Nicola Armacost is the managing director and founder of Arc Finance, formed in the spring of 2008 to link the fields of finance, energy, water, and sanitation. Ms. Armacost has over 20 years experience in microfinance and development in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. From 1993 to 2008, she worked at Women’s World Banking, a global microfinance network where she held various leadership positions. Ms. Armacost is an advisor to a number of organizations, including Distributed Capital (financial services, USA), Frontier Markets (energy distribution systems, India), SIMPA Networks (energy payment systems, USA/India), Stima Systems (solar micro-leasing, USA/Kenya), Angaza Design (solar pay-as-you-go system, USA and Tanzania), Lumeter Networks (pre-paid metered off-grid electricity), and EcoZoom (clean cookstoves, USA). She is the co-chair of the investment and finance working group for the UN Year of Sustainable Energy (2012). She also serves on the Board of MISFA (the donor consortium for microfinance in Afghanistan) and is a trustee of the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson in New York. Ms. Armacost has a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Toronto, an LLB from Queen's University in Canada, and an LLM from Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada.