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Our Team Members

Erick Rengifo

Erick Rengifo / Co-Founder

Erick Rengifo is an associate professor in the Economics Department at Fordham University. He is a co-founder of Spes Nova Inc, a nonprofit corporation whose main goals are to provide funding to microenterprises, assist in market creation, and provide insurance products for the working poor around the world. He is also the founder and director of the Center for International Policy Studies. Professor Rengifo is an active scholar with interests in market development, microfinance, micro-insurance, market microstructure, behavioral finance, risk management, insurance, and econometrics. He is a private consultant in the fields of algorithmic trading, investments, risk management, microfinance and micro-insurance. Professor Rengifo holds a PhD in economics with a concentration in finance and econometrics from Catholic University of Louvain-Belgium.

Steve Carlsen

Steve Carlsen / Co-Founder

Steve Carlsen is a co-founder of Spes Nova, and continues to serve as a Director.  Steve has a 35-year career in the insurance and reinsurance industries, specializing in underwriting, pricing and managing catastrophic risk.  He was an early developer of capital consumption models through the application of modern portfolio theory to insurable risk.  He was a co-founder of Endurance Specialty Holdings (ENH), where he continues to serve as a Director and member of its Risk and Finance Committees.  He also continues to provide consulting services to private equity groups and hedge funds investing in the insurance and insurance services sectors.Steve has an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cornell University and received his PhD in Economics from Fordham University in May 2013.

 

Dana Nelson

Dana Nelson / Director of Operations

Dana Nelson is an experienced researcher and practitioner in the field of corporate responsibility, human rights advocacy, sustainable development, and micro-lending. She holds a B.A. in International Political Economy from Fordham University, where she served as President of Students for Fair Trade and the Strategic Lead for Spes Nova from 2015 to 2018. After Fordham, she received her Master’s Degree from the internationally recognized Centre of Development Studies at The University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. There she pursued research pertaining to emerging trends in corporate social responsibility and private sector involvement in sustainable development.  


After Cambridge, she was sponsored by USAID to work in Accra, Ghana with Ethical Apparel Africa to build out robust social and environmental compliance standards for the region’s emerging garment industry. Specializing in workers’ rights and safety, the project helped ensure proper treatment and dignity for the predominantly low-income, female workforce. Returning to New York City, she was the first full-time hire of Equivico, a woman-owned investment management firm supported by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. She ws integral to the launch of its first fund, which focused on scaling responsible, affordable small business lending, particularly to women, minority, and veteran-owned businesses, as well as those in low- and moderate-income communities. Currently, she consults for an investment firm on their social impact strategies with a regional concentration in Latin America.