Upaya Social Ventures is pleased to welcome Caroline Bressan and Kim Rachmeler to its board of directors.
“We are thrilled to welcome the expertise and social passion of these two accomplished women to our board.” Kate Cochran, Upaya CEO said. “Carolyn Bresson brings the exact perfect background to support Upaya as we grow and expand, and I know from experience that working with Kim Rachmeler on a board is always brings out the best in an organization and will inspire us to think big.”
Caroline Bressan is the Director of Social Investments at Open Road Alliance, which she joined in 2015. She leads Open Road’s Social Investment team where she manages both the grant and the Open Road Ventures loan portfolios, funding unexpected roadblocks for non-profits and social enterprises.
Prior to Open Road, Caroline was an Investment Principal at Dalberg Capital, the investment advisory wing of Dalberg. There she focused on D. Capital’s impact investment advisory offerings, building a pipeline of investment opportunities in Sub Saharan Africa, specifically in energy and agriculture. Caroline also worked on the design and structuring of innovative financing mechanisms, including impact bonds and social impact insurance.
Previously, Caroline was an Investment Officer at Calvert Impact Capital (formerly Calvert Foundation) where she managed its $20 million portfolio mainly focused on Latin America. At Calvert, she originated and managed a pipeline of lending and investment deals focused on the sustainable trade, social enterprise, and financial inclusion sectors. Caroline received her MBA from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and holds a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Michigan. She speaks English and Spanish. Caroline is also the chair of the board of the social enterprise, InspiraFarms.
Kim Rachmeler is currently retired but was most recently the Director of Engineering for The New Data Project where she led the team responsible for VoteWithMe, a relational organizing app to get out the progressive vote. When Kim started her career, she worked as a software developer for some large Silicon Valley firms including Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics. Kim also co-founded (and crashed) her own start-up company before landing a job as Group Program Manager for Amazon in mid-1997. During her ten years at Amazon, she was the CIO for International, VP Retail Systems, VP WorldWide Customer Service, and VP Global Supply Chain, and the VP of Worldwide Discovery and a member of the s-team.
After retiring in 2007, she became deeply involved with Vittana, a non-profit dedicated to getting disadvantaged students in the developing world access to the financing they need to earn the degrees that will land them the steady jobs they need to leave poverty behind for good, eventually becoming co-chair of their board. In mid-2015, Kim joined the US Digital Service to help the federal government get better at developing and delivering software services. After returning to Seattle she joined The New Data Project to help preserve democracy. Her two French bulldogs are fully supportive of all her efforts as long as those efforts involve treats and scratchies. Kim holds two degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.
