Ms Yvonne LI

Personal Profile

Yvonne Li is a graduate of Cheung Kong Business School EMBA Programme and holds a Master’s degree in Finance from RMIT University and a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Monash University. She started working with NGOs as a volunteer during her finance days, and provided strategic planning and advisory service to various charities in HK / China. In 2008, she left the finance world for more meaningful life experiences, and embarked on the journey of social innovation in China development.

Yvonne is the former co-founder and CEO of Avantage Ventures, an investment and advisory organisation providing support to socially oriented organisations and makes impact investment projects in China and the Asian-Pacific region. Through this venture, Yvonne has worked on a variety of issues including special needs education, affordable healthcare, sustainable agriculture, environmental pollution, disabled communities and other issues. In an effort to further support the development of dyslexic children and China’s elderly care development, Yvonne founded the China Dyslexia Foundation and the International China Ageing Industry Association in 2014. She is passionate about promoting a vibrant elderly care ecosystem in China through introducing best practices that are suitable for the local context, and building high level cultural bridges between China and overseas countries, and amongst key stakeholders in cross-sector collaboration. She is committed to improving the conditions of all those living in Asia through embedding the principles of sustainability, professionalism, applied research and creative market solutions by delivering long-term value that benefits all stakeholders. Yvonne is also seeking to raise awareness of dyslexia in China while building capacity of the special needs education industry and introducing impactful school pilots.

Yvonne embraces the virtue of being humble, open-mindedness, creative expression and social innovation. She sees everyone as a potential teacher and every circumstance a life-learning opportunity.

Expectation towards Social Innovation and the SIE Fund

"A major objective of the SIE Fund is to build up a social innovation ecosystem. This ecosystem should do more than inspiring entrepreneurship but open up channels for every member of the society to pitch in. I would like to see the Fund facilitating more SMEs to take part in impact investment and to realise shared value while achieving business success. Compared with CSR of big corporations, SMEs are more entrepreneurial, more flexible in seeking funding support, and the projects they carried out match community needs better. I hope the SIE Fund would provide a platform to link up SMEs and impact investors for further cooperation."