 When a COVID vaccine arrives, UNICEF stands ready to deliver it around the world. And UNICEF workers go a long way to make those deliveries. Last year, UNICEF helped vaccinate 45% of the world's children against deadly diseases. UNICEF does whatever it takes to reach the most remote villages and the most vulnerable children. The Bridge Fund has been a long-standing partner in this work as a lifeline to children, fast-tracking over $250 million worth of vaccine purchases. We thank our investors and supporters for making this possible and will continue to provide the accelerated financing that keeps children safe. You've just seen a small window into the type of incredible work UNICEF does in 190 countries around the world, which the Impact Fund for Children is proud to support. I'm Christina Shapiro and I'm the President of the Impact Fund for Children at UNICEF USA. The fund started 10 years ago to use innovative investing practices to speed the procurement and delivery of key supplies and programs that enable UNICEF's important work. Our main investment tool, the Bridge Fund, fronts pledged donor dollars so UNICEF can put those dollars to work faster in emergency situations and speed up the delivery of education, health, and social services that support children to survive and thrive. We do this by raising a pool of protected grant funding from generous donors. We then borrow against that capital at a rate of $3.5 for every grant dollar, and then allocate the resulting loan money where it's needed most. Along with saving more lives, investors get a return of capital and a return on capital, and they appreciate how far their dollars go and are attracted by our strong track record. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the Bridge Fund, we have reported zero losses over the last decade. In fact, this year marks the 75th anniversary of UNICEF, as well as the 10-year anniversary of the Impact Fund for Children's Bridge Fund. In a year like 2020, where the needs were higher than ever, the Impact Fund stepped up to the challenge, delivering a record $93.3 million to support UNICEF's work, bringing our aggregate activity since inception to over $450 million. But this, unfortunately, is still no time to celebrate, as the secondary effects of the pandemic continue to affect children and women at an alarming rate. I want to share a few reflections that are top of mind for me as we seek to continue expanding our impact amid the urgency that this ongoing pandemic calls for. The first reflection I want to focus on is the importance of time. The Impact Fund for Children saves lives by moving money more quickly. That is our guiding principle. And that is because when a disaster strikes, speed and expediency of funding are critical. The Bridge Fund is set up to respond quickly, so we have a competitive advantage in fulfilling a focused area around disaster relief. Specifically, our support lets UNICEF buy and deliver supplies when they are needed, not when the donor money comes in, which can be months after it is pledged. Time is also a critical factor when it comes to health-related needs, which is why 95 percent of the Bridge Fund's allocations in 2020 went directly to support emergency situations or health-related needs. As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only proven to be one of the most pressing global challenges of our lifetime, but it is a crisis where time really, really matters. The Bridge Fund has mounted a response that includes quicker delivery of vaccine cold-chain equipment, those boxes that keep the vaccines cold, vaccine purchases, and personal protective equipment for frontline workers, most of whom are women. In getting supplies to the places that they're needed the most, the Bridge Fund has helped to stop the spread of the virus, which has resulted in human lives saved and a quicker end to the pandemic. In terms of our COVID-19 emergency response, we sprang into action in May 2021. As India experienced the worst COVID surge seen anywhere. If you recall, at that time, about three people were dying every minute in India, which is why we accelerated $6 million a month sooner in order to help procure many critical supplies. Amongst the supplies that we purchased were two oxygen generation plants that each support 500 beds. If you do the math, over a thousand patients had access to oxygen a full month earlier. Clearly, a life or death situation. I want to move to the second reflection. And that is how UNICEF helps the most vulnerable, including women and girls. Why do we do that? Because we know women and girls experience more of the negative impacts of humanitarian crises, poverty, lack of infrastructure and lack of economic opportunity. Let me bring that to life for you. In eight out of the 10 homes without running water, girls and women are responsible for lugging those heavy containers over rough terrain. That is a lot of lugging. And it totals about 200 million hours per day gathering water, which is one of the many reasons girls are less likely to attend school and more girls are likely to drop out of school. Girls and women are also bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated inequities and reinforced gender inequalities. Some of the challenges that we have seen include, one, an uptick in unpaid care work, which is disproportionately done by girls and women. Second, an increase in gender-based violence with cases of