Team Biographies
Grace M. Kataoka
Grace is the Founder and Principal of Amala Paradigm where she advises foundations, family offices/ultra-HNWIs and corporations on impact investment, corporate responsibility strategy development, strategic philanthropy, and arts initiatives. Previously, Grace was the Head of Asia Pacific Corporate Social Responsibility and Foundation initiatives at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong and Head of Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Philanthropy divisions for Shinsei Bank in Tokyo where she oversaw community investment, arts and culture initiatives, ESG integration, strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships, and responsible business practices for the Asia-Pacific Region. In this capacity, her teams seeded and provided capacity building to hundreds of social enterprises and innovation platforms across Asia as a pioneer corporate sponsor. Grace has 20+ years of nonprofit management and private/investment banking experience having previously worked at Salomon Brothers, BNP Paribas, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the United States and Asia.
Grace is a Triple Bottom Line Investing (TBLI) Group Ambassador and has been an advisor to several social entrepreneurs and high-impact non-profit organizations. She graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington with a BA in Political Science and BA double major in Japanese and Chinese Language & Literature and East Asian Studies, where she spent the first two years exclusively in the Jacobs School of Music under the tutelage of Menahem Pressler, founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio. She holds an MA in Performing Arts Administration/Non-profit Management from New York University and an Executive Education Certification in Corporate Social Responsibility from Harvard Business School.
Ash Sharma
Ash has 20 years of experience working at and advising multi-nationals and banks in North & Latin America, Asia and Europe and in positions of sustainability, innovation, investor relations, ESG, corporate responsibility, global business development, corporate finance & strategy, digital & social media communications, brand & marketing, and technology for impact. He is the Executive Director at Amala Paradigm, an advisory firm for HNWIs and Executives at private and public corporations, venture capital and private equity firms, foundations, investment funds, start-ups, non-profits and accelerators. Ash creates strategic partnerships and advises on ESG and sustainability integration, impact investments, corporate venture capital, diversity, equity & inclusion, global opportunities in multi-asset class sustainable investments, gender lens investments, philanthropy and the Arts in partnership with leading non-profits, multi-nationals and foundations. Previously he worked at Standard Chartered Bank, Shinsei Bank, Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace, and Scotiabank where he leveraged core business, sustainability and philanthropic activities to create inclusive and sustainable markets. Ash has implemented in-house corporate projects as a pioneer or lead sponsor in over 60 countries in partnership with other leading firms and institutions, including Microsoft, Qualcomm, Sanofi, Toyota, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Korea First Bank, The Body Shop, Yahoo!, Wipro, China Unicom, The World Bank, The United Nations, Palo Alto Research Center, MIT, IIT and national and local governments. As a banker focused on sustainability and engagement, he has been part of small, high-impact teams that integrated microfinance and high-growth ventures into business lines, workplace practices, and community investments in twelve countries; managed high-profile visual and performing Arts projects for wealth management and retail clients; created a growth culture around ESG that led to the launch of eight sustainable investment funds, including in healthcare, renewable energy, agriculture, infrastructure, mobile and universal design & access; succeeded gaining inclusion into the Dow Jones Sustainability Global & Asia-Pacific Indices; and managed USD4 billion in diverse, global capital market issuances to completely reset a bank’s corporate finance and investor strategy.
Ash is a Monbukagakusho scholar and holds a MBA from the International University of Japan and a B.A. Honors in European Studies in Arts, Culture & Languages (French, German & Spanish) from Trinity College at the University of Toronto. Ash completed his undergraduate studies as a scholar at Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin, Germany, University of Western à Trois-Pistoles, Quebec and Universidad de Alicante, Spain. He speaks six languages, including Hindi, and has worked in North America, Asia and Europe. Ash works with his family on access to healthcare and empowering women, senior citizens and youth.
Tami Jackson
Tami is an accomplished investment professional with over 25 years of experience focused on investment management. She is a specialist in the creation and implementation of business strategy, development and investor relations and leads the firm in securing new projects and partnership opportunities. Additionally, Tami supports Amala’s investment advisory clients in the areas of strategic partnerships and fundraising, investment policy planning, environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact investment guidance, program integration, investment manager/strategy selection and measurement.
Tami has worked with both non-profits and for-profit firms. She recently worked with ImpactAssets as part of their management team where she collaborated on the firm’s expansion strategy and other seminal leadership initiatives to increase influence within the impact investing and philanthropic community. Prior to this work, Tami served in senior roles for BNP Paribas Asset Management, Amundi Smith Breeden, Northern Trust Global Advisors, Brown Capital Management and Dresdner RCM Global Investors. Her investment expertise spans traditional, alternative and customized multi-manager/multi-fund strategies, including emerging minority/woman owned funds, ESG, sustainable and impact solutions, across all asset classes. She has worked with the country’s largest asset allocators across all significant institutional, intermediary and consultant channels. Tami has a quantifiable record of success raising billions of dollars for new products and ventures over her career.
Tami received a BA degree in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and an MBA from the Anderson Graduate School of Management (at UCLA) with a concentration in Finance and Accounting. She is currently a candidate in UCLA’s Certificated Sustainability Program.
Samjhana Khanal
Samjhana brings in over 20 years of diverse experience working in both public and private sectors globally in the area of social entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainable impact investing, global partnership, and business development. At Amala, she works with clients to develop a strategy for impact investing and collaborates with partners across sectors and geography to implement programs and initiatives on emerging social and economical issues that meet clients' investment needs. With her extensive field experience working with startups in Asia and Africa, she works with entrepreneurs to access capital and technical support to scale their work and impact. Previously at Ashoka, she led Ashoka’s Global Fellowship Program to support a community of over 2000 Social Entrepreneurs and their organizations across 40 countries to ensure sustainability of their work through collaboration, partnership, and impact investing. In addition, she led Ashoka’s programs in Turkey, Pakistan, and Nepal. At the World Bank, she was part of the Global Strategy team and pivotal in the execution of the design and implementation of the Bank’s strategic agenda of fostering innovation through the Global Development Marketplace (DM) Program, World Bank’s flagship sustainable investment program for innovation market-based solutions. In addition, she has advised Technology Startups for overseas expansion and business development; and she has advised International Foundations and women led social ventures on gender lens investing.
She serves on several nonprofit boards in the US and Japan. She holds a BA from the University of Vermont and Kansai Gaidai University, and Masters in International Public policy from SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. She speaks Nepali and Japanese.