Kostis Tselenis
Kostis is regarded as one of the few pioneer investment experts that helped shape sustainability and impact investing in Europe; in the past two decades he has been managing global diversified impact portfolios with direct investments and funds aiming to build a resilient circular economy.
He has a long track record in Investment Banking, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Project Finance, Fund Management and Portfolio Management for UHNWI and institutional investors, such as Bregal Energy (prev. Good Energies) of the COFRA Holding, a leading global private sustainability investor, Alternative Bank Schweiz, one of the first sustainable banks in Switzerland, and Quadia, a pioneer investment manager specializing in social and environmental finance. Kostis has directly managed and co-managed assets of more than EUR 500m.
He has been invited as a speaker and panellist in numerous international events and conferences, published articles in electronic and print media and acted as co-author in industry books and publications. He is co- organizer of the 1st and the 2nd international investor energy access conference (Zurich / London), and the 1st Hellenic Impact Investing Conference (Athens, Greece) and is Chief Editor for the sustainability and impact investing specials of the Market Magazine, a distinguished Swiss investor magazine. He is a lecturer for the Finance MBA program of the EPFL’s Swiss Finance Institute, and has held also other guest lectures for the Impact MBA Program of the University of St. Gallen, the Sustainable Finance MBA Program of the University of Geneva, The Graduate Institute Geneva, and the Business Week of the American College of Greece.
He has held various board positions in high-growth companies, mainly providing his expertise in strategy, business development, impact readiness and financing. He is a member of, among others, the investor juries of Climate Kic and TechTour and a senior advisor to Ashoka, the largest global network of social entrepreneurs. He is also Chairman of the Board of Generation Forest Invest, a forest carbon company with over 25 years experience in biodiverse reforestation in the developing world.
In 2018, Kostis established the Hellenic Impact Investing Network, a platform aiming at creating awareness and mobilizing action around sustainability and impact investing in the global Greek community of investors, next generation family members, and entrepreneurs.
His professional ethics and values were shaped through his early involvement in the family business, DiCO PWS, a company active in the sustainable & ethical professional cosmetics segment in Greece and Cyprus. He got his Masters degree with magna cum laude in Economics & Finance at the University of Zurich, is Swiss and Greek, and lives in Zurich and Athens.