How Financial Advisors Advance an Impact Economy
It is going to take all of us to shift the global economy to one that prioritizes sustainable over extractive practices. An estimated $4.2 trillion in private investment capital each year is required to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Investors, entrepreneurs, and financial institutions all play a role, but financial advisors are core. Financial Advisors guide your investment capital and inform decision making. They educate, identify, vet and diligence, monitor, engage with companies, and measure success, both financial and social impact. You can play a critical role in building a new impact economy by choosing the right financial advisor.
This webinar and Q&A features the Co-Founders of ValuesAdvisor, an online non-profit platform of impact financial advisors, and two financial advisors who have deep impact expertise. We will explore:
Nicole Middleton Holloway, CFP, is a San Francisco Bay Area-based advisor with Natural Investments. Her personal mission is to support conscious investors in making a positive impact with their wealth. As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM and a financial activist, Nicole enjoys designing portfolios for clients that incorporate racial, gender and economic justice, and she uses her expertise and position as a business owner to open the door for more women and people of color to work in the financial services industry. She holds a Master’s Degree in Financial Planning from Golden Gate University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Southern California. When she is not working, Nicole enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and two young daughters.
Lisa Renstrom is the Co-Founder/CEO of ValuesAdvisor, a nonprofit dedicated to making it easy for individuals to find a Values-Aligned Financial Advisor. ValuesAdvisor is her answer and offering to the impact investing field and most recent contribution to climate solutions. She’s the former President of the National Sierra Club, Rachel’s Network, and Threshold Foundation, and the Co-Creator of DivestInvest Individual. She currently serves on the Boards of Bonwood Social Investments, ecoAmerica, and Fresh Farm Markets DC. Formal education happened at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Owner President Management (OPM) at Harvard Business and MC/MPA from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.
As an impact investing professional, trained life coach, and teacher, Kate Simpson has spent her career helping investors on their impact journey. She is a Co-founder of ValuesAdvisor, a non-profit platform to connect investors with values-aligned financial advisors, and creator of the Take Two “Invest Your Values” course.
Stuart Valentine, MBA, is the Co-Founder of Centered Wealth and has been a financial advisor for the last 19 years. Prior to that he was active in the global futures market for 13 years. In parallel with his investment management and advisory work, Stuart has actively been exploring the boundaries of philanthropy, and entrepreneurship in his role as Co-Director of the Sustainable Living Coalition (SLC) and the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT), both non-profits dedicated to sustainability education, local food production and regenerative enterprise design. The Centered Wealth mission includes “manifesting the experience of centered wealth for clients by supporting the integration of their deep life purpose with their investment portfolio.” (www.Centered-Wealth.com) Stuart is a co-author of “Imagining Philanthropy for Life: A Whole System Strategy to Transform Finance and Grow True Wealth”. (http://www.philanthropy4life.net/our_book) Additionally, Stuart also plays an adjunct faculty role at Maharishi University of Management in the area of Socially Responsible Investing, Sustainable Community Design and Transformational Entrepreneurship.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Making Wall Street Work for the 99%
Globally, almost 2.4 billion women of working age do not have equal economic rights as men due to legal barriers, unequal pay, and limited access to finance. In addition, 56% of unbanked adults are women, and this gender gap in bank account ownership is prevalent in developing markets.
The financial market has traditionally overlooked underserved groups, especially women. It is crucial to transform the financial system to give them value and a voice in the global market for sustainable development.
Prof. Durreen Shahnaz, the founder of Impact Investing Exchange (IIX), is a global leader in sustainable finance and draws from a rich career working on wall street, where she broke down walls and built bridges to connect Backstreets of underserved communities to the Wall Streets of the world.
Join us in this Luminarias Series live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Durreen Shahnaz for an insightful discussion on key topics such as:
Durreen Shahnaz has worked both in high finance on Wall Street and in microfinance in the back streets of rural Bangladesh. Following stints as an investment banker, development worker, educator, media executive, and social entrepreneur, Shahnaz founded a pioneering impact investment firm that brings together investors, development agencies, and entrepreneurs to advance sustainable development and empower millions of women. Shahnaz is on the Forbes “50 over 50” list and received the 2017 Oslo Business for Peace Award, often referred to as the Nobel Prize for Business. Shahnaz holds degrees from Smith College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins University. She and her husband have two daughters and live in Singapore.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Bridging the Gap: Empowering Impact Managers in Accessing Capital
The asset management industry is heavily influenced by gatekeepers, such as Outsourced Chief Investment Officers (OCIOs), investment consultants, and bulge bracket broker dealers. These key players act as intermediaries between capital providers (allocators) and fund managers (investors). However, the business models of most gatekeepers present challenges in embracing new ideas and assessing impact opportunities. Consequently, many exceptional impact managers, including those head up by women and underrepresented minorities, find it difficult to access capital through traditional channels.
In this Luminarias Series webinar, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker hosts a conversation with Priya Parrish, CIO of Impact Engine, to explore the ways in which impact managers can overcome these barriers and secure the necessary capital to drive change. The program will delve into the following topics:
Join us for an insightful discussion on the crucial role underrepresented impact managers play in the industry and the measures that can be taken to ensure their voices are heard and their initiatives supported. This program will offer valuable insights for impact investors, fund managers, and other stakeholders interested in promoting a more equitable and inclusive approach to financing social, economic, and environmental progress.
Priya Parrish is Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Impact Engine, a women-led and employee-owned institutional investment firm that has been working to build the impact ecosystem since 2012 through investments that deliver superior risk-adjusted returns and deep impact outcomes. Priya is responsible for fund and co-investment sourcing, diligence, and management. She is also a member of the Investment Committee.
Priya is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Strategy and Impact Investor in Residence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and serves as an adviser to investment firms and asset owners developing and managing impact investment strategies.
Prior to joining Impact Engine, she served as Chief Investment Officer at Schwartz Capital Group, a single-family office investing across global markets. Previously, Priya was Strategy Head at Aurora Investment Management, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, and managed development of investment products that incorporated ESG factors at Northern Trust Asset Management and KLD Research & Analytics.
Priya holds a B.S. in Business Management from Babson College and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Bridging the Gap: Empowering Diverse Entrepreneurs with Impact Capital with Anne Richie
Join us for an insightful Deep Dive session with Anne Richie, founder of The Mezzanine Fund, as we discuss the unique challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color in raising capital for their businesses. The Mezzanine Fund aims to bridge the gender and wealth gaps by providing flexible debt capital to businesses owned by women and people of color, fostering growth in middle market companies. As larger, higher-margin businesses demonstrate higher survival rates and greater wealth creation potential, this session will shed light on the importance of supporting diverse-owned businesses at various stages of growth.
During the session, Anne will share her insights on how entrepreneurs can find the best mission-aligned funding matches for their businesses based on their specific needs and stages of development. We will explore the positive ripple effects of supporting diverse-owned businesses, such as closing wage gaps, increasing diversity in hiring, and strengthening the future supply chain. With the U.S. moving toward a majority-minority population, the growth and success of diverse-owned businesses are crucial to fostering innovation and promoting economic equity. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from an impact investing luminary and discover how you can contribute to creating a more inclusive and thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between our featured guest and our members. Be sure to come bearing questions!
Anne Richie is the Fund Manager of The Mezzanine Fund that provides flexible capital to businesses owned by women and people of color in support of scaling strategies. She is also the founder of ACR Capital that advises and invests in growth companies.
For more than 20 years, Anne managed distressed loan portfolios for Citicorp, Wells Fargo and KeyBank, completing capital restructurings ranging from $10 – 200 million for companies in more than 20 industries. After a successful career in corporate banking, she then served as chief restructuring officer and chief financial officer for a private equity-owned jet engine parts manufacturer with $27 million in revenue that was spun-off from TRW. More recently, Anne was a venture partner for JumpStart, a non-profit venture capital firm working with companies across three technology funds.
Anne is a frequent panelist and speaker on the subject of capital access. Through the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Initiative, Anne advises and draws insights from 100+ companies per year. Anne serves on the boards of BioInVision, a biotech company and EnDepth Data, a fintech start-up, the Editorial Advisory Board of Impact Entrepreneur and the Advisory Council of Luna Wealth Advisors.
Anne holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Smith College and a Masters of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Michigan.
*Note the starting time for this webinar (one hour earlier than usual)*
In December 2022, representatives from 188 governments came together at COP15 to adopt a landmark international agreement for biodiversity: The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Many commentators have touted the GBF, which pledges to protect 30% of global habitats by 2030 through a variety of multi-stakeholder approaches, as the “Paris Agreement of biodiversity”.
Even though both the COP for the Convention on Biological Diversity and that for Climate were first established in 1992, progress on biodiversity commitments and efforts have lagged far behind. Scientists estimate that current rates of extinction are 100 to even 1,000 higher than natural rates. Clearly, the need for action for biodiversity conservation and restoration has never been starker.
With increasing pressures and an international limelight cast on biodiversity, the question on many people’s minds is – how?
In this live Building an Impact Economy Series webinar, we highlight three innovators and entrepreneurs who are tackling different aspects of the biodiversity crisis: habitat and wildlife crimes, biodiversity business risks, and the private funding gap for biodiversity. Through our discussion, we will cover a variety of topics including:
Biodiversity in context: The scale and urgency of the issue
Climate and Biodiversity: How is addressing the biodiversity crisis different from addressing the climate crisis? What additional challenges need to be addressed to achieve biodiversity-positive outcomes, besides driving for carbon net-zero?
A Market for Biodiversity? Corporate incentives for participating in biodiversity protection and restoration, and moving from innate to instrumental values on nature
Scaling Solutions: What have been the biggest challenges for scaling solutions for biodiversity, and what coming next that will allow us to address these challenges?
Biodiversity credit space: What trends and developments do we see for the space across both regulatory and voluntary markets?
Dr. Eric Dinerstein is President and CEO of WildTech/Nightjar. For much of the past 25 years, he was Chief Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. Beginning in 1975, he led pioneering studies and conservation programs for endangered species such as tigers, greater-one horned rhinoceros, and Asiatic elephants. Most recently, he led the publication of conservation frameworks—the Global Deal for Nature and the Global Safety Net—to address the extinction and climate crises. At WildTech/Nightjar, Eric leads the creation of TrailGuard AI, an innovative camera-based real-time alert system to prevent wildlife poaching and human-wildlife conflict, and enhance security in remote areas of importance.
Before co-founding and running Wilderlands, Ash Knop headed up the innovation portfolio of conservation organisation Cassinia Environmental. Prior to this, Ash established his career in sales, senior management and strategy within the not-for-profit sector, whilst founding a number of start-ups in the health and tourism sectors.
Rachel Lim is an impact investment analyst at Silverstrand Capital, a Singapore-based family office investing in biodiversity and the regenerative economy. She holds a dual degree from Claremont McKenna College in Biology and Environmental Policy. Rachel is passionate about environmental protection, and in the innovative, intersectional solutions which can enable wide-scale systems change. At Silverstrand, her work includes project due diligence, portfolio management, and communications. Her latest responsibility is in managing the Biodiversity Accelerator+, a three-month program helping entrepreneurs addressing the biodiversity crisis to scale. Prior to her time at Silverstrand she has worked with spiders, turtles, corals, and more.
Dr. Debbie Saunders is an accomplished entrepreneur and leader with 25+ years of industry experience. She is the CEO and Founder of a deep tech company transforming biodiversity conservation through innovative technological solutions. This includes Nature Data Insights, an online platform enabling corporations to manage biodiversity risks for a nature-positive future, and Wildlife Drones, the world’s most advanced drone radio-telemetry technology used by species managers worldwide. Dr. Saunders holds a PhD in Conservation Ecology from the Australian National University and has secured multiple business innovation awards and over $4.5 million in grants and investments.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Catalytic capital is foundational to the impact economy, injecting patient, risk-tolerant, concessionary, and flexible dollars to impact enterprises. For much of the past decade, catalytic capital has arguably served as the “R&D” arm for the broader field, helping to seed innovative impact investing market developments. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and confluence of global crises in 2020, catalytic capital providers pivoted to flow capital to response, recovery, and resiliency interventions. Now in 2023, amid a challenging, dynamic economic and political backdrop, what will be the ideal role of catalytic capital going forward? How can catalytic capital most effectively support early-stage impact ventures and the impact economy as a whole?
