Kelly McCarthy

Kelly McCarthy is Head of Impact at The Vistria Group where she leads the firm’s impact management practice.
She is based in Washington, D.C.
Prior to joining Vistria, Kelly served as Chief Impact Officer at the Global Impact Investing Network where she spent over a decade leading the organization’s work to develop tools and infrastructure for integrating impact into investment management.
During this time, she was the chief architect behind the IRIS+ system, the most widely used impact investing standard in the world for measuring, managing, and optimizing impact performance.
She also oversaw the strategy and development of the industry’s first impact benchmarks.
Prior to joining the GIIN, Kelly was the Global Impact Officer for New Ventures at the World Resources Institute, where she worked to build an impact measurement and management practice for New Ventures’ global portfolio of 250 companies across 7 environmental themes.
Before New Ventures, Kelly worked for the consultancy SustainAbility (now the SustainAbility Institute by ERM) where she focused on accountability within Fortune 500 companies.
Specifically, she explored how corporate disclosure of social and environmental performance can drive mainstream adoption of sustainable behavior.
Early in her career, Kelly co-founded Good Harvest Market, an organic foods and lifestyle marketplace dedicated to ensuring that all socio-economic groups have the same access to healthy living choices, while also prioritizing local sourcing in order to promote economic growth opportunities in the local community.
She holds a BA in Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies from University of Wisconsin-Madison.