Week 4
This week we returned to the office after a week at the conference. While the conference was a great learning experience I was happy to get back to work. My assignments have been engaging and I am thoroughly enjoying the legal work that the GC office does.
Additionally, this week I had the opportunity to attend the Society for International Development Working Group event, “Impact Bonds: What is it good for? Absolutely, …something?!”. The event panelists included: Stefanie Ridenour from the World Bank Group, Marcie Cook from Population Services International (PSI), Dr. Emily Gustafsson-Wright from the Brookings Institution, Lily Han from Volta Capital, and Dia Martin from OPIC. Dr. Gustafsson-Wright published one of the leading articles on Impact Bonds, so it was very interesting to hear her open the panel.
Impact Bonds are currently a big conversation piece in international development. They can be broken down into social impact bonds (SIBs), where the outcome funder is the government and development impact bonds (DIBs), where third-party funders pay for outcomes. The bonds serve as an additional financial tool for both the private and public sectors, and you can read about USAID’s impact bond here.