Program speakers

Sara Olsen

Founder – SVT Group

Sara Olsen is the founder of SVT Group, a pioneering impact management advisory firm and “best for the world” B corp that supports clients to grow and tap social and environmental value. In the service of redefining profit so that it takes account of people and the planet’s well-being, SVT’s mission is to make impact management standard practice. The firm’s work has been used to gain insight into and/or manage the impact of some $10 billion in assets, and Sara has personally trained some 7,000 individuals in impact measurement and management skills. A champion of the emerging impact management profession, she serves as board member and methodology co-chair of Social Value International, the international standards body and network for professionals who are “changing the way society accounts for value”; a founding board member of SVI’s US chapter; and SVI’s liaison to the Impact Management Platform, which works to harmonize leading ESG and impact disclosure and management standards. In 1999 Sara also co-founded the Global Social Venture Competition which for 20 years engaged thousands in forming startups designed to quantifiably address social problems.

Sara holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, an MASW from the University of Chicago, and BA with thesis honors from Dartmouth College. Outside of formal education she has lived and worked in the Mississippi Delta and in formerly redlined communities in Chicago for six years, has shared a neurodiverse cross-cultural relationship for over twenty years, and participated in ten “burns.” Sara lives with (and/or near) her daughter, puppy, and fellow parent in Silicon Valley.