Sara Alvarado
Sara M. Alvarado
Board Director and Sustainable Finance Consultant
Sara has a successful international career of 30+ years in senior roles in sustainable infrastructure as
private sector investor, public policy and academia. She has lived in North America, Europe and South
America bringing an international perspective to the sustainability conversation.
She is a current member of UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) working group (pro-bono) on
the digitalization of PPPs for the SDGs and is former Co-Chair, Infrastructure 4.0 initiative at the World
Economic Forum.
Sara is also former Inaugural Executive Director at the Institute for Sustainable Finance, hosted at Queen’s
University, with the goal of accelerating sustainable finance in Canada where she also provided support to the SFAC’s Canadian Transition and Green Taxonomy.
She has held senior roles at the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, is former Head of Risk at the
Canada Infrastructure Bank. She built the inaugural PPP infrastructure portfolio as Managing Director
Private Placements and Infrastructure at Manulife, based in Toronto. Prior to that she worked at Sun Life
and Scotiabank in private debt and equity, respectively.
Sara is a CFA charter holder, has an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University in
the U.K. and has attended Executive Education at Harvard Business School. She serves on the Boards at the Cambridge Memorial Hospital and the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and is past Board Member at the CFA Society Toronto.
Sara was recently awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal at the Senate in Ottawa, Canada, for her contribution to accelerating Sustainable Finance in Canada.
She is a frequent speaker on the topic of sustainable infrastructure to various groups including the EU
Parliament Transport ERTMS roundtables, the EIB, the Investor Leadership Network, Toronto Summit
for Asset Management (TSAM), Toronto Finance International, Canada’s Trade Commissioners, The
Responsible Asset Owners Symposium, Responsible Investment Association, United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe, and various universities.
