At tonight’s StartOut Awards in San Francisco, Wharton alumna Erika Karp, W’85, will receive the 2016 Wells Fargo Leadership Award, which recognizes an entrepreneur whose career and accomplishments have had a profound effect on the LGBT entrepreneurial ecosystem.
StartOut, the leading national nonprofit dedicated to empowering lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender entrepreneurs and business leaders, hosts the annual awards to recognize and honor business leaders for outstanding representation of the community.
Erika is the Founder and CEO of Cornerstone Capital Group, a New York-based financial services firm leading in sustainable investing and finance.
Prior to founding Cornerstone, Karp was Managing Director and Head of Global Sector Research at UBS Investment Bank. Erika is an advisor to the UN Global Compact’s LEAD Board Development Program, a founding Board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Financing and Capital. Karp has been named among the nation’s “Top 50 Women in Wealth” by AdvisorOne, the “GOOD 100” and the “Purpose Economy 100” and one of 50 “Conscious Capitalists” who are Transforming Wall Street.”
In a profile for Wharton Magazine in 2014, she described her mission at Cornerstone as “[bringing] the principles of sustainable finance into the mainstream of the capital markets.”
“By starting from scratch with a single-minded focus on sustainable finance and capitalism, I am able to move much more quickly to pursue the mission…We’re at an inflection point where we can have a better and more sustainable form of capitalism if we act consciously, pragmatically and systematically,” she continues. “As a social impact investor, you can indeed demand both competitive returns and positive societal impact.”
Read more about Erika in Wharton Magazine.