Founding Partner, SAGANA
Raya is a Founding Partner of SAGANA and Senior Advisor to Circulate Capital. Raya helps lead our investment teams, relying on her previous experience in scaling social impact in Southeast Asia to create financial strength for investments with a positive impact.
Raya advises the team on impact-oriented investment strategies and asset allocations as well as due diligence, portfolio management of fund investments.
Prior to founding SAGANA, Raya was based in Singapore as the Asia Co-Head at LGT Venture Philanthropy where she managed the region’s investment portfolio and led a team of investment managers across five countries. In 2015, Raya received the Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association’s Most Impactful Social Enterprise Deal Award for investment in Kennemer Foods.
Previously, Raya ran the Social Enterprise team at Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX), helping social entrepreneurs prepare for and raise angel funding and growth capital. In her transition to social and environmental impact, she volunteered with Deutsche Bank’s Foundation to assist them with their private equity of Water for Cambodia, a Deutsche Bank-supported clean water NGO, where she continues to serve as a Board Member.
Raya began her career in New York in the financial services and media sectors. She was an Executive Director at Deutsche Bank Global Asset Management and a Vice President of Corporate Finance and M&A at Morgan Stanley in New York, covering Fintech. She led the market development of Thomson Reuters’ Scientific Division across the Asia Pacific region and worked at tech start-up Priceline.com to close two rounds of private equity and complete their IPO.
Raya is a champion for gender equity and women-led businesses as a member of angel networks CRIB (Singapore) and ANGIN (Indonesia). She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.