Join Impact Entrepreneur for a Luminarias Series Webinar to hear from field leaders on the following topics:
John Balbach is Director of Impact Investments at MacArthur Foundation. John is responsible for the operational management of Impact Investments, including playing leadership roles with major initiatives such as Benefit Chicago and the Catalytic Capital Consortium. He also leads impact investing efforts to advance the Foundation’s Climate Solutions Big Bet. Prior to MacArthur, John worked with Silicon Valley Bank and JPMorgan Chase. He has also served on a National Science Foundation commercialization review committee, managed and raised capital for an Impact Investing Fund focused on developing the Michigan life sciences sector, advised industry-leading corporations on infusing cleantech solutions into their supply chains, provided consulting services to leading nonprofit organizations with the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and served as a strategic advisor to hundreds of founders of technology-based startup ventures through a Michigan economic development program. He holds a BS in Finance from Miami (Ohio) University, an MA from St. John’s College, and an MPA from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Sam Bonsey is Co-Founder and Executive Director of The ImPact, a global network of families committed to making more impact investments more effectively. Sam is also Vice-Chair of the board of directors and Chair of the investment committee of Keller Enterprises, a family office committed to values-aligned investing. In 2022, Sam became Chair of the Transformation Capital Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to building the field of systemic investing, collaboratively accelerated by members of The ImPact. In 2015, Forbes recognized Sam as a “30 Under 30” Social Entrepreneur. In 2010, Sam co-founded the 2Seeds Network, an incubator of community-driven development projects in Tanzania; in 2019, 2Seeds merged with Spark Microgrants, on whose board Sam now serves. Sam graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in History and Literature, focused on African postcolonial studies and Swahili. Sam happily resides in Paris with his wife and son.
Tracy Palandjian is CEO and Co-Founder of Social Finance, a national nonprofit that builds innovative partnerships and investments to measurably improve lives. Since 2011, the firm has pioneered impact investments including the Social Impact Bond and the Career Impact Bond. To date, Social Finance has mobilized over $350 million in new investments to deliver measurable outcomes in education, economic mobility, health, and housing. Social Finance also develops recoverable grant opportunities for donor-advised funds (DAFs), aiming to unlock the $200+ billion in DAF assets toward greater social impact. Prior to Social Finance, Tracy was a Managing Director for eleven years at The Parthenon Group, where she established and led the Nonprofit Practice. She also worked at Wellington Management Company and McKinsey & Company. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Tracy is a frequent speaker and writer on ESG and impact investing, social innovation, and results-oriented policymaking. Tracy is a member of the Harvard Corporation, is Vice Chair of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, and serves on the boards of The Surdna Foundation and The Boston Foundation. She is also an Independent Director of Affiliated Managers Group (NYSE: AMG). A native of Hong Kong, Tracy is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. She graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. magna cum laude in Economics and holds an M.B.A. with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar.
Fran Seegull is President of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, which works to increase awareness of impact investing in the United States, foster deployment of impact capital across asset classes globally, and partner with stakeholders, including government, to build the impact investing ecosystem. She also serves as Executive Director of the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing—a donor collaborative focused on growing the field. Previously, Fran was the Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director at ImpactAssets where she headed investment management for The Giving Fund—now a $2B impact investing donor-advised fund. Fran has a BS in Economics from Barnard and an MBA from Harvard. She serves on the Investment Committee of Align Impact and the Advisory Boards of SOCAP and the CASE i3 Initiative at Duke. She tweets at @franseegull.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
In her book, Adventure Finance, Aunnie Patton Power writes, “The venture capital model doesn’t work — at least not for 99% of startups and small businesses. In this 99% are a lot of companies with incredible potential: businesses headed by female founders and those from diverse racial backgrounds, organizations headquartered outside of venture capital hubs, and purpose-driven enterprises that are creating social and environmental impact alongside financial success. Counter to what the press-savvy venture capital world would have you believe, there are a lot of funding options out there for startups and small businesses…. from revenue-based financing to recoverable grants to redeemable equity to distributed ownership and more.”
In this Deep Dive, Impact Entrepreneur welcomes Aunnie Patton Power to discuss self-assessments that enterprises can do to identify the type of capital that best fits their needs, and the evaluation criteria and innovative finance options funders can use in supporting impact enterprises at varying stages and of different types. Aunnie will share useful resources that help on the funding journey, and answer both funders’ and prospective fundees’ questions about their own approaches.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the our featured guest and our members and readers. Be sure to come bearing questions!
Aunnie Patton Power is an Academic, Advisor, Author and Angel Investor with a focus on directing innovative financing to organizations that create positive social and environmental impact. She is an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Marshall Institute, an Impact Fellow at The ImPact and the Academic Director for the BEAM Network. Aunnie works with funders globally to design innovative financing instruments and deploy capital sitting the investment committees of Sanlam Investments and Nyala Venture and the social and ethics board committee at JUMO. She also founded Impact Finance Pro, a careers platform and is a founding member of the Dazzle Angels, a female angel investing group. Her first book, Adventure Finance, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021 and she is working on her second book.
A reformed M&A investment banker, Aunnie began her impact investing career in 2010 with Unitus Capital in Bangalore and has since worked with start-ups, intermediaries, funds, family offices, foundations, corporates and governments across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Aunnie's work has been published throughout the world, including by the Oxford University Press, the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), the World Economic Forum, Impact Investing Policy Collaboration and as Massive Open Online Courses on Coursera and GetSmarter.
Note that this webinar is scheduled for a Wednesday, not our usual Thursday slots.
Investing for Climate Impact through Food Waste Solutions
Despite the fact that real progress has been made over the past two decades, it’s now abundantly clear that the climate crisis is no longer a future concern. It’s happening now, and we must act more boldly to address it by investing in for-profit and nonprofit enterprises that offer immediate, rapid, and large-scale solutions to climate change – like food waste reduction. In the United States alone, an estimated 35% of all food ends up uneaten annually, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than 42 coal-fired power plants. Uneaten food is the number one product entering landfills, where it decomposes and generates methane, an anthropogenic greenhouse gas that’s 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The good news? The problem of food waste is eminently solvable – it’s literally low-hanging fruit. Food waste reduction solutions already exist, and many of them are “shovel-ready,” just needing implementation rather than invention to reap big benefits. And by preventing food waste from going to landfill – through prevention and diversion – we can reduce atmospheric methane concentrations in just a decade or two, which is critical for limiting warming by 2050.
