Emma Colenbrander has been appointed as Spring Impact’s next CEO.

If you’ve worked with Spring over the past few years, there’s a good chance you’ve already experienced Emma’s leadership. As Managing Director, she’s helped shape much of the work, thinking and partnerships that have defined Spring’s recent chapter. Now, she’ll lead the organisation into its next one.

Before joining Spring, Emma founded a social enterprise in India, enabling urban slum communities to access clean energy, and then built the Global Distributors Collective, a network of over 300 companies across 60 countries reaching more than more than 64 million people with life-changing products including solar lights, clean cookstoves and water filters. 

Emma’s experience spans social entrepreneurship, development innovation and strategy, as a 2 x founder with a track record of building impactful organisations and supporting founders and enterprises across Africa, Asia, Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific.

She succeeds Mohamed Osman, who has led Spring Impact for the last 6 years. Under his leadership, the organisation grew its team, deepened its expertise, expanded its global reach, and supported more than 1,000 mission-driven organisations to achieve greater impact.

Reflecting on Emma’s appointment, Mohamed noted:

“It’s an incredible joy to be able to announce Emma. Having worked alongside her for the past three years, one of the easiest parts of this transition has been knowing Spring was already in such capable hands. Much of what makes Spring what it is today has Emma’s fingerprints on it already. Her leadership embodies the values we advocate for across the sector, putting people and impact first. Spring Impact is entering an exciting new chapter, and I couldn’t be more confident about who is leading it in this ambition. It has been the honour of my career to lead this organisation, and I will be Emma’s fiercest champion every step of the way.”

Emma takes on the role at a time when practitioners and funders are increasingly focused not on whether scaling matters, but on how to achieve it effectively and sustainably, ready to build the capabilities, partnerships and evidence needed to achieve it.

She commented:

“Spring Impact has spent fifteen years going deep on scaling impact, building alongside organisations, growing their scaling capabilities, co-creating strategies grounded in evidence and shaped by the people closest to the problem. We know that better scaling happens together, so moving forward, we want to see scaling become a mainstream discipline, with a shared language, shared expectations, and shared practice around achieving impact that can actually tackle the size of the problems we’re facing. I am deeply honoured to be building on everything Mohamed has achieved over the past four years and lead Spring Impact’s next chapter.”

Emma’s appointment follows a rigorous search process led by the Board.

Spring Impact Board Chair, Peter Freedman, reflected:

“We could not be more excited for the future of Spring Impact under Emma’s leadership. The Board was particularly impressed by the strength of her track record, her thought leadership on scale, and the passion and energy that she brings to the CEO  role. This is also a moment to thank Mohamed. Over the past six years he has grown Spring Impact into an organisation that many in the sector now look to first on scaling impact, that is doing the most impactful work in its history.”