Essma Bengabsia

Essma Bengabsia is an impact investor by profession and social justice advocate by passion. Through her work in impact investments, she focuses on how to leverage the power of capital markets to advance inclusion, equity, and well-being for society’s most vulnerable, including people of color, people with low incomes, and people with marginalized identities.

Essma Bengabsia is Founder and Managing Partner of Bengabsia Consulting. Through her practice, Ms. Bengabsia works with endowments, foundations, and institutional investors to help them advance positive environmental and social impact through their portfolios. Ms. Bengabsia advises investment and consulting firms on developing, launching, and scaling impact investment services to their clients. Ms. Bengabsia also works with clients to craft impact investment, portfolio construction, and impact measurement strategies more broadly.

Ms. Bengabsia serves as a portfolio manager at a private foundation, where she helps to align the Foundation’s $150 million portfolio of impact investments with its mission of creating brighter futures for children and families. Prior to that, Ms. Bengabsia was an investment specialist at Glenmede Trust, where she worked with over 300 clients including endowments, foundations, and high net worth individuals to invest their assets in impact opportunities across diversity and inclusion, environmental sustainability, and other thematic areas.

Ms. Bengabsia serves as a board member and investment committee member at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, a $60 million New York-based family foundation whose endowment is 100% mission-aligned to advance gender, racial, environmental, and economic justice. Ms. Bengabsia also serves on the leadership team of the Racial Justice Investing Coalition, a group of over 300 investment professionals and firms who regularly convene to build partnerships, resource-sharing, and educational opportunities to advance racial justice through their investments. Ms. Bengabsia completed the NAIC Up Fellowship Program, a program to advance women of color professionals in the investment sphere.

Ms. Bengabsia received her Bachelor of Science degree from New York University Stern School of Business where she specialized in finance. She received her Master of Public Administration from New York University Wagner School of Public Service where she specialized in social impact, innovation, and investment.

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