domestic violence up as much as 30% in some countries. Third, greater risk on the front lines of the outbreak, given that women account for roughly 70% of health workers globally and do the majority of support jobs at health care facilities. And lastly, lack of access to education with 11 million girls at risk of never returning to school due to the COVID-19 school closures. So how is the Bridge Fund helping to solve some of these challenges? In addition to working to end the pandemic, which would certainly help ameliorate many of the challenges that I outlined previously, the Bridge Fund accelerates funding for programs that specifically support women and girls, such as programs that address child marriage. This year, the Bridge Fund accelerated over $700,000 to help end child marriage by enhancing legal and political actions and providing education to empower adolescent girls. You might ask yourself, what is one-year matter in funding this type of program anyway? Well, we already talked about how COVID-19 aggravated many of the conditions that could lead to child marriage. And let me give you an example of a specific country. In Malawi alone, it is estimated that 40,000 girls got married and 13,000 got pregnant in the first COVID-prompted school closure last year. So in many ways, we are racing against time and the Bridge Fund is a key accelerant in that critical race. I want to move on to the final reflection and that is to talk about the importance of vaccines in thriving communities. The Bridge Fund supports a number of program areas that UNICEF focuses on, but I'm going to focus specifically on vaccines, and that's because they save and improve millions of children's lives every year. Children who receive routine immunizations against diseases such as measles, rubella, polio, and smallpox do better in school, which has been proven to have intergenerational economic benefits. And for those of you who don't know, UNICEF is the largest single purchaser of vaccines, immunizing nearly half of the world's children every year. And since its inception, the Bridge Fund has proudly accelerated funds to purchase and deliver countless vaccine doses to countries all over the world. In light of the pandemic and its disastrous secondary impacts on children, UNICEF is leveraging its vaccine expertise to procure and deliver COVID-19 vaccines as well. And to date, the Bridge Fund has deployed $86 million to support these efforts by accelerating country preparedness, vaccine purchases, and to facilitate in-country delivery that help vaccines actually turn into vaccinations. Finally, I want to highlight that UNICEF uses a gender lens to drive an uptick in under-five immunizations by engaging women in under-vaccinated communities. And that's because a gender lens is not only an enabler, it is a key goal of vaccination efforts. And that's because immunizations, both routine vaccines for under-fives, as well as the COVID-19 vaccine, uplift communities, which inherently uplift women and girls who are often and unfortunately the most vulnerable members of these communities. In closing, I want to invite all of you to get involved and to learn more about the Bridge Fund, which accepts contributions of any size, from $1 to hundreds of millions of dollars from those who have the means to support at that level. I also want to invite you to stay tuned for updates from the IMPACT Fund. One of our guiding principles is innovation, and you can expect to see us launch other funds that invest in different ways in the coming months and years. Thank you. Hello, I'm Erica Seth Davies, CEO of Reaventures, where we're on a mission to create a vibrant U.S. market for sexual, reproductive, and maternal health that produces equitable outcomes for all women and birthing people. We recognize that this multi-billion-dollar market actually has significant potential for public health impact. But it's been built on systems that were intentionally designed for the benefit of white men and has been designed to perpetuate and reinforce unjust outcomes for black, indigenous, and women of color, low-income women, and others that are directly affected by systemic inequities due to geography or access to education and other social factors. Our work is designed to transform this market. We do this in four priority areas. First and foremost, we are leveraging capital by making investments in early and growth-stage companies. So Reaventures has a wholly-owned subsidiary, RH Capital, which is a traditional venture fund that makes direct investments in early and growth-stage companies that are driving innovation, access, and equity and reproductive and maternal health. We also provide technical assistance and shared resources and think about systems change assessment in terms of the ways that we help those companies that are in our portfolio as other companies that are operating in the ecosystem so that they can strengthen their work in health equity and bring change across the venture ecosystem. We also work through our corporate engagement program, which promotes corporate social responsibility regarding all aspects of reproductive and maternal health. So we work with investors, actually, and publicly-traded company stocks who are committed to leveraging their investment portfolios to affect positive social outcomes. Two reports that we've released were actually designed to encourage corporations to have more inclusive and