Susan Payne 2023 Speaker

COO

Sustainable Planet

Biography

“Susan has spent her career founding, building and managing businesses either focused on or located in global emerging markets, over the last decade primarily Africa. After having been trained as a lawyer and called to the Bar in Canada, Susan’s early work experience included senior management roles in securities trading over a decade with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. In 1997, Susan co-founded a hedge fund focused on emerging markets and, on its sale in 2011, focused on developing food production, processing and delivery across various countries in southern Africa. In 2016, Susan co-founded Holistic Agricultural Investments Group Ltd, a Mauritian–based venture capital firm specialising in sourcing and often operating sustainable agricultural start-ups and early stage investments. In 2022, she co-founded GLIDE Fund, a gender lens fund launching in Q1 2023 to support female-led SME’s across Africa.

Susan has been awarded a Shell UK Woman of the Future Award, was listed by Financial News as one of the, “Top 100 Most Influential Women in European Finance” and was short-listed for the CBI UK First Woman of Finance award. She has been a member of the World Bank Supervisory Committee that established Guidelines on Global Agricultural Practises and also on the UN FAO Advisory Council on Private Investment into Agriculture.

Susan has a BA Hons, MA, LLB (Law) and MBA diploma and has studied at Oxford University, England; McGill University, Canada; St Andrews University, Scotland and London School of Economics. She is a practising Executive Coach as well as being a distance runner on the Great Britain and England Masters Athletics teams, competing recently in the World Championships in Finland in July.”