Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a social investment fund that mobilizes the financial and human resources of South Africa’s lowest income communities of colour. Since 1994, Shared Interest has helped to create more than 180,000 new small and micro-enterprises, 1.9 million jobs, and 120,000 affordable homes – benefiting 2.3 million economically marginalized South Africans. The organization is now extending its work to other Southern African countries, including Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia.  Previously, she served as Director of South Africa and International Justice Programs for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. She has been honoured by the South-African-American Organization, received the North Star Fund’s Frederick Douglass Award, the South African Embassy’s Inaugural Friends of South Africa Siyabonga Award, the inaugural Ubuntu Award from Face2face Africa, and the SRI Service Award in 2015 by the Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing.

A board member of the Thembani International Guarantee Fund in South Africa, and the Center for Community Change in the U.S., Ms Katzin holds a master’s degree in Community Organization and Planning, and a doctorate in Human Services Education and Development.  She has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing, and is also the author of With These Hands, a volume of poetry inspired by the birth of South Africa’s democracy