better reproductive and maternal health policies. First Hidden Value, the business case for reproductive health, was a groundbreaking report that connected access to comprehensive health care, reproductive health care, could impact a company's bottom line and its workforce. Our recently released report from here to maternity, the business case for strong maternal health care coverage in the private sector, is written for corporate leaders who really do want to understand how strong maternal health care benefits can improve employee and health well-being, employee health and well-being, sorry. So through this work, we also, as I mentioned briefly, engage in shareholder advocacy. And right now, we're focused on corporate responsibility or corporate accountability, I should say, for political spending as we're facing one of the most significant reproductive rights crises since 1973 in Roe v. Wade. Who are the companies that are providing support, that are politically support or providing financial support to politicians, policymakers at the state and national level who are advancing these harmful policies. And finally, we think more intentionally about narrative change as well. We're the stories that are shaping and actually deepening our belief systems and mental models around issues of access to health care and abortion access, for example. And so we've launched a podcast called PS Blossom that seeks to change social norms and practices for those who are influencing this market. But it does so in a way that centers the experience of women of color. So recognizing that we are, again, leveraging capital and operating in a system that was designed this way. It is operating in the way that it was designed and it is a very efficient system. How do we use some of these tools to do differently was the question that we were asking ourselves and recognizing that the results of this system are all around us. Knowing that, for example, modern medicine was developed with a white male physiology as the default. And even modern gynecology was built on or was rooted in oppressive, extractive and harmful practices, abusive practices of black women. How do we think about or understand how this historic lack of inclusion or historic harm and harmful policies and practices are shaping the ways in which we think about women's health conditions and meeting their needs? Every year, some 810 women die around the world from pregnancy and childbirth related causes. And the maternal mortality rate in the United States is doubled between 2002 and 2016, even as it was declining in other high income countries. And understanding that when this risk is occurring, it's actually distributed unequally across racial lines. Black women are two and a half times more likely to die of pregnancy related complications than white men, women, even with a college education. Black mothers have a 60% higher risk than white women without. So we think about or understand that the approval of hormonal birth control pills over 60 years ago ushered in a whole new era of family planning options and put family planning in the control of women. Since then, that contraceptive research has pretty much stalled, where most of the innovation around contraception has been based on delivery and dose with hormonal methods as the mainstay. And the choices that are offered are still not meeting women's needs. But when we understand where resources are being dedicated, we can actually see that there's very little incentive for innovation or very little incentive for digging into why disparities such as maternal health, maternal mortality outcomes exist the way that they do. So the NIH, for example, the largest non-private sector funder of research with a budget of some $40 billion has made great strides around women's inclusion in clinical research and sex as a biological variable in research. Yet only a small proportion of research is focused on female specific conditions in particular. So just 1% excluding women's cancers are going to female specific conditions. So to do this work, we know at Reaventures that we have to very clearly bring an intersectional analysis so that we view the full range of social, health, economic and environmental problems and then ensure that we are also considering more inclusive or the most inclusive interventions that recognize how different, how oppressive systems actually shape experiences and outcomes, access and opportunity based on our complex identities. We're addressing these issues with courage and, yes, discomfort, but we do have a powerful moment to do better, to be better and to get it right. And collectively, we have to capture this moment and recognize that it doesn't take anything from anyone. It simply makes a richer opportunity. Again, once we are clear about the analysis that we bring to the work and have an understanding of root cause, what is driving these outcomes and who's being most harmed and if we can develop interventions or develop an approach that listens to and engages those who are being most harmed and take their lead when we understand the significance of maintaining racial hierarchy and how some people have a vested interest in maintaining that. We have a better understanding of actually what tools we need to bring to this battle, what weapons we have to bring to the battle. Make no mistake and it is no coincidence that Texas would have passed the most restrictive voting rights