SEAF

Co-Founder Bert van der Vaart serves as Chief Investment Officer and has led the firm’s investment strategy since the 1995 spinout from CARE. Regional managing directors in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa — including Jan Cherim (ExCo Vice Chair for EMEA) and Tom Monaco (ExCo Vice Chair for Americas & Asia) — handle local deal sourcing and portfolio management. CEO Paul Sheehan oversees the global platform from Washington, D.C.

SEAF operates over 14 locally staffed offices in emerging markets, a legacy of its CARE heritage. Local professionals — not parachuting partners — originate deals through networks built over three decades of in-country lending and advisory work. The firm also runs 14 Centers for Entrepreneurship and Executive Development, which function as talent and pipeline feeders.

SEAF is an independent asset manager, not a family office. It was spun out of the humanitarian organization CARE in 1995 and operates as a fund manager running traditional private equity impact funds, as well as custom mission-driven mandates for DFIs and corporate foundations.

SEAF makes direct equity and quasi-equity investments in small and medium-sized enterprises. It does not operate as a fund-of-funds. The firm’s deal structures typically involve active operational support alongside the capital, reflecting its development-finance roots.

The firm’s approach spans early-stage startups, seed rounds, expansion capital, growth equity, and turnaround situations. It targets SMEs — not microenterprises or large-cap buyouts — and deploys both traditional fund structures and program-specific vehicles, such as the Daraja Impact and Ukraine-focused platforms.

SEAF was founded in 1989 as the private equity subsidiary of CARE, the global development organization. It spun out in 1995 as an independent entity and has since developed no ongoing ownership or governance link with CARE, though both organizations share a decades-long relationship and occasionally partner on development initiatives.

SEAF typically acts as the lead or sole institutional investor in its portfolio companies and does not routinely co-invest alongside external GPs. Its value proposition — providing hands-on operational assistance — favors majority or control positions. However, it regularly structures co-investment vehicles for DFIs and corporate partners, such as the Caterpillar Foundation and Bechtel.org.