Join Impact Entrepreneur for a Building an Impact Economy webinar, co-hosted by ReFED, a nonprofit working to reduce food loss and waste in the U.S. food system. We’ll explore the connection between food waste and the climate, present a range of solutions for fighting it – from breakthrough innovations to basic best practices – and share opportunities for you to support the effort right now.
Dana Gunders serves as Executive Director of ReFED, the national nonprofit working to end food waste by advancing data-driven solutions. Dana is a national expert on food waste and was one of the first to bring to light just how much food is lost throughout the food system. For almost a decade, she was a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She then launched Next Course, LLC to strategically advise on the topic. Some of her career highlights include authoring the landmark "Wasted" report and Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook, launching the "Save the Food" campaign with the Ad Council, testifying in Congress, consulting to Google, and being a founding Board Member of ReFED. She was also called "the woman who started the waste-free movement" by Consumer Reports.
Arthur Chow is a Vice President at S2G Ventures supporting the Food & Agriculture strategy. His responsibilities include evaluating and executing investments as well as managing and supporting portfolio companies. Arthur began his career in investment banking at UBS and later joined Frontenac, a middle market private equity firm, where he focused on food and consumer buyouts. Seeking operating experience, he worked for the Kraft Heinz Company and managed a $2 billion commercial P&L within the Foodservice business unit. Arthur then joined S2G prior to pursuing his MBA, where he primarily spent time working with several early-stage consumer-focused food companies including Tovala, Once Upon a Farm, and Dom’s Kitchen and Market. Arthur received a BBA from the University.
Kate Leadbeater is Head of Marketing for Flashfood, where she leads marketing and customer experience. Flashfood is an app that seeks to end retail food waste by making near-dated groceries an affordable source of healthy food for its 2.5 million users. Flashfood is available in more than 1,600 grocery stores across North America and has saved more than 80 million pounds of food from landfill since it was launched in 2018. Prior to pursuing her passions for food and sustainability at Flashfood, Kate spent eight years at award-winning ad agency DDB Worldwide as VP Digital, working with clients from a variety of sectors from CPG to tourism. She has studied communications and media at the University of Toronto and Montreal’s Concordia University and was a guest lecturer at the University of Alberta’s MBA program. When Kate’s not solving marketing problems, you’ll find her gardening, making messes in the kitchen with her 6-year-old, and advocating for the changes we need to tackle the climate crisis.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
*IMPORTANT: This Webinar Has Been Postponed to April 6th*
Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) and the impact investing industry has recently been subjected to a barrage of verbal attacks and state bans. A Florida law passed in 2022, for example, currently prevents the state’s pension funds managers from considering ESG criteria. A host of politicians, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Rick Desantis have publicly trolled ESG as “woke capitalism.”
Despite the attacks, demand for ESG investing has become a dominant force that markets cannot ignore. In their annual Report on US Sustainable Investing Trends, the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investing, known as US SIF, calculated sustainable investment assets under management to be $8.4 trillion in 2022. Growing numbers of investors are seeking sustainable investment opportunities that integrate environmental, social, and governance factors, despite the efforts of divisive trolls who often seem to be attacking ESG for their own political gain.
Stephanie Cohn Rupp, a Board Director at US SIF who has spent the last two decades of her career focused on economic development, global Impact, and ESG investing, thinks that these attacks demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of ESG and ignorance of the potential risks for investors and politicians who dismiss it. Cohn Rupp has been working to get out the message that ESG is not an ideology, it is a lens applied to investment due diligence that integrates real world impacts.
In this live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Stephanie Cohn Rupp, CEO of Veris Wealth Partners – a wealth management firm founded with a 100% focus on impact and ESG investing – for a discussion about the realities of ESG and how each of us can help defend ESG from the trolls.
Stephanie Cohn Rupp is a Partner and Chief Executive Officer with more than 20 years of global impact investing experience. During her career, Stephanie has focused on building scalable, profitable, sustainable businesses. Based in Denver, she helps lead the firm’s impact wealth management growth strategies, financial performance and client experience.
Before joining Veris, Stephanie was Managing Director and Partner, Head of Impact Investing, at Tiedemann Advisors, where she served clients as a wealth advisor and led the development of the impact investing platform and impact client experience. Prior to that, she was CEO of Toniic, a global community of impact investors which she grew tenfold. Previously, Stephanie held globally focused investment roles at Omidyar Network, PlaNet Finance, UBS, The World Bank and building greenfield micro-finance institutions financed by USAID.
Stephanie is a Board Director of the US Sustainable Investment Forum, a member of the ImpactAssets 50 Review Committee and an advisory board member to Paris-based Investisseurs et Partenaires’ investment fund for Education in Africa.
She earned a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a French and U.S. binational and co-authored The ImpactAssets Handbook in 2017 with Jed Emerson.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Participants in the impact ecosystem — accelerators, investors, corporates, higher education, and other interested parties — all strive to support impact entrepreneurs according to their own unique strategies. Unfortunately, these collective efforts can be mystifying and even counterproductive for the very entrepreneurs we seek to support.
A better approach entails working together to evolve an ecosystem that offers a seamless continuum of technical support, networks, and capital to accompany entrepreneurs throughout their journeys. Collective solutions must overcome the capital mismatch between supply and demand, ensure diversity and inclusion in the enterprises we support, prioritize impact measurement and management, and bridge partnerships with corporations and universities.
In this live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes social impact pioneer and global development leader Brigit Helms of Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship for an in-depth conversation about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to centering impact entrepreneurs. Spoiler alert: It’s about connecting the dots rather than strengthening silos.
Brigit Helms is Executive Director, Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, the premier university-based social enterprise accelerator dedicated to eliminating poverty. For 30 years, Helms has created and delivered solutions to social and environmental challenges in 45 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, in both the private and public sectors.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
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 live fireside chat and audience Q&A, 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.
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.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Join us for a Deep Dive with Barbara Handelin and Sandra Heibel, co-authors of the IE Magazine article The Case for a USA Public Benefit Biotechnology Industry.
In their recent article in Impact Entrepreneur Magazine, Barbara Handelin and Sandra Heibel of Audacity Therapeutics point to a major flaw in the existing biotechnology innovation industry — a single-minded focus on high profitability medicines that ignores the vast majority of (non-blockbuster) treatments. In this Deep Dive, we welcome the authors to discuss their ideas for the creation of a public benefit biotech industry to remedy the situation through “prioritizing medical impact for the maximum range of patients and conditions”.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the author(s) or subjects of a Magazine article and our members and readers. Be sure to read the article in question and come bearing questions!
