Patti Chu is a people-connector and is passionate about making social impact. Patti’s experience ranges in the fields of banking, access to finance, education, and renewable energy. Her wealth of project experience includes working with banking institutions in China to offer microfinance products to small businesses; evaluating Lego Foundation’s grantee portfolio in Asia and creating a new strategy for the region; analyzing and implementing improvements to increase production efficiency and lower costs for Siemens wind power division.

Patti is a native of Argentina and has working experience in Latin America, the United States, Asia, and Europe. She has a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the University of Richmond, and an M.A. in International Development and Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She speaks Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, and Danish.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

KrASIA (Kr): Can you explain what your career background was like before, and how Mana Impact came about?

Patti Chu (PC):When I moved to Singapore about 8 years ago, I knew I wanted to work in the social impact space and found this opportunity with the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN). That experience gave me the opportunity to understand the landscape of social and environmental impact in Asia, but I also started to realize certain gaps, which led to my co-founder and I starting Mana Impact.

In the beginning, we didn’t really have a sector focus, both of us just really cared about the environment, which unfortunately was not common in Asia. Another thing is that a large part of the economy in Asia is centered around agriculture and aquaculture. However, the farmers don’t get paid the most, and hence our mission was to provide fairness and transparency in this major industry.

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