EP 19 – Jessica Camus and Mark Blick – Diginex Solutions – The Full Remit of ESG

The Social Innovation Podcast had the pleasure of speaking with Jessica Camus and Mark Blick of Diginex Solutions.  Mark and I had a conversation about a year ago.  Jessica also has an incredibly strong background and a deep interest in development issues.  Jessica is originally from Haiti and grew up in Switzerland where she studied International Relations.  She has advised International Organizations and Corporates primarily in emerging markets on Social Impact Strategies, Impact Investing, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance Issues).  One of the issues that Jessica observed was that it was difficult for these institutions to scale their impact and measure it.  This piqued her interest in how blockchain technology could potentially help to solve that with new and innovative solutions.

While there are not only technological issues to solve, we also discussed how creating the right partnerships and encouraging collaboration across domains can also be very important.  One of the ways to accomplish this is to have a common set of agreed-upon data so that all of the collaborators can be on the same page.  Jessica’s time at Thompson Reuters and at the World Economic Forum taught her how important public-private partnerships can be in enabling effective change.

 Since we last spoke, a lot has changed at Diginex Solutions.  While Mark notes that he likes to focus tightly and go deep on a particular topic, Diginex has been busy expanding its offerings and rapidly developing and deploying its software.  With an initial focus on forced labor and modern slavery, Diginex has now expanded to the full remit of ESG.  The idea is to expand the platform to drive meaningful change.