Barbara Handelin, PhD is cofounder and CEO of Audacity Therapeutics, a public benefit (B Corp) pharmaceutical company which is seeding a new public benefit industry, operating in green practices and delivering drugs at a cost for a sustainable healthcare economy. She is a veteran entrepreneur and molecular medical geneticist who has pioneered the responsible application of genetics and molecular innovation to clinical medicine over a 35 year career. In 1987 Dr. Handelin established the first commercial DNA testing laboratories at Integrated Genetics (later Genzyme Genetics). She also co-founded Genovo), a biosimulation company, (Kenna Technologies). and BioPontis Alliance, a novel investment fund. Dr. Handelin has served on the board of several genomics companies (EXACT, RedPath IP, Stemina BioSciences) as well as on a variety of federal committees and advisory panels on ethics in genetic testing, including the Secretary’s Advisory Panel on Genetics, Health and Society.
Sandra Heibel, PhD believes in fiscally responsible development of therapeutics to benefit the public good. As the COO for Audacity Therapeutics, she applies her multi-disciplinary expertise as a scientist, program manager, and regulatory specialist with extensive knowledge of drug development and rare disease regulatory strategy. She co-leads the Commission on Financing a Public Benefit Biotechnology Industry, an initiative to develop a finance model that can support a new way of producing more medicines for more diseases at sustainable costs. She also serves as the Chief of Science and Regulatory Affairs at Haffner Associates where she works with Dr. Marlene Haffner, the preeminent expert in orphan drug regulatory affairs. Prior to working in the regulatory affairs field, she spent 13 years conducting preclinical and clinical research in a laboratory setting with a focus on rare, heritable diseases.
Join us for a Deep Dive with Tim Freundlich, co-author of the IE Magazine article, Donor Advised Funds: Sources of Capital for Impact Ventures and Funds
Impact Entrepreneur’s 2023 season of live programs launches with a Deep Dive conversation with the Founder and Executive Director of Strategic Development for ImpactAssets, a pioneering organization championing the use of donor advised funds in the impact space. We will be discussing the recent article in Impact Entrepreneur Magazine that Tim and his colleague Tracy Sherman wrote on how donor advised funds are an exciting (and underutilized) source of capital for impact enterprises and investment funds.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the author(s) or subjects of a Magazine article and our members and readers. Be sure to read the article in question and come bearing questions!
Tim Freundlich is an innovator of financial instruments for impact investing. Over the last 25 years, he served 12 at Calvert Impact Capital, helping to build the $500+ million Calvert Community Investment Note (more than $2 billion cumulatively invested into hundreds of nonprofits and for profits globally). While there, he conceived of and launched the prototype of the ImpactAssets Donor Advised Fund – now a $2.2B impact investment-based DAF that was spun out as ImpactAssets in 2010, which he founded and serves as executive director, strategic development. Additionally, he co-founded Good Capital and its Social Enterprise Expansion Fund LP, as well as the SOCAP Conference. He received a BA from Wesleyan University with a major in Film, an Executive MBA from the University of San Francisco, and lives in the Greater Boston Area with his partner in life Julie, and sons, Milo and Gus (and a small dog named Russell).
Closing the Disability Wealth Gap Through Venture Investment with Regina “Gina” Kline
The disabled population currently experiences crisis-level unemployment and a lack of capital investing in early-stage solutions. According to the United Nations, 1.5 billion people globally live with disabilities, which is almost 20 percent of the world’s population. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s working-age persons with disabilities (PWD) are not employed. All in all, it is estimated that the global GDP loses approximately $1.9 trillion annually due to exclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace.
The investment case for investing in innovation at the nexus of disability and tech could not be stronger, yet the disability market is massively underserved and undercapitalized. There are more than 2.5 billion people who would benefit from assistive products. People with disabilities alongside their friends and family control over $13 trillion in global disposable income. The US assistive tech market will be valued at $26 billion by 2024. The global disability community is expected to increase from 1.5 billion people to 3.5 billion by 2050 as populations age and the rate of non-communicable diseases rise.
Enable Ventures is the first impact venture fund dedicated to closing the disability wealth gap while achieving competitive, market-rate returns. It is supported by SmartJob, a platform to attract disability deal flow, and support and build the disability innovation ecosystem. Enable Ventures is part of the Sorenson Impact Platform of Funds.
In this live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes founder and CEO of Enable Ventures, Gina Kline, for an in-depth discussion on how to close the disability gap by investing in some of today’s most exciting innovations at the intersection of disability and tech, and the potential for these innovations to improve all of our lives.
Regina “Gina” Kline is an investor, entrepreneur, civil rights lawyer, and thought leader dedicated to building the future of work by advancing the rights and interests of people with disabilities as innovators, workers, business owners, and consumers. She is the founder and Managing Partner of Enable Ventures, the first impact venture fund dedicated to closing the disability wealth gap while achieving competitive, market-rate return. She is also founder of SmartJob, a platform to attract disability deal flow, and support and build the disability innovation ecosystem, and a 2022 recipient of a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action. ? Previously, Gina led a successful career as a civil rights attorney which included working at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, where she successfully led efforts to dramatically improving working conditions and the employment of people with disabilities.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
What is Resilience?
In her Impact Entrepreneur interview with resilience experts Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy and David Dodd, IE correspondent Allison Lee writes:
“In Stewart’s experience, people often tend to fall into a disaster risk-reduction view of resilience. For him, though, it’s about more than survival or adaptation; it’s about thriving. He takes a systems-view of resilience. Whether it’s island or city resilience work, he looks at the system itself, and the entirety of the ‘organism’ that surrounds the community — whether that is individuals, families, businesses, government, etc. Resilience is the characteristic that enables the system to survive, adapt, and thrive in the face of multiple shocks and stresses.
For David Dodd, it’s the ability of people to cope with stresses on their environment, and more importantly, bounce back after a disturbance of any kind happens. This includes not only natural disasters, but also man-made ones — acts of terror, conflict, and economic turmoil. David has been through economic cycles that have been devastating to people and feels that those cycles can be as much of a disaster as a Category Five hurricane. David’s catchphrase is ‘transformative recovery’, which is a new paradigm in recovery. He wants to transform the economy to make it more resilient, robust, and wealth-generating for the location and its people.”
