C. Sara L. Minard, Ph.D. Bio
Sara is the Founder and CEO of Manarine, LLC, an international consulting firm working at the intersection of impact investing, design thinking, economics, faith, social justice, and sustainable development. She is the Associate Director of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Public Square at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, teaches an award-winning course (Aspen Institute) on impact investing and social finance at Babson College and other institutions, and facilitates an online community of faith leaders and social entrepreneurs for Faith+Finance: Reimagining God’s Economy.
Sara earned a Ph.D. in Economics (highest honors) from Sciences Po, Paris under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen on the topic of social entrepreneurship in the informal economy in Senegal, West Africa. As a trained socio-economist, educator, facilitator, policy advisor, and development practitioner, her multidisciplinary and boundary spanning expertise supports universities, multinational companies, social impact startups, impact funds, governments, and communities across the globe.
Prior to Babson, she was Executive Professor at Northeastern University’s D'Amore-McKim School of Business where she designed and taught impact investing, global social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and created several experiential learning programs in India and Appalachia focused on gender, food systems, social justice, and impact measurement. Before Northeastern, Sara taught and researched for five years at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs as Lecturer-in-Discipline where she co-led the required course in methods for development practice and designed Columbia’s first course on social entrepreneurship for sustainable development.
Outside the academy, Sara’s industry experience includes five years as a socio-economist at the OECD in Paris, leading efforts to bring private sector investment to small and medium enterprises and to sustainable natural resource management across 18 West African countries, and worked as an international development consultant, managing both short and long-term social finance-related projects for international development banks, US and European companies, and NGOs. After serving in the US Peace Corps in Senegal, Sara co-founded a village-level sustainable aquaculture business which ran for seven years. She began her career as a Legislative Aide in the U.S. Senate. She speaks fluent French and Wolof, practices and teaches yoga and mindfulness meditation, and is a member of her church’s worship team.
