Simon Rowell

Simon is an experienced executive focused on driving impact across the private, public and social sectors, and at the forefront of global impact investing movement in Australia and the UK. Simon led strategy, market development, policy and research for the world’s first social investment bank, Big Society Capital, in the UK between 2012 and 2018.

 He helped pioneer a number of landmark policy reforms to encourage more impactful investment, including the first venture capital tax relief to incentivise individual investment into charities and social enterprise that became law in 2014, reforming the regulation of investment duties to enable greater investment for social purpose, and reforming company law to incorporate greater capital raising by community interest companies. He also built a number of key pillars of the impact investment ecosystem, including a research council from across the public, private and social sectors, and a growing movement to develop new social pensions products that connect individual investors with the social causes they care about through their pension (superannuation) investment funds.

 He worked with a range of institutional investors, venture capital investors, trusts and foundations and advisors to help develop partnerships to promote investment with purpose. He also has co-authored a number of leading publications including the Social Business Frontier, 2014, and Good Pensions, 2015.

 He has also been an international corporate lawyer with Linklaters, and a senior adviser and director in the UK Government and NSW Government.

 He holds a Master in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Bachelors of Commerce and Laws from the University of Queensland.