Amani Terhas Boros, State Street Bank International

Amani was involved in social impact spaces before she began her Sustainability and Impact Investing professional career in banking. She attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019, as a banking sponsor of the Summit. Amani’s time at the Summit inspired her to continue her social impact work, and it encouraged her to grow further as a leader.

“My experience at the Summit was incredible. It was the best time, honestly, meeting so many inspiring young people and the founders, of course. And it was just wonderful to witness all of the ideas, social impact, environmental impact and to see what was being developed in person and all the innovation from all parts of the world. It helped me a lot, the One Young World experience, I feel very grateful and it inspired me to grow further.”

Amani was introduced to female coffee farmers during a trip to Ethiopia in 2017, after which she founded Amatte Coffee to tackle gender inequality. The company works with women farmers, empowering them economically through the sale of their coffee. Amani also founded the Amatte Foundation, through which she works with two orphanages in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Amani hopes to upscale the impact of Amatte Coffee in the near future to continue empowering women coffee farmers.

Amani believes that diversity efforts within companies should go beyond gender, race, sexual orientation, and disabilities. In her previous role, Amani founded and chaired the EMEA Black and Asian Employee Network of her previous employer. She worked with the board to ensure equal access to opportunities for candidates regardless of their background, levelling the field to make the industry accessible to people from underprivileged backgrounds. Amani’s advocacy resulted in a commitment from the bank’s board of directors to double the number of Black talent in VP and MD roles. She also helped build the bank’s impact investing and Sustainability team, working on issues such as affordable healthcare and housing. Amani was part of the team that worked on The Wildlife Conservation Bond, also known as the Rhino Bond, an innovative approach to helping rhino conservation efforts in South Africa.

Amani currently serves as Managing Director, Head of Sustainability, at State Street Bank International, the European arm of State Street. She is in charge of building their sustainability department, and has advised the company’s board on reducing emissions and addressing social issues within State Street’s business. Amani is responsible for the creation of State Street Bank International Sustainability department and Strategy, which addresses the European Central Bank’s climate change requirements and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Amani believes that the finance industry has a huge role to play in the fight against climate change and social equity. She has focused her efforts on educating and training key decision-makers within State Street Bank International to integrate sustainability measures, like climate and environmental risk, into their new product, credit risk, market risk, liquidity, and other financial products. Amani is also the global co-chair for State Street’s Women’s Network, promoting gender parity in the workforce and is part of the global Black Leaders group at State Street.