Kevin Jones: Co-founder & Convener, SOCAP Markets

The convener of SOCAP, Kevin Jones creates information businesses inside emerging markets. He believes that markets emerge in conversation, as people try to explain and understand value. But this market is not like others he’s been in, and that’s what makes it more interesting and more important. The social capital market adds the dimension of impact, what your money actually does in the world before it comes back to you as a gain or loss, to the traditional risk and reward investment equation. Looking at impact is what has enabled SOCAP to be at the vital intersection of money and meaning, Kevin said.

Besides SOCAP, Kevin is founder of Good Capital (goodcap.net), a venture capital firm that invests in social enterprises. He is also part of the team launching the first U.S. node of the Hub (hubsf.net), a network of more than a dozen work spaces for social entrepreneurs in cities across the world from Cairo to London.

His previous six businesses all achieved market dominance before he left or sold them. As a journalist, he has been a columnist for Forbes and Business 2.0 magazines. Early in his career as a journalist his reporting sent a sheriff to prison on 53 counts of fraud. He has been on the boards of Social Enterprise Alliance, the association of non profit social enterprises, and Social Venture Partners International, a network of engaged philanthropy circles. Kevin also led a malaria project in Zwaziland and Mozambique, working with Jeff Sachs of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Finally, during his 20 year business career in Mississippi he was heavily involved in public school advocacy. He twitters @kevindoylejones.

Frank van Beuningen: Convener, SOCAP/Europe

Frank is delighted to co-found and convene SOCAP/Europe with Kevin and company,in his hometown of Amsterdam. Frank is founder and director of PYWMYMIC, the “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth is Company (and Community), a network of angel and institutional investors in the Benelux who actively invest in what Frank calls the ‘solutions’ sector. Frank loves working with new businesses, new movements, the next new. That’s the personality that made him a pioneer in the impact investing field in Europe; his first PYMWYMIC fund, formed in 1995, provided seed funding for the first wave of socially responsible businesses coming to Benelux, including seed funding then unheard of industries like solar energy, lithium batteries, recyclable plastic, and more. Previous to PYMWYMIC, Frank bought a small Holland sailmaking company, saw that windsurfing would be new, and scaled GAASTRA Sails (and Fashion) into an international brand. Frank is a long-term member of Investor’s Circle, was a founding member of SVNEurope and SVNAsia, created the Money Meets Ideas seed funding platform; serves on the board of NESsT, as well as several international companies and family foundations, and continues to Put His Money Where His Mouth Is, as advisor to and shareholder in multiple social enterprises.

Margaret McGovern: Convener, SOCAP/Europe

Margaret McGovern is co-producing SOCAP/Europe with RosaLee Harden, and is a partner in PYMWYMIC in Amsterdam. Margaret joined PYMWYMIC in 2007, with a special interest in the pymwymic community, international outreach, mobilizing women’s investments, and healthy food systems. She is a serial entrepreneur, has helped a small family food enterprise scale to a multimillion dollar events company, and spent 15 years as founder/CEO of three media companies producing (intelligent) film and television. Besides being deeply practical and pragmatic, she has a bent for philosophy and believes that the social capital market is consciousness evolving. Margaret is a co-founder of SOCAP/Europe, is a founding member of Slow Money (for Slow Food), and is co-chair in North America for social innovation platform The Hub.

Rosa Lee Harden: Producer and Co-Founder, SOCAP Markets

Co-Producer with Heidi Kleinmaus of SOCAP, Rosa Lee was previously COO of a highly profitable $18 million events company she sold at the peak of the dot com era.

As one of the original founders of the SOCAP conference, Rosa Lee was the architect of SOCAP08‘s wildly successful open space third day last year. She is a successful serial entrepreneur and for 25 years was an owner and publisher of newspapers, magazines and trade journals, accomplishing turnarounds and launching successful startups that became the top publications in their markets.

Two large and thriving non profits, both with significant earned income revenue, altered their standard practices to invite Rosa Lee to remain as president of their boards beyond the standard two year term. She led one of those non profits, the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Jackson, MS, to become the largest per capita in the U.S., building more than 300 houses and transforming entire neighborhoods. She was also involved in the creation of a revolving no interest loan fund for Habitat homes using local banks CRA monies. That method of funding was adopted by many affiliates across the country. The Jackson affiliate was also one of the first in the nation to begin turning excess donated doors and windows into the basis of a thriving line of business.

