Speaker Profile: Nigel Kershaw

Nigel joined The Big Issue in 1994 becoming group chair (Big Issue Publications and Big Issue Invest) and chair and co-founder of The Big Exchange. The Big Issue mission of preventing and dismantling poverty for now and future generations with ‘a hand-up, has created one of the world’s most successful and best-known social enterprises. It has inspired over 100 similar publications around the globe. Nigel then co-founded Big Issue Invest, the social investment arm of The Big Issue, that was set up to become the UK’s first ‘Social Merchant Bank’. It has financed 370 social enterprises and manages and advises on £250m of pioneering innovative private and public market impact funds. Nigel is the co-founder Chair of The Big Exchange (TBE) whose mission is the ‘democratising capital’ by giving everybody the opportunity to make choices about what they do with their money and be able to make a social and environmental impact without sacrificing their financial returns.