Michelle Haigh Osorio

Michelle Haigh Osorio

Vice President, NY Green Bank

Yana: What was your inspiration for working in social impact investing?

Michelle: I always believed and observed that success requires many forms of support, creating a deep interdependency between people and subverting the purely merit-based narrative at the center of American culture. It is not possible to achieve success alone and always requires many contributing factors. As a result, I viewed poverty as a shared challenge and felt compelled to take action. After college, I volunteered in Honduras in a region facing extreme poverty. While I worked on health and education solutions, we sent people home to hunger and deprivation. It seemed clear that these problems would continue to recur without economic development and access to opportunity. When I returned home to the US, I found a job with a very early impact investing firm focused on environmental sustainability and job creation in underserved regions, and it set me on my career path.   

Yana: How do you measure & balance financial returns with the social impact in your investment decisions?

Michelle: Every impact investing fund or product must define its financial and impact goals and operate accordingly.  There is no single answer or approach to this issue, and I have worked on a spectrum of financial solutions that address different impact gaps.  For example:

KawiSafi Ventures

KawiSafi Ventures invests in distributed energy in East Africa to expand access to clean energy, with a focus on improving the lives of people living in poverty. Its portfolio companies are typically late venture to early growth stage, having proven a viable market and seeking to scale up.  The fund is committed to achieving positive financial returns but has some flexibility in its target returns to allow for reaching low-income populations.  Its path to scale relies on proving that the portfolio can reach profitability and achieve positive returns for investors, while continuing to build and support the financial innovation ecosystem in the region. 

New York Green Bank

NY Green Bank is a state-sponsored specialized fund that invests in New York State’s clean energy markets, including projects supporting building decarbonization, clean transportation, energy storage, solar, and other sustainable infrastructure. NY Green Bank’s role is to set a precedent for debt financing projects with certain risk elements that the broader lending market is not yet comfortable with. As a result, it sets terms at commercial rates to help activate the private market.  An exception is its Community Decarbonization Fund, which offers concessional financing to mission-driven investors to finance greenhouse gas-reducing projects that benefit historically disadvantaged communities (DACs).  

Yana: How do you stay resilient in the face of slow progress in your social impact goals?

Michelle: Doing hard things requires a strong perspective and support. For me, the impact of my work is vitally important, and that is what energizes and motivates me. The opportunity to visit a customer or end-user benefiting from our investment and seeing the impact in action – whether that’s a bio-digester improving operations, health, and environmental outcomes on a farm in East Africa, or community solar extending clean energy benefits to more areas in NYS.   I also treasure and benefit from the professional community of investors, founders, and other supporters who bring their talent and passion to this work in the face of great challenges.  It is an inspiring group of people who pick each other up after setbacks, push each other forward toward the next milestone, and keep a focus on driving excellence and impact.

About Michelle Michelle Haigh Osorio is an impact investor with a track record of delivering strong financial performance alongside business-aligned social and environmental outcomes for organizations, including KawiSafi Ventures, Conduit Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs & Co., and SJF Ventures. She drives value across fund leadership roles, fostering a collaborative team culture while enhancing organizational effectiveness in dynamic, multicultural environments.

Michelle is currently on the investments team at New York Green Bank, a state-sponsored specialized fund that invests in New York State’s clean energy markets, including projects supporting building decarbonization, clean transportation, energy storage, solar, and other sustainable infrastructure. 

Previously, Michelle invested in emerging markets private equity for over 15 years, including backing high-impact climate ventures in East Africa while at KawiSafi Ventures, as well as renewable power projects in Latin America while at Conduit Capital Partners and the Carlyle Group. She previously worked in the Public Sector & Infrastructure Banking group at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and started her career at SJF Ventures, a leading impact VC fund. 

Michelle holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in New York City and is a mom of two fantastic children.