A community builder in all of her activities, Rosa Lee is also an Episcopal priest who leads a thriving and welcoming congregation in San Francisco. During her eight years at Holy Innocents it has doubled its membership and budget, most significantly expanding from three children under 10 when she arrived, to more than 40 today.

Tim Freundlich: Senior Advisor, SOCAP

Tim is an innovator in new financial instruments in the social enterprise sector. Over the last thirteen years, he has served in a number of capacities at Calvert Social Investment Foundation, including his current role as Special Advisor. While there, Tim conceived of and launched the Giving Fund the $40 million impact investment-based donor advised fund which has been spun out to a new organization, Giving Assets, for which he serves as the Executive Director. He was also instrumental in building the $225 million Calvert Community Investment Note sourced from 12,000 investors large and small (with more than $750 million invested into 300+ nonprofits and for profits globally), and helped launch Community Investment Partners, an analysis and asset administration group for community development and social enterprise investment with $300 million under administration. He co-founded and serves as Managing Partner for Good Capital, which in addition to its flagship Social Enterprise Expansion Fund LP, has two operating spin outs, the 1,000 person annual SOCAP Conference and Hub Bay Area, a co-working, meeting and community space for 700 social innovators. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Hub North America that links to a global network of 25 Hubs across five continents with 6,000+ members. He received a BA from Wesleyan University, an MBA from the University of San Francisco, and lives in San Francisco with his wife Julie and sons Milo and Gus.

Amy Benziger: Producer - Content, SOCAP Markets

Amy Benziger is the Producer for SOCAP focusing on content development and conference framework. She is responsible for researching the social enterprise landscape, tracking trends and identifying thought-leaders to present at the annual event. The SOCAP conference series is dedicated to forming partnerships, producing events and incubating ideas around the creation of a social capital marketplace. Amy has been with the organization since the inception of the event in 2008 and has served as a strategic advisor in the development and roll-out of the Hub, a diverse local and global community dedicated to building solutions for social, economic and environmental sustainability. Prior to coming onboard with SOCAP, Amy was the youngest sales specialist for Diageo North America, managing San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. Amy is a graduate of Dartmouth College with a B.A. in History with an emphasis on social activism. A lifelong traveler, she has lived and worked in Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Thailand.

Jon Axtell: Producer - Operations, SOCAP Markets

Jon Axtell works as Operations Lead with SOCAP and assists in coordinating sponsor relations, partnership, online marketing, and volunteer efforts.

Previous to joining SOCAP, Jon completed his MBA in Business Development for Social Enterprises at the Monterey Institute of International Studies while starting up a social enterprise project in Zambia, Africa. Jon speaks Mandarin Chinese and has assisted numerous social enterprise start-ups.

Gary Bolles: Co-Founder and Advisor, SOCAP Markets

Gary A. Bolles is CEO of Xigi Inc. (ZIG-ee), which produces Web-based tools designed to help groups understand and solve complex problems through social networking and insight management. Xigi’s “insight engine” powers sites like IdeasProject.com, which showcases the links between ideas about the future of connected communications.

Bolles is also a co-founder of Social Capital Media (formerly Xigi Media), which produced the inaugural Social Capital Markets 2008 conference. Current events clients include the Interactive Advertising Bureau, London Business School, and UNGAID, a technology initiative of the United Nations. Bolles is also the consulting producer of Zeitgeist, the Google Partner Forum.

Bolles’ background is in enterprise software, strategy consulting and integrated media. He is a former executive in a variety of technology startups, including serving as COO for Evolve Software and VP Marketing for Network Products Corp. Bolles has consulted on innovation strategies with organizations such as Nokia, London Business School, Silicon Valley Bank, and Intel. Through CollectiveIntelligence.net, he and partners Kevin Jones and Mark Beam performed consulting work focused on mapping and defining complex social and global problems. Bolles has also advised organizations such as the Dalai Lama Foundation and Good Capital, a venture fund for socially focused, expansion-stage, for-profit businesses.

Previously, Bolles was the editorial director of publications such as Interactive Week, Yahoo! Internet Life, and Network Computing, as well as the on-screen host of TechTV’s “Working the Web.”