Kim Leslie Shafer focuses on impact investing as the synthesis of her mission orientation and accumulated financial experience. She is a Director and the immediate past Chair of Aeris, a social enterprise that accelerates the flow of capital to good by driving accountability and transparency into impact investing. She serves on the Accelerating Impact Committee of High Water Women and the planning committee of the NYU Grunin Center annual conference. She works as an expert witness and consultant and serves on boards, including the advisory committee of a credit hedge fund. Kim was a Senior Managing Director in Strategic Finance at Bear Stearns until its 2008 merger, working with alternative asset managers and various structured products. Subsequently, she assisted the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in DC create its bestselling report and archives. While affiliated with the Center for Financial Stability she began her occasional practice of writing comment letters on proposed financial regulation.

In earlier professional chapters, Kim was a public finance investment banker; served as Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Banking Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, where she became the staff expert on the Community Reinvestment Act and mortgage discrimination issues; worked on the national staffs of two Presidential campaigns; and, practiced corporate law at White and Case. Her lifelong interest is the potential beneficial power of finance, along with the challenge of effective regulation.

Kim has a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. from Vanderbilt University. Post-graduate she was awarded a Corning World Travel Fellowship to explore foreign private investment and economic development issues in Asia and Africa. She resides in Manhattan with her husband and has two college-age children.