In this Impact Entrepreneur Deep Dive, we welcome Stewart Sarkoczy-Banoczy and David Dodd, along with IE correspondent Allison Lee, for a discussion of resilience and how it relates to economic development and the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the author(s) and/or subjects of a Magazine article and our members. Be sure to read the article in question and come bearing questions!
Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy is Founder and Chief Precoverist for Precovery Labs and Global Director, Policy and Investments, for Resilient Cities Network, leading the Resilient Community Impact Funds (RCIFunds) and Resilience 21 (R21) Coalition. Stewart’s work in precovery and resilience takes him to urban, island, indigenous and ocean contexts, engaging in research, implementation, finance and storytelling . Stewart is Sr Advisor for the Global Island Partnership, Assessment Committee Member and Chair for SMILO-small islands organization, Ocean Fellow for the Center for Ocean Policy and Economics (COPE°), loan committee member for NDN Fund, and member of Four Bands Community Fund’s board of directors. Stewart’s passion for storytelling includes his work as a professional photographer and writer.
David Dodd is founding CEO of the International Sustainable Resilience Center (ISRC) a Specialist Center of Excellence in New Orleans Louisiana, US, focused on disaster resilience and recovery utilizing public-private partnerships. He transitioned from economic development to disaster recovery beginning with Hurricane Katrina, where he was a liaison between the state economic development agency and federal recovery efforts. From there, he led efforts in Mexico, Japan, and consulted with Australia and the Philippines on efforts to enable robust economic recovery and resilience. Since 2013, David and consulting partner Novaces, LLC have been contracted with the US Economic Development Administration to deploy economic recovery funding in major disasters. David was Dean of the Economic Development Institute and Founding Chairman of the Resilience Development Institute, both at the University of Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Louisiana Tech University and the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University.
Allison Lee is co-founder of Alpine CSR Advisors, which specializes in CSR/ESG strategy and implementation, with a focus on business and social impact metrics. She has over fifteen years of experience in CSR research and consulting, and has partnered with Fortune 500 corporations, foundations, academic institutions, and other nonprofits globally.
Entertainment, when effectively engaged, is a powerful tool to effect social change and can be utilized by entrepreneurs as a catalyst for purpose and profit.
In this live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Paul Katz, CEO of social impact agency Entertain Impact and veteran music industry executive, to discuss the Influencer Effect, the field of social impact entertainment, edutainment, and how to harness the power of popular culture to effect social change. There may not be a more significant time in our history when businesses, non-profits, entertainment, creators, and influencers, can work together to meet the challenges of our time meaningfully.
With multiple Grammy nominations under his belt, Paul Katz’s approach to the field of cause influence - the use of pop culture to effect social change - is informed by his experience at Jive Records, working with artists such as Pink, A Tribe Called Quest, and Britney Spears, as well as his music work consulting for Oscar-winning films, including 12 Years A Slave, Green Book, and American Factory.
As founder and CEO of Entertain Impact, a leading social impact agency, Katz has raised awareness, support, and funds, inspired action, and driven programs forward for philanthropic, social justice, and purpose-driven organizations over the past two decades—including the African Wildlife Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rotary International, ELMA Philanthropies, and WHO Foundation.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Too many who yearn to make a difference become paralyzed by the fear of leaping without having worked out every detail. Yet the decision we face is not to chart the perfect way forward; it is simply to embark on the journey. In her latest book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen, outlines concrete practices we can all use to jumpstart our own impact on the world. Change is possible, she argues, and because it’s possible, it’s up to each of us to be part of that change.
The critical ingredient for large-scale, sustainable progress lies in moral imagination — which starts by viewing other people’s problems as if they were your own, and discerning how to solve those problems. It requires both the audacity to see where you want to go, and the humility to realize the scale of what we’re facing. In this intimate conversation and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Jacqueline Novogratz, who will share her story of quitting her banking job to start a business in Rwanda, which ultimately led to founding Acumen 21 years ago and forging the path for a now-thriving impact investing industry. She’ll explain the role of patient capital in building markets and solving the problems of poverty, and the role that listening, immersion, and transcending our tendencies toward binary thinking plays in building dignity for all.
Jacqueline Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Acumen, and a recognized leader and innovator in the social impact sector. Her work began in 1986 when she quit her job on Wall Street to co-found Rwanda’s first microfinance institution, Duterimbere; the experience inspired her to write the bestselling book The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor, and, in 2001, launch Acumen.
A pioneer of impact investing, Acumen has invested more than $146 million of patient capital into 151 companies affecting the lives of nearly 400 million people across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States in the areas of clean energy, agriculture, healthcare, and education. Acumen also has launched four for-profit funds, including KawiSafi, a nearly $70 million impact fund focused on off-grid solar energy in East Africa, and ARAF, a first-of-its-kind $58 million fund focused on helping smallholder farmers mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Her second book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World, was named one of the top 10 social entrepreneurship books of all time. A recognized leader in the issue of poverty and the importance of dignity, Jacqueline has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, one of the 25 Smartest People of the Decade by the Daily Beast, and one of the world’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds by Forbes. She lives in New York with her husband.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Building a Vibrant Impact Ecosystem with Jim Sorenson
Building a robust impact investment market requires establishing a healthy, supportive ecosystem. Impact investors, just like conventional investors, depend on the work of researchers, advisors, wealth managers, entrepreneurs, industry experts, and others to make well-informed, successful investments. Moving from a single bottom line to triple bottom line set of priorities, however, requires embracing additional complexities and utilizing creative problem-solving, especially around such challenges as impact measurement.
Successfully growing early-stage impact enterprises necessitates a similar level of comfort with complexity and creative experimentation. Strategic pivots and unorthodox funding strategies are often the norm for impact entrepreneurs and their businesses.
In this live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes one of the founding voices of the impact investing movement, Jim Sorenson, founder of the Sorenson Impact Group, for a far-ranging conversation about impact investing, impact entrepreneurship, and impact field-building.
Jim Sorenson is a global impact leader, and one of the founding voices in the impact investment movement. Since the start of his career, first as an entrepreneur and then as an investor, Jim has focused on mission-driven investments that prioritize profit and purpose.
