Sarah Gelfand Joins BlueMark As Managing Director

As a founding Director of the Global Impact Investing Network, Gelfand is a leading expert on impact measurement and management standards

News provided by

BlueMark

Jan 19, 2021, 09:15 ET

NEW YORK, Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BlueMark, a leading provider of impact verification services for investors and companies, today announced the hiring of Sarah Gelfand as Managing Director. Gelfand will report to BlueMark CEO Christina Leijonhufvud and will co-lead BlueMark's business strategy and team, business and product development efforts, and various market-building and standard-setting initiatives.

"Sarah is one of the impact investing market's early pioneers, highly respected for her integrity and expertise in impact management and measurement, not to mention, equally well-liked and admired by her colleagues," said Leijonhufvud. "Her experience building innovative platforms and managing multi-disciplinary teams makes her a perfect fit for BlueMark as we take this next step to bring impact verification to the global impact investing market."

Gelfand was a founding Director at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), where she led development of the industry's leading system for measuring and managing impact "IRIS" (now IRIS+), growing the user base from five pilot investors to several thousand organizations across the industry.

More recently, as the Vice President of Social Impact Programs at Fidelity Charitable, Gelfand launched several new impact investing programs and led a grant-making initiative for the Board of Trustees. She also developed and ran a specialty business unit focused on providing philanthropic consulting services to clients.

"Over the past 12 years working in different parts of the impact investing market, I have consistently seen first-hand the need for independent verification to ensure the industry grows with integrity and credibility," said Gelfand. "I share BlueMark's vision of bringing increased transparency and accountability to the impact investing market and am eager to get to work in building the business and exploring new service areas."

Before joining Fidelity Charitable, Gelfand was a Deputy Director at Duke University where she oversaw strategy and operations for an accelerator program that produced research and provided consulting services to a network of 50 nonprofit and for-profit healthcare-focused social enterprises.

Tideline, a specialist consultant for the impact investing industry, launched a separate independent impact verification business, BlueMark, in January 2020. BlueMark offers a range of impact verification services, helping evaluate the alignment of clients' impact mandates, impact management practices, and impact reporting with industry standards like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Impact Management Project (IMP), IRIS+, Operating Principles for Impact Management (OPIM), UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and others.

About BlueMark
BlueMark provides independent impact verification services for investors and companies. With a mission to strengthen trust in impact investing, BlueMark's services are designed to meet the need for reliable, third-party assurance of impact claims and practices. Learn more at www.BlueMarkTideline.com.

About Tideline
Tideline is a specialist consultant for the impact investing industry providing expert, tailored and actionable advice to clients developing impact investment strategies, products and solutions. Learn more at www.Tideline.com.

Media Contact
17 Communications
Dmitriy Ioselevich
[email protected]

SOURCE BlueMark