About the Speakers:
Priya Parrish is Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Impact Engine, an venture capital and private equity firm investing in companies driving impact in economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and health equity. Priya is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Strategy and Impact Investor in Residence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and serves as an adviser to investment firms and asset owners developing and managing impact investment strategies. Prior to joining Impact Engine, she served as Chief Investment Officer at Schwartz Capital Group, a single-family office investing across global markets. Previously, Parrish was Strategy Head at Aurora Investment Management, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, and managed development of investment products that incorporated environmental, social and governance factors (ESG) at Northern Trust Asset Management and KLD Research & Analytics. Parrish holds a B.S. in Business Management from Babson College and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Debbie Kobak is a managing director at Arabella. She works to develop a network of individual, institutional, and corporate clients throughout the Midwest region who drive impact on the causes important to them by using the firm’s full platform of advisory and fiscal sponsorship services.
Debbie has extensive issue expertise in community and economic development, education, and impact investing. She was a banker for 16 years, providing investment, treasury management, and credit products to charitable foundations and institutional asset owners that delivered financial and social returns. She also led the corporate foundation of a Chicago-based bank, where she was the principal architect of the bank’s signature community investment that helped more than 2,000 young people get on a path to living wage employment by attending college and/or industry-recognized work certification programs.
In her early career, Debbie worked in the nonprofit sector for various public policy research and advocacy organizations in Washington, DC and Chicago focused on women’s reproductive rights, free and fair multi-party elections in the developing world, and the environment.
Debbie is an enthusiastic community volunteer, with a particular passion for refugee and immigrant rights organizations. She is currently on the board of GirlForward, an organization that provides comprehensive supports to refugee teen girls, and is the past board treasurer of RefugeeOne, the Midwest’s largest resettlement agency. She also serves on the advisory boards of several education-related nonprofit organizations in Chicago. Debbie has a BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in political science (with honors) and French, and an MA in international development from the American University in Washington, DC.
