Beyond Development: Cornelia Tremann is building an inclusive future for women entrepreneurs
A Q&A with an Acumen Partner on aligning values with action, closing gender data gaps, and empowering local innovators to lead lasting change.
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After a career spanning Africa, Asia, and Europe, Cornelia Tremann is bringing her deep experience in international development to the world of philanthropy and impact investing. Through her new initiative, Investress, she’s helping close gender data gaps and accelerate financing for women entrepreneurs. In this Q&A, Cornelia shares how her global journey has shaped her values, her giving, and her partnership with Acumen.
What inspired you to begin your journey as a philanthropist and impact investor, and how has your background in international development influenced the way you think about deploying capital?
My journey has been a natural progression shaped by years of living and working in Africa and Asia; from a brief but formative period as a child to then most of my adult life. I’ve spent my career focused on private sector development and social entrepreneurship first in academia, then with bilateral and multilateral donor agencies, and for the past decade as an independent consultant and advisor. I feel I have now come full circle as an impact investor and am grateful to fully align my work with my values.
I’ve seen firsthand what works and what doesn’t in international development and firmly believe that private sector growth—and putting money in the hands of capable local innovators and entrepreneurs—is a key piece of the poverty reduction puzzle. De-risking larger investments by deploying “no strings attached” financing, through philanthropic grants or first-loss impact-first investments, is such an important catalyst in this space.
You recently launched Investress, dedicated to financing female founders and closing gender data gaps. How did your experiences in development and entrepreneurship lead you to focus here, and how does this connect with your decision to partner with Acumen and amplify impact together?
I’m so excited to have finally launched Investress after many years of thinking about how I want to show up with the resources I have, how to translate my passion into an actionable cause, and inspire others to join me! I created Investress to help close gender data gaps. We envision a world where women’s needs and perspectives are considered in the design of products, services, and research across all spheres of life, driving sustainable growth for all.
Gender data gaps exist in our everyday lives: from healthcare to transportation, where even seat belts and crash test dummies are based on the average male body, resulting in higher injury rates for female drivers. And at the global level, we see persistent gaps in pay, financing, and opportunity. I see Investress as a lever to strengthen the ecosystem and spread the message. We’re on a mission to find, fund, and support female founders and organizations already doing this work and help amplify their impact.
My focus on this issue comes from my professional experiences in development and entrepreneurship and my lived experiences as a woman. I’ve been acutely aware—as many of us have been, I’m sure—of the pervasive gender inequalities that persist, to varying degrees but equally egregious, across every country and culture that I’ve had the pleasure and honor of being immersed in. From working in an office in the United States to interviewing female founders managing micro and small enterprises in Burkina Faso. I’ve always admired Acumen’s approach to solving problems of poverty at scale through private sector concepts and the way in which the organization wears its values on its sleeve. I’m learning a lot through my journey with Acumen and am excited to bring those lessons to Investress as we grow.
Having worked across sectors like governance, agriculture, education, renewable energy, and fintech, what lessons have you learned about what it takes to create real and lasting change?
Lasting change must be driven by those seeking the change themselves, in their way, according to their own priorities and needs. As outsiders, the best we can do is find pathways in, connect with those leading change in their own communities, and support them with what they need—often, first and foremost, access to capital.
Change must also be systemic. That’s why our approach at Investress isn’t to reinvent the wheel but to support and strengthen existing ecosystems through different approaches, helping bring about the change we want to see.
What values guide you and your family in your philanthropy and investing, and how do you hope to pass these values on to your children?
We are guided by the same values that we have always lived by: be grateful, humble, kind, honest, have fun, and show empathy. At Investress, we’re exploring how to incorporate these values into our investment and grant-making criteria. Through Acumen’s Immerse community, I’m connecting with values-aligned peers to refine these ideas and develop a clear set of investment principles by the end of 2026. For example, we’re inspired by the concept of “return on character,” which means we will be evaluating opportunities according to character-based criteria before we even look at financial or traditional investment data.
Our children are still quite young, and we think a lot about how to pass these values on to them. The way I see us doing that is by modeling the behavior and values we want to see in them. Hopefully, our approach will work!
What advice would you give to new philanthropists or aspiring impact investors who want to use their capital more intentionally?
Dig deep and identify the two or three issues that matter most to you. Stay true to what you believe in and the change you want to help bring about. Sometimes it can feel like what we’re doing is just a drop in the bucket, but I constantly remind myself that every small action contributes to a larger whole. If everyone does a little good, together we can accomplish a lot of good.
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