News shared with Impact Entrepreneur by Babbie Jacobs of Investors Circle

Investors Circle and four partners will hold Building Impact Leaders, an afternoon program designed for undergraduate and MBA students, on Saturday, November 7, from noon to 4:00 p.m. ET, followed by a social hour until 5:00. It meets at a venue in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood and online. In-person places are limited to students because of space, and virtual attendance is open to all. Registration costs $10 on Luma, and the address or Zoom link comes with registration.

The partners are the Sustainability Investment Leadership Council (SILC), the MFA Design for Social Innovation program at the School of Visual Arts, NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Finpublica. Babbie Jacobs of Investors Circle hosts with Andrea Schmitz of SILC, Miya Osaki of the School of Visual Arts, Andrea Armeni of NYU Wagner and Adam Wasserman of Finpublica.

The program brings students together with investors, entrepreneurs, designers and academic leaders working on social and environmental impact. Through conversation and real-world examples, it will take up what it means to build an impact-minded venture today, how entrepreneurs and investors bring social and environmental considerations into their decisions, what design and creativity can contribute to meaningful change, how impact investors see their role, and how the next generation of leaders can move from ideas to action.

The organizers have invited 12 panelists: Kim Folsom of Founders First Capital Partners, Karen Proctor of Harbour Workshop, María Juliana Ruiz of Impact Capital Management, Matthew Flowers of ImpactAlpha, Amer Jandali of Marketplace of the Future, Adriana Valdez Young of the School of Visual Arts’ MFA Interaction Design program, Erin Goss of Montefiore/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Tiffany Lentz of Polus Digital, Kobla Asamoah of Slow Money NYC, Sada Guess of Trillium Asset Management, Lona Vincent of WIN: Women in Innovation, and Susanti Vijaykumar, a senior user experience researcher.

Building Impact Leaders is part of the Student Impact Investing Initiative that Investors Circle is piloting in 2026, in which university students work with the network’s angels, professional investors and entrepreneurs to source, analyze and conduct due diligence on live impact investment opportunities. Investors Circle describes itself as a collaborative network of investors and entrepreneurs with three decades of experience backing impactful ventures.

Sources: Investors Circle’s announcement, its event registration page and its Student Impact Investing Initiative page. Image courtesy of Investors Circle; artwork by Héctor Ruiz.