The son of a self-made billionaire and entrepreneur, Jim grew up surrounded by innovation and business. When it came time to launch his own career Jim went off on his own before returning to the family business. In 2002, he was about to fundraise for one of those businesses, Sorenson Media, when the dot.com bust derailed those plans, forcing Jim and his team back to the drawing board.
Out of that crisis Sorenson Communications was born, a technology business that provides communications services for the deaf community. Sorenson Communications soon became the world’s largest employer of the deaf. In 2005, the business was spun out and sold in what was the largest private equity deal in Utah to date.
His experience with Sorenson Communications opened Jim’s eyes to the real meaning of profit and purpose. Deaf educators estimate that the services provided by Sorenson Communications have increased employment for the hearing-impaired fourfold.
In June, Jim launched Sorenson Impact Group (SIG) as a multi-faceted center for impact investing, to advance the field of impact investing, drive capital to impact investing, institutionalize, and scale the sector. At the Sorenson Impact summit, also in June, SIG announced that it was taking over the operations of SOCAP, the cornerstone impact investing conference, now in its 15th year.
Jim strongly believes that to solve the biggest challenges facing our society the impact ecosystem must align through a more holistic approach to impact investing, with a focus on actionable results at scale.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Achieving racial and economic equity is a defining opportunity of our time. When it comes to investors, the urgency of the moment necessitates greater understanding, pushing and growing in how they approach advancing racial equity and economic justice. Despite recognizing the need for more effective practices within their organizations and portfolios, many investors starting out on their diversity, equity, and inclusion journeys succumb to several common pitfalls:
In this Building an Impact Economy webinar, our panelists, who co-designed the IRIS+ racial equity theme for impact investing and co-wrote a related article for Impact Entrepreneur Magazine, will discuss both the opportunities and pitfalls for investors. They will provide insights into how investors can consider power, risk, and justice in their impact measurement and management work.
PANELISTS
Mahlet Getachew, Managing Director of Corporate Racial Equity at PolicyLink, works to ignite the racial equity movement more broadly and deeply within corporate America. She comes to PolicyLink with extensive experience in the private sector advising public and private corporations across various industries as external legal counsel and in-house counsel.
Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, President and CEO of CapEQ™, has been religiously leading and writing about enterprises that “do well and do good” for over a decade. As President and CEO of CapEQ™ she works with companies and investors to embed equitable impact in their daily practice.
Lissa Glasgo, Director, IRIS+/Impact Measurement & Management (IMM) at the GIIN, leads the IRIS+ standards on impact themes including DEI and supports the development of the GIIN’s impact performance benchmarks. She is grateful to have spent her career on IMM strategy/research for incredible organizations and people around the globe.
GUEST MODERATOR
Melanie Audette, Senior Vice President at Mission Investors Exchange, a national membership network for foundations building and growing their impact investing programs. She works with members to identify and drive additional resources towards innovative impact investing opportunities, facilitates partnerships across the sector, and represents the impact investing network.
Finance is not working for people or the planet. We need to act to change this.
There is a significant gap between this growing awareness and tangible actions that will result in better outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the annual SDG financing gap to $3.7 trillion in 2020, up from $2.5 trillion in 2019 (OECD) – a drop in the ocean compared to the claimed ESG investment universe. It is certain that in the current landscape of small, separate sustainable finance initiatives, often focused in high- and middle-income countries, we will not deliver the change at scale needed across the financial system globally. A transformational shift in how we think about capital, the role of capital in society, and the private sector is needed.
In this special fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes the Director of UNDP’s Sustainable Finance Hub, Marcos Neto, to discuss the innovative instruments for attracting and disbursing significantly greater amounts of impact capital and exponentially growing the business/finance sector’s social and environmental impact.
We will discuss, among other topics:
Marcos Athias Neto joined UNDP in February 2013 and has since led UNDP’s global work on private sector development and foundations, first at UNDP’s headquarters in New York and then, from November 2014, as head of the Istanbul International Center for Private Sector in Development (IICPSD). In April 2019, Marcos returned to New York to lead the establishment and management of UNDP’s new Finance Sector Hub.
Marcos led the development of UNDP’s new private sector strategy and its offers on SDG Finance. He co-chairs the executive boards of the Business Call To Action and the Connecting Business Initiative. Apart from his role at UNDP, Marcos also serves on the Supervisory Boards of CARE International and the Museum of Tomorrow International.
Over the past 25 years, Marcos has been a leader in sustainable development, poverty eradication and multi-stakeholder partnership building. He is a passionate advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to joining UNDP, Marcos spent 17 years at CARE International. During his tenure at CARE International, Marcos served in numerous roles including Regional Manager for Asia and Latin America at CARE UK, Executive Director of CARE Brasil, and Program Director in Central America.
Marcos has lived and worked in Central and South America, Europe and the United States and has also worked in Asia, Middle East and Africa. He is a lawyer by training, with a Master of Laws from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. Marcos is married and has two children.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
The Resilience Imperative: Innovating and Investing Like Our Future Depends on It
Today, there are many important global issues, including the ongoing war in Ukraine and COVID, which vie for our attention. But we cannot afford to take our eyes off the threat of global warming. Everything that we know and love depends on collective climate action.
Climate-related disasters, spurred on by rising emissions, are growing in frequency, severity, and scale, reaching ominous and unprecedented proportions around the world. Epic disasters, damages, and losses will define the 21st century unless we invest in climate resilience – now. Yet, one of the biggest challenges we face is how to make our communities more resilient. Real resilience is based in coordinated community action that is backed by data and analytics. To get there, we need investment in climate resilience efforts that will prepare society and the economy to respond and recover from the effects of climate change.
Today, efforts to increase resilience in communities are fragmented, especially so in frontline communities and contested environments. This lack of integration and information coordination across the various actors and agents necessary to stabilize communities is exacerbated by 1) a failure to address the communities’ inability to properly absorb capital (both human and financial), and 2) by a lack of innovation in exploring ways to invest more appropriately in the vanguard communities that bear the first and worst of climate change.
In this live webinar and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Green Jobs Machine co-founder & CEO Sharron McPherson to discuss the resilience imperative and how impact investors and entrepreneurs can effectively tackle the biggest social and environmental challenge of the century.
