Liesel Pritzker Simmons is Co-Founder and Principal of Blue Haven Initiative, an innovative family office that invests for profit and with purpose. An early leader in the impact investing space, BHI manages an international portfolio of diversified investments in traditional asset classes, groundbreaking impact business models, and nonprofit organizations. It applies a rigorous portfolio-management lens to its investments with the goal of generating measurable financial returns as well as societal and environmental benefits.
Liesel is also Co-Founder of IDP Foundation, a private Chicago-based foundation focused on achieving universal primary education. There, she helped create the IDP Rising Schools Program, which leverages microfinance networks to empower nearly 450 low-cost private schools — established and managed by local entrepreneurs — in some of the least-developed regions of the world.
Liesel is a sought-after speaker on the topic of impact investing. She serves on for-profit and nonprofit boards and investment committees of organizations including Impact Assets, Synergos, Toniic, Eco-Post, and the ImPact, a network of families committed to the conscientious stewardship of wealth. Liesel attended Columbia University in New York City, where she studied African History. She lives in the Boston area with her husband, Ian Simmons, and their daughter.