and abortion access bills pretty much in the same session. And so if we are not paying attention to what that means for black women and for Latina women and for immigrant women and for those who identify along the LGBTQIA spectrum, when we don't understand what these things do to those who are already marginalized or forced to the margins of society, then we miss out that a lot of this work is intended to keep people where they are and to continue to cause harm. And so if we're not bringing the right tools or the right analysis, then we're not going to actually win this battle, this particular battle. And so understanding that even our work at Reaventures and where we sit with the intersection of capital, leveraging capital for change means that we've got to do our work differently as well. So with that, I am really pleased and appreciate having everyone here today. And I look forward to your questions. Hello, Christina, Erica, thank you so much for joining today. Erica, I understand that you had crazy internet issues and you've been able to join us from the cards, amazing. So thank you, thank you. We have a number of questions that have been coming in through the chat. And then also one that I think is probably on the mind for many. So I'm going to start here. And I think my first question is we'd really like to know from both of you a little bit more about your funders and so who's funding you. And then, you know, a little bit more about who you are funding. That seems to be something that's coming up a lot here so far. Christina, you want to start first and then Erica, over to you. Sure, thank you so much for having me, Erica, amazing to hear about your work and Kerry, great to be here with everyone. So let me start with what we fund. And what we fund is UNICEF initiatives, that whether that is getting supplies into a market faster, like the oxygen concentration plants in India or rebuilding the stockpile of vaccines for oral polio in many African countries. So what we're funding is UNICEF programs and the delivery of supplies. 100 percent of the bridge funding goes to support that work. The funders that we have fall into three buckets. The first is those individuals that grant us money and that grant money is used as collateral to for us to then borrow a pool of fixed rate fixed term loans. So that those grants are almost like an endowment and they sit there and are not used to cover operating expenses. They're used purely to protect our lenders. And then we have two types of lenders. We have investors who have provided us with recoverable grants, which in essence are grants that have the possibility of getting repaid after two years. If our portfolio was performing as expected, it is the most patient and the most flexible type of capital. And in that pool, we have a lot of existing UNICEF donors who love the idea that in addition to granting money to UNICEF, they can provide money to the bridge fund and have the possibility of getting it back. And our track record has been zero losses to date, so they have had confidence. And then the third bucket is institutional lenders or individual lenders that lend us money for three, five or seven years and are receiving a return of anywhere between a half a percent to two, two and a half percent. And some of those lenders include names, you know, TD Bank, Prudential, Merck, Affleck. And then a lot of we also have faith-based organizations who love the idea of providing some portion of their endowment to the bridge fund and see us as a fixed income, high impact type product. And we have a lot of individual lenders who come to us through their financial advisors or learn about us through their DAF because we are listed on a lot of DAFs. So let me stop there and give Erica a chance to answer. Great. Thank you, Erica. Well, hey. OK, so thanks so much for having me again. And when it comes to funding for Reaventures, one of our biggest funders has been the Natara Health Foundation because of our structure. We can accept a range of capital. So the C3, the 501 C3, which is Reaventures, obviously can accept grants as well as recoverable grants that would be then invested into the Venture Fund, RH Capital. So as a wholly unsubsidiary of Reaventures, our Venture Fund takes one direct investment. It's just a traditional Venture Fund. And then also, as I mentioned, we can accept recoverable grants that would actually make the add to the LP pot for Reaventures, the C3. The goal here is over time that the exits from the fund would then provide a bit of funding to the operating budget for our Reaventures for the C3. But right now, we are funded with philanthropic support. We have a first exit from the fund. It was a very small return, but it was a proof of concept. So return of capital plus profit just happened earlier in the cycle than anyone anticipated. So OV Health was acquired by Labcorp, and that was one of the portfolio companies. So over time, that is the structure, how that we expect for that to actually provide support to Reaventures, again, the C3. But right now, we're grant funded. So a number of foundations are providing support directly to the C3 as well. Nice. I love the structures of both of your projects. And I think, Erica, just really quickly to stick with you and then, Christina, over to you. We have a question from Mark. And I think this, while we've got you here, Erica, Christina, this might apply, I think, to you as