Interviews Archives - IIX - Impact Investment Exchange

A Defiant Optimist Transforming Global Finance (with Durreen Shahnaz) – Positive Leadership

May 19, 2025 Interviews

On the Positive Leadership Podcast, Jean-Philippe Courtois interviews Prof. Durreen Shahnaz, a pioneering social entrepreneur, impact investor, and relentless advocate for women’s empowerment.

In this powerful conversation, Durreen shares:
How her upbringing shaped her belief in using finance for good
What it means to be a defiant optimist in a system built for exclusion
The bold vision behind IIX and the practical ways it’s transforming lives across the Global South
How young leaders can challenge the status quo and lead with purpose

Durreen’s work has shifted the paradigm of global finance—proving that profit and purpose can coexist, and that real change comes from the margins.

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Building A Stock Market for Social Entrepreneurs | Durreen Shahnaz, Impact Investment Exchange – Richard Brubaker

February 17, 2025 Interviews

In this episode, I speak with Durreen Shahnaz, Founder of Impact Investment Exchange and Shujong, about the work she has done to launch the world’s first (and only) socially oriented stock market. Born out of the recognition that the finance industry, which is largely run by Western/ white male executives, was not working for a large portion of the world, she has spent the last 10+ years developing a solution. A solution that has not come easy, was largely built out of her own vision for what the system should look like, but for her there was no other choice or way. She is a true entrepreneur.

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Durreen Shahnaz: Climate change is a feminist issue – The Peak

June 23, 2022 Interviews

In her own words, the founder of Impact Investment Exchange tells us why climate change and feminism come hand in hand.

I stared at the painting. I squinted my eyes, and tilted my head, but could not figure out why the painting did not look right. I like to think of myself as a painter, but when I try to take flavours from my favorite feminist painter, Frida, I struggle.

Frida could effortlessly blend with oil, her political views, agony, and love as spirited attempts to express her own reality. I chewed on the end of my paintbrush, wondering how she did so time and again. The answer stared back at me from in between the interplay of green and blue textures.

Robert Kraybill on ‘Scaling up blended finance in developing countries, LDCs and SIDS: Challenges and opportunities’

May 1, 2022 Interviews

22 March 2022, Mr. Robert Kraybill, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director, Portfolio Management at Impact Investment Exchange, attended as a speaker at an event jointly hosted by OECD Private Finance for Sustainable Development Community of Practice (CoP – PF4SD) and the Tri Hita Karana Blended Finance Platform.

Mr. Kraybill provided insights into the place of impact measurement, monitoring and transparency in blended finance transactions, in particular on the opportunities and challenges they pose to developing country partners.

Building Pathways Between Wall Street and the Global South — A Conversation with IIX

March 10, 2022 Interviews

Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) is an impact investment firm with the mission of transforming financial systems so that women, the environment, and underserved communities are given value and a voice in the global market. “We build pathways to connect the Wall Streets of the world to underserved communities by measuring and unlocking investment capital,” says IIX Founder and CEO, Durreen Shahnaz. Based in Singapore, IIX’s work spans 53 countries and has unlocked $233 million of private sector capital to support more than 150 enterprises since the firm’s founding. READ MORE

5 Questions with Durreen Shahnaz – Morgan Stanley Alumni

June 7, 2021 Interviews

Former Morgan Stanley analyst Durreen Shahnaz is the founder and CEO of Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). As the first Bangladeshi woman investment banker on Wall Street, Shahnaz has focused her career on giving value to those who are typically invisible to financial markets. Founded in 2009, IIX is a global organization that is, according to their website¹, “dedicated to building a more inclusive world by changing financial systems and innovating solutions for women empowerment, climate action, and community resilience.” In 2017, Shahnaz was the recipient of the Oslo Business for Peace Award². In addition to her role as a social entrepreneur, Shahnaz was a professor at the National University of Singapore and also a media executive at Hearst Magazines. READ MORE

Impact investor Durreen Shahnaz: ‘we must go beyond social bonds’ – Global Capital

July 8, 2020 Interviews

Durreen Shahnaz is founder and chief executive of Impact Investment Exchange(IIX), which says it created the world’s first social stock exchange. She tells Global Capital about how we can rebuild a better economy, with the help of capital markets, after coronavirus. READ MORE

Robert Kraybill ’89 Uses High Finance to Empower Women – PRINCETON Alumni Weekly

February 12, 2020 Interviews

In 2009, with the help of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Kraybill and Shahnaz created Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). They hoped to create an exchange dedicated to listing the stocks and bonds of, in Kraybill’s words, “mission-driven social enterprises” — businesses that are similarly dedicated to doing some kind of good as opposed to simply making money. It’s an idea that Kraybill admits is still “ahead of its time.” READ MORE

There Are No Foreign Lands: Interview with Jeff Sheehan

September 5, 2019 Interviews

We sat down with Jeffrey A. Sheehan for an interview about his new book There Are No Foreign Lands. Sheehan’s book takes the reader on a global tour to 21 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia to introduce the women and men he believes are the harbingers of a potential “Global Spring,” in which all members of the human race can find common ground to settle their differences and work together productively and peacefully.

Based on the acquaintances he made during a 30-year career as Associate Dean for International Relations at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Sheehan presents profiles of 21 people from 21 countries. Our very own CEO and Founder, Durreen Shahnaz, is one of these 21 people that the book features, with a dedicated chapter talking about the work IIX has done and achieved through the decade of impact investing since it was first coined in 2008.

Impact Investment Exchange: Taking Wall Street to the backstreet – Wealth & Society

January 31, 2019 Interviews

Managing Director Robert Kraybill discusses how IIX uses financial markets to directly and proactively benefit society.

Employing innovative financial instruments and a range of platforms to best ensure that capital invested has a social and environmental impact as well as a financial return is fundamental to Investment Impact Exchange’s (IIX) business model.

IIX’s Managing Director, Robert Kraybill, who has twenty years of finance and investment banking experience said that: “the 2008 Financial Crisis was a wakeup call to ask myself how can we use the tools of the traditional finance markets in a way that will directly and proactively benefit society.” Read more.

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