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Elevating Community Voices as an Impact Investing Lawyer
Leslie Cornell discusses how she uses her position as a lawyer to ask probing questions about how project terms serve people—and push for changes when they do not.
Leslie Cornell
![Leslie Cornell Headshot](https://socialfinance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Leslie-Cornell-333x500.jpg")
(She, her, hers)
Vice President, Deputy General Counsel & Policy Advisor
2018
- Operations
- Impact Investing
- lcornell@socialfinance.org
- San Francisco
Leslie Cornell is a Vice President and the Deputy General Counsel & Policy Advisor at Social Finance. She manages the legal team across SFI’s portfolio of Impact Investments, advises the senior team with respect to policy and regulatory priorities, and supports the General Counsel in developing organizational strategy and overseeing corporate legal matters.
She was an awardee of the 2019 Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship, administered by the New York University School of Law.
Leslie holds a B.S. in Media Arts and Sciences and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was a Civic Leadership Fellow. She graduated cum laude from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Building first-of-their-kind impact finance products is an exercise in collaboration, creativity and persistence. I’m challenged and invigorated by this work every day.