well. What are the most effective ways you've found to support companies in your portfolio, aside from capital, in order to help them achieve success? Sure. So thank you. And hi, Mark. Good to know that you're on the line. So the C3 actually provides very intentional technical assistance to the companies in the portfolio and we're even trying to make that TA available beyond our portfolio companies, because we believe deeply in racial equity and health equity. So one of the initiatives that we recently launched was piloting a Medicaid learning collaborative. So we recognize that Medicaid is a very complex system. You're essentially working with between states and territories, 56, I believe, different systems that would have to be engaged. But when you step back and look at the Medicaid market, it is over half, just about half of all births in this country are under Medicaid as the insurer. And Medicaid is the largest insurer of health care in this country. So to not have a strategy that's intentionally taking that into account misses the market. And equally important or more important for us in terms of impact, it actually holds back or prevents the opportunity for women and birthing people to access innovation when that innovation isn't finding them or when it's not reaching them, where they can actually access their insurance. And so our first cohort was just, again, focused on introducing companies to Medicaid, helping them understand how to begin thinking about incorporating that into their strategy and their structure. One, to be able to be eligible under Medicaid. But then also how to think about how that impacts your financing, because that's on a reimbursable system. Our next cohort will actually then focus on racial equity and health equity so that we are supporting companies in the portfolio to deepen their understanding of and commitment to racial equity. Because what we can't forget is that these have been harmful systems. So when we think about women's reproductive health, Black women's reproductive and maternal health in particular, and other women of color, indigenous women, Latino women, immigrant women, a lot of the women who are disproportionately accessing Medicaid, for example, for their health care coverage, that we can look at how harmful the system has been to these same women. So when we look back on the history of the medical system and we talk about concepts like medical racism or understanding reproductive justice movement and why it exists the way that it does, our companies need to understand this as well. They need to understand the relationship between, for example, Black women and forced sterilization. Because that actually was a systemic process and approach of mitigating the reproductive rights and health of Black women. And so having an understanding of the historic trauma that comes along with that, that is, as an investor organization, we have the ability or the opportunity now to provide that type of insight to our company so that they don't replicate or underestimate how that plays out in actual health. Thanks, Erica. Health and maternal. Right. So that's how I think that is how we're having that support. Yeah, no, incredible stuff from both of you. And I think when I recorded this, when I asked both of you to be together here, I already knew that we were going to have to put you back together again at another time. So, and these are lightning bolts, so they do go very quickly. Christina, I'm going to close out with you. We had a question that came in from Joanna. How donors are feeling about funding the bridge fund versus funding local orgs directly? Yeah, no, great, great question. I think donors that fund us love the idea that they are getting a multiplier effect on their grant, right? So they give us a grant. That grant immediately takes on leverage. So we borrow three and a half dollars. So their $1 has three and a half times the impact and continues to work year after year as we advance money to UNICEF, it gets paid back. We borrow more money. So there's a multiplier effect. There's leverage and there's diversified outcomes. So it really works for a particular funder who loves the idea that we're funding over 40 countries, UNICEF's work and funding health related outcomes, educational related outcomes, emergency response, et cetera. And in fact, all of our funding is going to UNICEF and or associated nonprofits already. So there's not an exchange. It's not like it's coming to us, but then we're keeping it. We're helping to accelerate the money that others people are committing to UNICEF. So I think that hopefully answers that question. And I think COVID has shown us that really, as I said, time matters and getting that money into the field early is important. So ensuring that there's an ability to have an impact and then that money can be absorbed, that's where the bridge fund can come in and make a huge difference. Fantastic. I think we may have lost Erica, but Christina, thank you so much. I also just wanted to mention that if you would like to hear even more about the work that Christina is leading, my esteemed colleague, Alex Kravitz, has done a very recent podcast with you and you can find the podcast on the website or even where you love to listen to your podcast. But Christina, thank you so much. Thank you very much. And thank you, Erica. I look forward to having you both in conversation again very soon. Take good care.