Jacqueline Novogratz, wearing yellow, the founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, on a visit to India. The firm has helped 40 companies in four countries, Pakistan, India, Kenya and Tanzania, and is now looking to Egypt. Susan Meiselas / Magnum PhotosJacqueline Novogratz, the American founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, has involved herself in another form of banking.

A former Chase executive and more recently founder and director ot the Philanthropy Workshop and the Next Generation Leadership Program at the Rockefeller Foundation,  Novogratz takes an entrepreneurial, as well as a socially aware, approach to fighting global poverty.

“I want to change the way the world sees poor people and the way we confront the issue of poverty,” Novogratz says on a recent visit to the UAE. “I wanted to create something that honoured people’s ability to work and their creativity. via.” The National

The Acumen Fund has invested US$40 million (Dh147 million) in 40 companies in four countries: Pakistan, India, Kenya and Tanzania. She was recently in Dubai, expressing an interest to invest in Egypt.

Novogratz brings a pragmatic approach to social investment that reflects a new tone, one looking at the probability for long-term results in the project.