BioData

SUNIT SHRESTHA

Sunit Shrestha is founder & Managing Director of ChangeFusion, a non-profit institute under Thai Rural Reconstruction Movement Foundation under the Royal Patronage.

ChangeFusion supports social enterprises in various areas including mobile-based disease surveillance, appropriate technology for sustainable agriculture for lower income rural farmers, sustainable tourism and more.

He also is a lead partner and designer in the setup of innovative social investment programs / funds / platforms for emerging social entrepreneurs in Thailand including;

– UnLtd Thailand and Banpu Champions for Change programs that supports 10 new teams of young social entrepreneurs per year via incubation process and seed funding over the past 9 years with survival rate of 60%.

– ChangeVentures, an early stage social enterprise investment holding company that invest and provide loans to social enterprises.

– B-KIND Fund, Thailand’s first Socially Responsible Investment Mutual Fund that invests in listed companies that passed sustainability criteria with built-in philanthropic investment mechanism (0.8% of fund size, current fund size is over 30+ million USD.) The mutual fund is a partnership between Bualuang Asset Management, Kon Thai Foundation and ChangeFusion.

– Thai Governance Funds Initiative, a scale-up of B-Kind fund model with specific focus on governance and anti-corruption issues. The initiative is a partnership between 13 asset management companies, through its association, in launching 13 ESG mutual funds with focus on governance issue with built-in philanthropic mechanism to support anti-corruptions projects and initiative in Thailand. Current funds size total is over 200+ million USD.)

He also engaged in different areas of social innovation researches such the development of ecosystems for sustainable agriculture in Asia with Oxfam as well as the feasibility study of Asian Social Stock Exchange with the ADB.

He also involved in innovative public policy fostering through different posts;

THAILAND

– Joint secretary (2007 – 2008) to the National Safe & Creative Media Committee chaired by the deputy Prime Minister

– Director (2010), Social Innovation Unit under Advisor to the Prime Minister (Apirak Kosayodhin), Office of the Prime Minister.

– Joint secretary (2010 – 2011) to the National Social Enterprise Committee chaired by the Prime Minister

– Competitive regulation subcommittee (2012) under the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission of Thailand

– Open Government Sub-committee (2021-present), Office of the Public Sector Development Commission

– Value Creation Development Sub-committee (2022-present), Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency -GISTDA

SOUTH KOREA

– A member of Social Innovation Global Advisory Committee, an international advisory group for the Major of Seoul, Seoul Metropolitan Government, South Korea.

Sunit studied Economics from Thammasat University in Thailand. He became an Ashoka Fellow in 2009 and Thailand Institute of Justice’s ROLD Fellow in 2017. He received Rising Economist Award from the Alumni Association – Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University in 2018.