Board of Trustees
Sir Ronald Cohen
Sir Ronald Cohen is a pioneering philanthropist, venture capitalist, private equity investor, and social innovator. He is recognized as the father of impact investment and European venture capital, and is driving forward the global Impact Revolution.
He serves as Chairman of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative at Harvard Business School, and The Portland Trust. He is a co-founder and former Executive Chairman of Apax Partners Worldwide, a global private equity firm. He is also a co-founder of Social Finance UK, USA, and Israel, co-founder Chair of Bridges Fund Management and former co-founding Chair of Big Society Capital.
He chaired the Social Investment Task Force (2000-2010) and the Commission on Unclaimed Assets (2005-2007) and received the Rockefeller Innovation Award for innovation in social finance in 2012. He was a founder director and Chairman of the British Venture Capital Association and a founder director of the European Venture Capital Association.
Sir Ronald is a graduate of Oxford University, where he was President of the Oxford Union, and is an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School to which he was awarded a Henry Fellowship.
Sir Ronald was born in Egypt and left as a refugee at the age of 11, when his family came to the UK. He is now based in Tel Aviv, London and New York. He is the author of The Second Bounce of the Ball – Turning Risk into Opportunity (2007) as well as IMPACT: Reshaping capitalism to drive real change, which was published in 2020 by Penguin Random House and is now a Wall Street Journal Best Seller.
Nicola Cobbold
Nicola has spent the last 14 years in the not for profit sector, with a particular
focus on improving outcomes through sustainable economic development and social impact investment.
Since October 2015, Nicola has been exploring the role impact investment tools might play to help create solutions at scale to issues such as the global refugee and migration challenge and developing resilience in individuals and
communities. This follows nearly eight years as CEO of The Portland Trust, a British non profit ‘action tank’, working with a range of partners to help develop the Palestinian private sector and relieve poverty in Israel through entrepreneurship and social impact investment.
Previously Nicola worked as a lawyer, specialising in media and copyright.
Between 1995 and 1999 she lived in South Africa. In 1998 she headed up the legal team which bid for and won the first private South African free to air terrestrial television license, subsequently launching e.tv in a record breaking six months. Prior to specialising in media, Nicola worked as a corporate lawyer at Linklaters in London and Paris.
Interspersed with her legal career, Nicola worked in reconciliation and coexistence. In addition to compiling a report for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, she was a trustee (2001-2003) of the Jewish
Council for Racial Equality. She has been a governor of the Hebrew University
(2010-2013) and a Board Member of Seeds of Peace (2011 – 2014), the Eastern Mediterranean International School in Israel (2013-15) and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (2016-2019).
Nicola is a founding shareholder of Social Finance Israel and currently a Trustee of each of The Portland Trust, The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment and Mercy Corps Europe. She also chairs the Schools Wellbeing Project for the Jewish Leadership Council.
Nicola is a graduate of Cambridge University.
Sir Mick Davis
Sir Mick Davis is currently Chairman of MacSteel, a global trading and shipping company and an investor, director and advisor to other companies in the resource, technology and financial services sectors.
He has recently launched Vision Blue Resources Limited, an investment
company, that invests in companies, operations and projects that produce metals and minerals that support energy and other changes that support the reduction in CO2 emissions.
He stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of
Xstrata plc in 2013, one of the world’s largest global diversified mining and
metals companies that he grew in a 10-year period from a market value of US$500 million to US$60 billion, employing more than 90,000 people and operating in over 22 countries.
Previously, Mick was an Executive Director and
Chief Financial Officer of Billiton plc and Chairman of Billiton Coal.
Prior to joining Billiton, Mick was an Executive Director of South African state-owned Eskom, one of the world’s largest electricity utilities.
Mick has extensive capital markets and corporate
transactions experience.
During his career, he has raised almost US$40 billion from global capital markets and successfully completed over US$120 billion of corporate transactions. Some of his successes are the creation of the Ingwe Coal Corporation in South Africa; the listing of Billiton on the London Stock Exchange; the merger of BHP and Billiton into the largest diversified mining company in the world; the initial public offering of Xstrata plc on the London Stock Exchange in 2002 and Xstrata’s subsequent acquisitions of MIM Holdings and Falconbridge Ltd., amongst others and most recently the successful merger
of Xstrata and Glencore.
Mick was also the Treasurer of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom from February 2016 to July 2019 and its Chief Executive from July 2017 to July 2019
Mick is the immediate past President of the Council of Members and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Leadership Council of the United Kingdom, the umbrella body of the largest Jewish charities and institutions in the United Kingdom responsible for the strategic imperatives of UK Jewry, and is Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission of the United Kingdom.
Mick is also a member of the Brookings International Advisory Council and a trustee of the Institute of National Security Studies, Israel.
Sir Harry Solomon
Sir Harry Solomon is the co-Founder and Vice Chairman of the Portland Trust. He qualified as a Solicitor in 1960 and practised law until 1976 when he jointly founded and was Chairman and Chief Executive of Hillsdown Holdings plc, a major European food group.
Sir Harry has been a Director and Shareholder in many businesses, public and private and through his family charity is involved in a number of charitable initiatives. He is the Chairman of the Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre and Chairman of the Ashdown Fellowship.
He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and was awarded a Knighthood for his services to the food industry in 1991.
Jonny Harel-Cohen
Jonny Harel-Cohen grew up in London and moved to the United States to pursue a BA in Economics at Harvard University.
After graduating, Jonny worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and then as right hand to the CEO of Playbuzz. In 2017, he returned to Harvard Business School for an MBA and joined Dynamic Loop Capital in Tel Aviv in 2019. At DLC, he invests in early stage profit-with-purpose businesses. DLC portfolio companies include Papaya Global, Optibus, Visby Medical, Redefine Meat and Nym Health, among several others.