Lauren Cochran

Vice President, Office of Equity and Investment Funds, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation

2018 Law & Finance Award Winner

Lauren Cochran is Vice President of the Office of Equity and Investment funds at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), where she supports DFC’s mission to invest in solutions to critical challenges facing the developing world. Before joining the DFC in 2021, Cochran was Managing Director at the Blue Haven Initiative, where she led strategy and execution for the family office’s portfolio of early-stage investments in sub-Saharan Africa. The Initiative invests equity with the dual expectation of best-in-class financial returns and maximum positive social and environmental impact, focused on renewable energy, financial services, and logistics. An early investor in industry-leading companies such as CrossBoundary Energy, M-KOPA, and PEG Africa, Cochran supported the rollout of distributed energy to impact the lives of people and businesses across the continent. She was also a member of the Blue Haven Initiative Investment Committee, which invests in innovative renewable energy vehicles globally, including New Energy Capital, Generate, and True Green. Prior to joining Blue Haven in 2014, Cochran was an early employee at Imprint Capital before the impact investment firm was acquired by Goldman Sachs. There, she made investments across the developing world in funds and for-profit businesses seeking to improve standards of living, create economic opportunity, and better the environment while also generating a commercial financial return. Her interest in emerging- and frontier-market startups dates back to her 2006–2007 tenure with The Clinton Foundation, where she analyzed healthcare infrastructure on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa and worked to fill gaps in the diagnosis, care, and treatment of children living with HIV/AIDS. Encountering grassroots entrepreneurship in Africa inspired Cochran to pursue a career linking social impact and private equity. Earlier in her career, she worked in private equity as an analyst with Deutsche Bank’s financial sponsors group in New York and then as an associate at a private equity firm. Cochran holds a BS from Georgetown University and earned her MBA from The Wharton School.