Orli Arav is a development finance and impact investing specialist with over 20 years of experience in these fields. Orli’s specific areas of leadership have included: development finance; project and structured finance (within funds, financial institutions, and advisory firms); and impact investing (with a focus on frontier and emerging markets).

Orli is the Managing Director and founder of EMFin Advisory. Selected clients include IFC, Norfund, World Bank, UN ECA and FCDO where she advised them on private sector investments in infrastructure, mainly power & climate, in Africa.

Orli holds a number of non-executive positions, serves on the Board of Factor(e) and the Global Gender Smart Fund (GGSF). Until recently, Orli managed Cygnum Capital Asset Management Debt Funds and previously served as the Director of Investments for Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF).

Prior to SEDF, Orli successfully led, structured, and closed numerous transactions providing capital to infrastructure projects and companies in Africa (54 Assets over USD 1bn of principal investments, across 21 countries and 7 sectors). Orli also successfully raised capital from donor countries, as well as debt financing from commercial banks and development finance institutions (DFIs). Leadership experience focused on infrastructure in Africa has included serving as CIO for Impala Energy Holdings, LLC (Co-Founded the company), as well as nearly 10 years serving as MD of the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a dedicated open-end commercial debt fund.

Prior to her leadership at Impala Energy and EAIF, Orli served as assistant director at TASC – Ernst & Young and a Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the infrastructure and project finance divisions advising governments and private sector clients on infrastructure & telecom projects.

Orli has an accomplished academic background in economics and finance.