Program speakers

John McKinnon

Dr John McKinnon began his career in the finance industry. After holding several positions in funds management, asset consulting and superannuation consulting, John co-founded the Australian office of Grantham Mayo van Otterloo LLC in 1995 where he was responsible for GMOA’s Australian equity investments, which grew to approximately AUD 6 billion. Post 1997, John was the senior partner of the business, which, when he left in 2005, had over $10b in total funds under management.

In 2005 John joined overseas aid and development charity TEAR Australia, where he managed first the NSW office and then TEAR’s Australian operations. During this time John completed his PhD in social enterprise and development, investigating the intersection of finance and poverty alleviation.

Since 2012 John, together with his wife Sue, has managed the McKinnon Family Foundation, a private ancillary fund that focuses on support for the environment, poverty alleviation and social enterprise development. Both John and Sue are keen to maximise use of their assets, which means investing the corpus as much as possible in line with their values and the mission of the foundation. Hence they have been at the forefront of impact investing.

In 2019, John co-founded Infrastructure Access Managers, an impact funds management business created to provide access for smaller investors to unlisted infrastructure. 

John sits on a number of boards including The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility and AAP and is chair of The Australia Institute.