Sharron L. McPherson

About Sharron L. McPherson

Dr. Sharron L. McPherson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Resilience Technologies Inc (RTI) and the architect of the R Score, a composite resilience measurement framework that helps capital markets, infrastructure investors, insurers, and governments price fragility with scientific rigour. She has spent more than 30 years structuring and financing infrastructure across Africa, the United States, and emerging Asia — first as a Wall Street investment banker and attorney, then as a senior advisor to the Biden administration on infrastructure resilience and international foreign policy, and most recently as the founder of a startup at the intersection of climate risk, capital markets, and systems change. Her career spans Wall Street, the Constitutional Court of South Africa (where she clerked for Justice Albie Sachs), the Stimson Center (a bipartisan Washington think tank), the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business (where she served as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Project Finance for nearly 15 years), the board of a JSE-listed insurance company, and the chair of a 30-year-old loan guarantee fund. She co-founded WINDE and the Centre for Disruptive Technologies. She is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. Her forthcoming book, From Risk to Resilience: Why Risk Models Fail and Why Resilience Is a Smarter Investment, will be published globally in 2026. She has raised more than US$2bn in foreign direct investment for Sub-Saharan Africa. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and in Washington DC, USA, and is available for engagements in Africa, the United States, the Middle East, and internationally.

Key message

Resilience is a measurable investment, not a mindset. Capital flows where it can read the risk. The R Score makes fragile systems legible to investors. Africa is not high risk; it is mispriced. Invest in resilience now, or pay compounding losses later.

Speaking topics and expertise

• The Resilience Imperative: Why Risk Models Are Failing Us and What to Do About It
• The R Score: Making Fragility Legible to Capital
• AI for Climate Resilience: Measuring What Matters
• Project Finance in Emerging Markets: The New Rules
• Women
• Capital and Infrastructure: Unlocking the Funding Gap
• Future of Work: Resilience as a Leadership Competency
• Nexus Thinking for Smart Cities: People
• Place
• Assets and Capital
• Financing Climate Resilience: From Buzzword to Balance Sheet
• Exponential Technologies for Development: How AI Is Reshaping Infrastructure Investment
• Africa Mispriced: The Capital Opportunity Hidden in Plain Sight
• Invest Now or Pay Later: The Compounding Cost of Fragility
• The Translation Layer: How Leaders Can Speak the Language of Capital