Paola Fonseca is the General Counsel of VIVA Idea. She is also the Chair for Latin America of GAIL (Global Alliance for Impact Lawyers). With 18 years of experience in international corporate law and governance (compliance), advising global companies, she has an extensive career as in-house counsel covering all of the Americas plus the European Union, for both regulated and non-regulated entities. Additionally, she has experience in M&A across Latin America. She holds an MBA and a Post-MBA from the INCAE Business School and is pursuing her PhD (focused on designing public policy to promote Impact Investment for SMEs) at the United Nations University for Peace. She is also an alumna of the Impact Finance Program at the University of Oxford. Furthermore, she teaches MBA courses on integrating the perspective of in-house counsel into decision-making processes, with a focus on ESG compliance.

Paola is also a member of the board of directors of the Vance Center’s Women in the Legal Profession (Costa Rica), President of the Central American Corporate Lawyers Association, and Secretary of the World Compliance Association (Costa Rica).

Roberto Randazzo is responsible for the ESG & Impact industry at Legance. With a background in commercial and corporate law, he has developed transversal expertise in sustainability dealing with ESG criteria, sustainable corporate governance, impact finance, and social innovation, assisting investment funds, benefit corporations, B-Corps, and companies interested in generating positive and measurable impacts. For more than twenty years Roberto has also been involved in non-profit organisations, strategic philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, dealing with projects both nationally and internationally, with focus on emerging markets, and in particular those in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has always combined professional and academic activities, and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Tiresia – Politecnico di Milano and a member of the Extended faculty of the Graduate School of Management at Politecnico di Milano. Roberto is Emeritus Director of Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers (GAIL), Officer of the Business Human Rights Committee of the International Bar Association and Advisor of OECD

María Laura Tinelli is the Director of Acrux Partners, an impact investment advisory firm focused on Latin America.  Since 2021 she advises  Pro Mujer International in the development of Strategic Business opportunities, having led the successful launch of the first 2 Gender Bonds for the organisation in Latam  In 2022 and 2023 she advised the Argentine Government and developed the Sustainable Finance National Strategy for the country.  In 2016 she founded the Impact Investment National Advisory Board for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay and since 2019 she serves as Board Member for the Global Steering Group on Impact Investment .  In 2023 Maria Laura was named Forum Member of the 2XGlobal Initiative. María Laura was a Fellow of Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, UK, in 2021 and 2022 for her work on Outcome Payment Contracts in Latin America.  In 2020 /2021 she served as an advisor to the development of the SDG Impact initiative under UNDP and as Impact investment advisor for the UNPRI.

She has previously worked for the Principles for Responsible Investment as Head of Global Networks, and in several regional or global level positions at Christian Aid UK and MSF International.

She has an MSc in Development Studies from the University of London; a Degree in International Relations from Belgrano University in Argentina, and has completed graduate programs on: Private Equity at Said Business School, Oxford University, and  Finance for ESG Professionals at the University of Saint Andrews Scotland. She lectures on Impact Investment and Sustainable Finance at Universidad de San Andres and Universidad Di Tella and routinely speaks on on specialized executive level courses in Latin America.

Maria Peña is the Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Symbiotics. Her areas of expertise include microfinance, sustainability, blended finance, structuring of investment vehicles, private debt and syndicated loans, cross-border and asset management mandates.

She is fluent in English, French and Spanish and her experience includes:

– Organizational strategy, development of business set up and analysis based on foreign countries legislations;

– Debt international transactions on emerging and frontier markets;

– Securitization vehicles and alternative investment funds;

– Restructuring, workouts and insolvencies;

– Compliance, corporate, governance and employment law of the group entities;

– Swiss / EU / Emerging and Frontier Markets law.