Â
We are excited to present the third event in our thought leadership series, exploring the potential for environmental and social justice through litigation finance and the role of capital markets. Please join us to network with industry peers and hear the LP and GP perspective on this innovative approach to impact.Â
Â
We look forward to seeing you then.
Â
Please reach out to events@capricornllc.com with any questions.
Robert Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Aristata Capital, a litigation finance fund dedicated to driving positive environmental and social change through litigation.
Prior to founding Aristata, Rob was the Director of Development for ClientEarth, Europe’s leading public interest law firm.
Rob has 15 years of experience developing social impact solutions for high net worth individuals, foundations, and family offices in the US and Europe. He previously served as Executive Director of CCS in New York, advising family offices and NGOs on impact strategy and fundraising.
Rob holds an MBA from London Business School and a BA from Northwestern University.
James A. Goldston is the executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which advances the rule of law and legal protection of rights worldwide through advocacy, litigation, research, and the promotion of legal capacity. A leading practitioner of international human rights and criminal law, Goldston has litigated several groundbreaking cases before the European Court of Human Rights and United Nations treaty bodies, including on issues of torture, counterterrorism, and racial discrimination.
Goldston previously served as coordinator of prosecutions and senior trial attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
He was also the legal director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre; director general for human rights of the Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and prosecutor in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he focused on organized crime.
Goldston graduated from Columbia College and Harvard Law School and has taught at Columbia Law School and Central European University.
Georgia Levenson Keohane has more than twenty years of leadership experience in the private and nonprofit sectors at the intersection of the capital markets, innovative philanthropy, responsible business and investing, and public policy. As President of the New York City Impact Partnership (NYCIP), she advises CEOs, boards, management teams, and institutional, corporate, and philanthropic investors on strategy, operations, ESG and impact investing, and inclusive growth. Previously, she served as President of the Navab Capital Partners (NCP) Foundation and head of the firm's Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practice, and before that Executive Director of the Pershing Square Foundation.
Keohane is also a Professor of Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School, where she hosts the Capital for Good podcast. She speaks and writes regularly on social and economic policy, philanthropy, stakeholder capitalism, and the role of business in society, and is the author of two award winning books, Capital and the Common Good: How Innovative Finance is Tackling the World's Most Urgent Problems (2016) and Social Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century: Innovation Across the Nonprofit, Private and Public Sectors (2013). Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Time, and the Harvard Business Review, among other publications.
Keohane is a senior fellow at New America and serves on several corporate and nonprofit boards. She holds a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MSc from London School of Economics, where she was a Fulbright Scholar.
One of the largest mission-aligned firms in the world, Capricorn Investment Group was born from a belief that sustainable investment practices can enhance risk-adjusted returns. Underlying this investment approach is a deep desire to demonstrate the huge investment potential that resides in breakthrough commercial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. With offices in New York City and Palo Alto, the firm has grown to manage more than $10 billion in multi-asset class portfolios for families, foundations and institutional investors.
Aristata Capital was founded in 2018 and is the first litigation fund dedicated to driving positive social and environmental change with an attractive financial return. Aristata has two key objectives: 1) Funding high quality litigation in order to achieve measurable social and environmental impact, and 2) Harnessing the power of private capital to drive systemic change at scale. Aristata invests in a diversified portfolio of litigation cases across a range of impact sectors – including environment, climate change, human rights, justice reform, access to justice, foreign aid and equality - where law can be used as a potent tool for social and environmental change.
The Open Society Justice Initiative pursues strategic litigation and other legal work that supports the mission and values of the Open Society Foundations. Open Society, founded by George Soros, is the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. The Foundations provide thousands of grants every year through a network of national and regional foundations and offices, funding a vast array of projects in over 120 countries.
