Catalyzing a new era in philanthropy
J.P. Morgan alumna Rafia Qureshi is forging powerful connections between entrepreneurs and investors, to tackle global challenges.
“Philanthropy must be bolder,” says Rafia Qureshi, to truly help address some of today’s most pressing global challenges—climate change, healthcare inequities and rising food insecurity.
As a founding member of the women-led finance and philanthropy strategy firm LEBEC, she’s helping philanthropy to be more “catalytic,” moving beyond filling funding gaps to develop new solutions and attract forms of capital outside philanthropy to critical sectors.
Her method offers an alternative to more traditional ways of giving: Donors and foundations supporting underserved communities have long focused on giving grants to nonprofits—and often with strings attached. Grantees face restrictions on how they use funds, while short funding cycles limit long-term planning.
“No one pot of capital is going to single-handedly address our massive global challenges,” says Qureshi, who has worked in the social impact space for the last two decades, most recently splitting her time between Munich and London. Business as usual is not cutting it anymore. The short-term thinking and risk aversion across the capital spectrum has to change. For philanthropy, it’s about thinking more innovatively around the capital being deployed and taking risk that commercial capital can’t.”
And for commercial capital, it’s about being more open to blended finance structures that can not only provide financial returns, but can also reshape markets and drive economic and social impact at scale, she adds.
“A combination of funding is essential for making sectors like clean energy and water access thrive and drive sustainable, systemic change at scale,” she says.
In the last four years, Qureshi and the LEBEC team have provided a growth strategy package and tools that have helped LEBEC’s community of clients mobilize some $50 million in capital to reach their goals.
From silos to synergy
Qureshi joined LEBEC in 2022 after reconnecting with high school friend Alix Lebec, who founded the company after over 20 years in philanthropy and impact investing.
Qureshi leads LEBEC’s growth efforts in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia. She advises asset owners, including Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs on growth strategies and sustainable business models, including diverse revenue streams and impact investing strategies.
Part of her work is also to stimulate dialogue among key stakeholders through sessions held during events like the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week in New York and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Annual Conference in Paris.
“Our work is about breaking down silos across the finance ecosystem,” says Qureshi. “When the right people are around the table together, honestly that’s where the magic happens.”
She hopes her efforts will help clients to disrupt key industries and fuel a sustainable global economy. Around $12 trillion in annual gross domestic product could be unlocked by 2030,* she says, by investing in sustainable and clean energy, water, food, transportation, and health systems, with a deep focus on resilient infrastructure, digital transformation, and locally-led solutions.
Led by purpose
Qureshi has long been drawn to social impact work—it’s her calling, she says. She was born in Pakistan before her father’s job as head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization took her family around the world. She grew up in China and Turkey, then moved to Boston for college and London to earn her master’s degree.
“I felt so lucky to have the opportunities I had, especially as a woman, as a girl,” she says. “Average Pakistani girls would not typically have the opportunities that I’ve had. I’ve always felt the privilege, and for me it’s been about how can I use my skills and expertise to give back in a way that makes the world a better place.”
Across the course of her career, Qureshi has worked in venture capital, in Deloitte’s emerging markets practice, and for family foundations. She spent six years at J.P. Morgan in London, joining on the heels of the Global Financial Crisis.
Powering progress
At the firm, Qureshi jointly oversaw $250 million annually in social investment through the Investment Bank’s Foundation in EMEA, designing multi-million-dollar strategic partnerships with organizations like USAID and the Rockefeller Foundation.
“What I valued the most about the firm was that recognition of the importance of the Foundation,” she says. “This allowed me and the team to truly think outside the box, and to innovate and to create solutions to problems.”
At J.P. Morgan, one of her proudest moments came when she and her team created a platform in South Africa called Catalyst for Growth, which provided much-needed transparency to help entrepreneurs and investors to successfully connect with business development support providers in the country. The project transformed into an independent entity, having attracted $1.5 million from USAID to scale its work, a first-of-its-kind for the JPMorganChase Foundation in EMEA.
The experience opened her eyes to the power of what—at the time—was the emerging field of impact investing. “It was exciting to be at J.P. Morgan when that industry was taking shape,” she says. Qureshi’s work was catalytic in other ways, too—she met her husband during a business trip to South Africa.
A new era of giving
Now, Qureshi is working on adding German to the long list of languages she speaks, including English, Urdu, and French, and basic Turkish and Mandarin from her time in Istanbul and Beijing. She’s embracing the outdoors in Munich, taking forest walks, and getting her kids to and from school on a bike.
It’s young people—the next generation—Qureshi says, that are sources of inspiration for her, both in her personal and her professional life.
“Much of philanthropy is still risk-averse and prefers to fund existing work as opposed to new solutions,” she says. “But the next generation of philanthropists doesn’t want to give the same way their elders did. They want to roll up their sleeves, learn the issues, come up with solutions, and provide patient capital.”
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*https://www.undp.org/sdg-accelerator/business-and-sdgs?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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