Brett combines his corporate experience with three years in the non-profit sector, where he focused on solving issues of environmental sustainability. At the Resource Renewal Institute in San Francisco, Brett worked on market-based solutions to environmental resource management and protection. More recently at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy he worked on a variety of projects with regard to business and the environment, primarily leading research efforts for a book on environmental protection in the information age.

Brett has conducted research in South Africa and in the US on the use of information and communication technology to address the complex relationships between social, political, economic and environmental issues. He holds a Master's Degree in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a BS in Anthropology from UCLA.

He currently lives in San Francisco with his wife, Caitlin, and spends his free time enjoying the outdoors, live music and anything that makes him laugh.

Strategic Partners and Collaborators

HIP Investor helps companies, investors, and entrepreneurs realize both Human Impact + Profit simultaneously. HIP's founder, R. Paul Herman, is a prior McKinsey strategist, entrepreneur, grantmaker and fundraiser. SVT Group and HIP Investor partnered on the analysis of HIP Practices and HIP Revenues for Fast Company magazine. More can be found at www.HIPinvestor.com.

Xigi.net is mapping the fast-growing but still emerging capital market that includes fair trade, microfinance, social enterprise, independent media and clean technology. Xigi.net is the creative commons where people who want to be involved or learn more about investing for good come together to house their collective market intelligence and thinking.

Javier Flores has worked with SVT since 2005, when he assisted Ciudad Saludable to develop its first SROI analysis. Now Javier is responsible for building and managing Ciudad Saludable's relations with donors and partners; supporting fundraising and grants management; providing leadership to fundraising initiatives, including special events, online giving, and building individual relationships in the United States. In his spare time he has become a champion on the SROI methodology in Latin America, and his efforts with Ciudad Saludable have garnered worldwide recognition.

Javier’s experience comes from the private and non-profit sector. Before joining Ciudad Saludable, he was a research financial analyst for the private equity/venture capital group at Thomson Venture Economics. He developed and managed relations with investors in Brazil and Latin America. Javier also worked as a risk/loan analyst for ACCION, a microfinance non-profit organization. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Javier lives with his fiance in New Jersey, and originally hails from Peru.

Associates, volunteers and other helpful friends

Nicole Tidwell previously worked at the Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC) in Washington, DC as a graduate fellow and project associate where she tracked news coverage, wrote news summaries and disseminated a daily journal of news stories related to child welfare, foster care and low-wage worker issues. Prior to that, she interned on Capitol Hill with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s office. Nicole received her MA in international relations from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and her BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Kimber Lockhart is entering her senior year at Stanford University, majoring in Computer Science. She is active in the Business Association for Stanford Engineering Students, the Future Social Innovators Network, and as a section leader for introductory computer science. She also serves as a resident academic advisor for a dorm of first year students. Kimber spent last summer living in Budapest, Hungary working for an organization encouraging nonprofit enterprise in Central and Eastern Europe.

Kerry McLorg

Jim Whitestone

Fran Seegull

Daniel Simons

Caitlin Galimidi

Vickie Vertiz

Beth French

Wendy Rogell

Ellen Beldner

Dean Engle