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April 22, 2024
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Using Integrated Capital to Build Community Wealth and Power
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If we wish to address the growing wealth gap and ecological challenges of our times, we need to create the opportunity for communities to own and control their future. That means circulating investment dollars locally, transforming the governance structures that allocate capital so people most affected have the most say, and designing investment approaches that make wise use of blended capital — integrating debt, equity and grantmaking. This requires a whole systems approach to place-based change, engaging all the stakeholders – entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropy, anchor institutions, policymakers, professional service providers and community members–in building sustainable, resilient, and inclusive local economies.
It also requires a willingness on the part of investors and philanthropists to challenge their current understanding of risk and return. In conventional finance, investors try to transmute risk into return. Practitioners of solidarity finance redefine risk and transmute it into impact and power.
In this program, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Deborah Frieze, founder and president of Boston Impact Initiative and a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University’s Department of Urban Environmental Policy and Planning, for a discussion of how to deploy integrated capital to build community wealth and power.
Featuring
Deborah Frieze
Deborah Frieze is a professor, author, entrepreneur and activist. She teaches impact investing at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. In 2013, she founded the Boston Impact Initiative, an impact investing fund working to close the racial wealth divide in Eastern Massachusetts. The fund takes an integrated capital approach, combining investing, lending and giving to build a resilient and inclusive local economy. Deborah is co-author (with Margaret Wheatley) of Walk Out Walk On, an award-winning book that profiles pioneering leaders who walked out of organizations failing to contribute to the common good—and walked on to build resilient communities. She is also founder of the Old Oak Dojo, an urban learning center in Boston, MA.
Host
Laurie Lane-Zucker
Laurie Lane-Zucker is Founder and CEO of Impact Entrepreneur, PBC, an impact economy business that hosts the Impact Entrepreneur Network — a large, global network of “systems-minded” entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars of social and environmental innovation — and editor and publisher of Impact Entrepreneur, a digital magazine covering the emerging Impact Economy. For over 30 years, Laurie has been a “pioneer” (Forbes) and recognized leader in sustainability, social enterprise, and impact investing. Laurie was the founding Executive Director of the international environmental organization, Orion Society, which publishes the celebrated Orion Magazine, as well as the founder of a global sustainability think-tank, the Triad Institute, and Hotfrog, a Founding B Corporation, GIIRS Pioneer Company, and the first company ever to complete an equity transaction on an impact investment exchange. Laurie is the bestselling and multiple award-winning publisher and editor of books and magazines on sustainability and social impact — having worked with such acclaimed authors as Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, and David James Duncan — and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing. Laurie is contributing author to the recently published academic textbook from World Scientific, Sustainability: Business and Investment Implications (2023).