team

Steve Koon is the Social Enterprise Chief Strategist at Avantage Ventures. Steve’s main responsibility is to source social enterprises across Asia in order to identify high-potential investment opportunities. He will work also closely with portfolio enterprises on their business and impact strategy.

In addition to being a social entrepreneurship strategist, Steve also serves as the lead trainer for British Council's Social Innovation program in China. Since 2009, he has trained hundreds of social entrepreneurs and NGO executives across China.

In business, Steve specialises in executive development for multinationals. He has taught over 10,000 managers in business strategy and global management in China. Before coming to China, Steve has spent over a decade working with executives across a number of multinationals including BEA Systems (now owned by Oracle), PA Consulting Group, Honeywell and Merck.

Steve studied social entrepreneurship at the Harvard Kennedy School and is a Mason Fellow. He holds Masters degrees from both Harvard and Columbia University.

Steve says the following: “Traditional philanthropists pride themselves on how many people they have helped. Social entrepreneurs hold themselves accountable for how many people in need they have not helped. The worlds needs more social entrepreneurs.”

Based in Hong Kong, Megan Pillsbury is Social Investments Manager working at Avantage Ventures.  In this role, Megan helps social enterprises to overcome operational and financing challenges and investors to identify opportunities to employ capital for positive social, environmental and economic impact.  

Megan has nine years leadership and management experience on three continents, with a focus on technology, innovation, communications and sustainability.  Previously she has been a sustainability consultant in Hong Kong, was co-founder and served as Executive Director of the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre in France, and worked six years in high-tech b2b marketing in San Francisco.  Megan earned a BS from Ohio State and an MS from University of Michigan in electrical engineering, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Megan says "Investment in social enterprise will stimulate much needed innovation for addressing social and environmental challenges, and certainly these innovations have the potential to deliver massive impact.  But more importantly, I think, is that these social entrepreneurs will demonstrate to the world that there need not be a trade-off between social/environmental value and economic value, something that mainstream business and consumers, for all their savvy, have been slow to learn."

Jamie Laursen is a Field Consultant at Avantage Ventures.  Her strong analytical background supports her work researching various social enterprises and their models in Asia. Jamie is currently seconded to a portfolio enterprise and has been supporting the company with all aspects of business strategy and financial modelling, along with consulting on a new trade finance facility.

Jamie previously worked in sales and marketing in New York for AstraZeneca, a leading multinational pharmaceutical company. She has a Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and recently completed a Masters in Business Administration in Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Jamie spent a semester during her MBA at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology focused on International Business and also participated in a short-term exchange program with Tsinghua University in Beijing.

She is currently learning Mandarin Chinese at the Beijing Language & Culture University. She is an accomplished tri-athlete, scuba diver, and pianist and has a strong interest in Chinese culture.

According to Jamie “the innovations I have observed in the field have given me tremendous faith that social enterprise is the best solution to Asia’s numerous development challenges.”