Land Accelerator: Tracking your Impact and Creating a Successful Pitch Deck
Session 1: Tracking your Impact
6:30PM – 7:30PM
Why must impact-driven businesses track the change they are creating for their communities and beneficiaries? It’s easy to claim that a business is making an impact, but how does one measure this impact? Entrepreneurs often face difficulty in knowing where exactly an impact-driven business is heading.
In addition to simply creating an impact value chain, it is also important to align the business’ social impact goals to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Aligning a business’ impact goals to the SDGs — down to each goal’s targets and indicators — will help in determining and monitoring exactly the progress we are making towards achieving those goals on a global level.
During this session, each entrepreneur will have the chance to identify their main Environmental and Social Impact Variables, and make a plan to commit to collect data, report on and integrate into their pitches and communication materials the information of key impact variables and how they can track their impact footprints.
SPEAKERS
Amanda Gant, Manager, The Land Accelerator, Global Restoration Initiative, World Resources Institute
Amanda is an Accelerator Manager for the Global Restoration Initiative, where she works to improve and expand the program's growing Land Accelerator program. Previously, Amanda served as a Small Business Lending Officer at Washington Area Community Investment Fund (WACIF) and the Latino Economic Development Center where she coached hundreds of businesses on loan readiness and closed over fifty loans to small businesses. She also has many years’ experience organizing startup boot camps and virtual mentorship programs to support entrepreneurs in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Amanda holds a master’s degree in International Public Policy and a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service, both from Georgetown University.
Kavita Sharma, Manager, Food, Land and Water, WRI India
Kavita leads the work on Land Accelerator, South Asia at WRI India. Earlier she was associated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare in implementing the RKVY-RAFTAAR scheme. Her areas of expertise include entrepreneurship development, business mentoring and startup funding. She has experience in the corporate sector in developing agriculture marketing infrastructure, modern wholesale markets and value chains for perishables in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. She has worked as a technical consultant for six months with Rungis Market International, Paris, France, for developing India International Horticulture Market (IIHM) Project at Ganaur, district Sonepat, Haryana. Kavita is an agribusiness professional with management degree from NIAM Jaipur and a bachelor’s in Agriculture with a Vice-Chancellor’s Gold Medal from GBPUAT, Pantnagar. She has also received certification in “Introductory Sustainable Finance for Policy Makers” from the University of Oxford.
Session 2: How to Create a Successful Pitch Deck
7:30PM – 8:30PM
The speaker walks you step-by-step through the process of creating a pitch deck that will win. He also shares tips for presenting that deck that will catch the attention of anyone in the (virtual or literal) room, adding his experience as an investor, working with hundreds of other investors, and startups from around the globe.
SPEAKER
Luni Libes, CEO, Africa Eats (in his own words)
For the first twenty years of my career, I (co)founded a series venture-scale software companies, growing each from an idea to a company earning millions in revenue, collectively serving tens of millions of customers. I now use the knowledge gained from those twenty years to help new entrepreneurs. My goal is to have them increase their odds of success by not repeating the common mistakes that I and my peers once made.