A reformed investment banker and Wall Street attorney, Sharron McPherson is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Green Jobs Machine, a resilience tech company committed to helping communities globally thrive in adverse climate conditions. She is a leading expert on the impact of advancing technologies that drive sustainable growth and development. Sharron is co-founder and Former CEO of one of Africa’s largest women’s infrastructure investment groups, the WINDE Consortium (Women in Infrastructure Development & Energy). She is a founding director of Singularity University South Africa and is a former Executive Director of the Centre for Disruptive Technologies, a “think & do” tank based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her life’s passion is to measurably help improve the lives of a billion people by reimaging how we leverage advancing technologies to unlock a better world.
An accomplished public speaker, moderator, and published author with a lifetime interest in building better communities through social impact investing, Sharron has addressed a wide range of audiences, including TED and the World Economic Forum.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Join us for a Deep Dive with IE Correspondent Christian Kingombe, author of the IE Magazine article Faith and the Future of Impact Investing, and three expert practiioners in the field of faith-based investing — Nicoleta Acatinei, Guillaume d’Alançon, and Xavier Heude.
Nicoleta Acatrinei is an economist and started her career in banking. The reality of the business world forced her to inquire about the relevance of the assumption of the egoistic nature of homo oeconomicus. This research question became the cornerstone of her academic trajectory covering fields as theology, anthropology, moral decision making and work psychology. She received her Ph.D. in 2014 from Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), Switzerland, entitled Work motivation and pro-social behavior in the delivery of public services: theoretical and empirical insights (free download, published in 2016, Switzerland). She had been principal investigator and co-principal investigator of research projects on faith at work at Princeton University. She has been developing research and gave conferences on topics such as sustainable entrepreneurship, impact investing, Faith-based impact investing, sustainable development, etc. She has authored books, book chapters and journal articles, including: Saint John Chrysostom and Homo oeconomicus (2008); Let’s talk about money, let’s talk about human nature (2007); The determinants of work motivation in the delivery of public services: the case of the Swiss education sector (2015); and Perspectives of Saint John Chrysostom for the VUCA world. An integrative mindfulness program to cope with managerial challenges in a VUCA world.
Guillaume d’Alançon is married and the father of five children. After two years in human resources and six years in civil service responsible for culture and relations with the population, he spent eleven years leading a diocesan office in France. A frequent commentator and author on ethical and social issues, he has appeared in print, radio and television. In 2015, he founded LIFE-Europe, an association which connects professionals and volunteers to families and individuals facing difficulties through a network of family orientation centers, the “Accueil Louis et Zélie.” He joined Aliter Invest in 2019.
Xavier Heude used to work in the banking industry for almost 20 years until he decided to leave and co-found BACKBONE, a company specializing in the origination of SME-financing oportunities in developing and emerging countries. The intention is to contribute to protect human dignity through the financial support to SMEs that provide essential products and services to the population in need. Investment focus is : food, education, medical care and social inclusion.
Christian Kingombe attended Roman-Catholic primary and secondary schools before completing his BSc., MSc. and PHD in economics. He is Managing Partner of the 4IP Group LLC, an Impact Investing Advisory Boutique, which he co-founded in 2017 after working for a number of International Organizations, Think Tanks, and the African Development Bank. He is also the GP of a Tech Impact VCF named Invisible Heart Ventures based on ethical principles.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the author(s) and/or subjects of a Magazine article and our members. Be sure to read the article in question and come bearing questions!
Join us for a Deep Dive with Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber, co-authors of the IE Magazine article, The Impact of Diversity on the Global Economy. The article is adapted from the authors’ forthcoming book, The XX Edge: Unlocking Higher Returns and Lower Risk, to be published by Worth Books / Forefront Books on June 21, 2022. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book benefits Women of the World Endowment and Tara Health Foundation.
Deep Dives are hour-long Zoom Meetings: Live Q&A Sessions (as opposed to our Zoom Webinars, where the audience is in View-Only Mode) between the author(s) or subjects of a Magazine article and our members. Be sure to read the article in question and come bearing questions!
Patience Marime-Ball has more than two and a half decades of investment experience across capital markets and is widely recognized for using the levers of finance to innovate pathways for creating a more equal world. Patience has led many “firsts” in the investing space; she developed the Banking on Women platform at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and was responsible for co-designing IFC’s Global Trade Liquidity Program, as well as the first-ever gender bond issued on the Uridashi market. As the founder and CEO of Women of the World Endowment, an investment nonprofit focused on gender intersectional investing, and most recently, the co-author of her new book The XX Edge: Unlocking Higher Returns and Lower Risk, Patience actively drives forward a capital system that is more inclusive. Patience is a non-executive Board member for MIO Partners and Intelligent Medicine Acquisition Corp (Nasdaq: IQMD). She serves as a member of multiple advisory boards including Emerging Sun LLC, a company she co-founded in 2005.
Ruth Shaber, MD, is an innovator and changemaker on a mission to change the face of finance. As the founder and president of Tara Health Foundation, which promotes health, well-being, and opportunity for women and girls through innovative evidence-informed programs, the co-founder and board chair of Rhia Ventures, a group of foundations and investors that collaborate to bring new types of capital and enterprise to the field of reproductive health in the U.S., and now, as the co-author of her new book The XX Edge: Unlocking Higher Returns and Lower Risk, Ruth’s entire career has been dedicated to pushing for change. She had a robust career as an obstetrician and gynecologist and executive at Kaiser Permanente where she founded the Women’s Health Research Institute. She serves as a board member at the Women of World Endowment and Toniic, and Ruth was recognized as a Forbes 2020 Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit—and Pushing for Change for her contributions to the field of impact investing.
In her recent article for Impact Entrepreneur Magazine, Deb Nelson, founder and executive director of the Just Economy Institute, writes, “Our culture encourages excessive consumption, financial systems were designed to be complicated, and money myths are hard to escape”.
Nelson goes on to deconstruct several deeply seated myths about capital and wealth, including:
In this Luminarias live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker explores with Deb Nelson these five money myths and why it is important to debunk them. She will offer examples of “financial activists” that are “shifting the flow of capital and power” to advance sustainability goals and build the impact economy.
Luminarias is a live video webinar series featuring the leading lights in impact investing and entrepreneurship.
Deb Nelson is Executive Director of the Just Economy Institute. She launched the Just Economy Institute in 2021 to train and support financial activists who are shifting the flow of capital and power to solve social and environmental problems. Her leadership draws on more than two decades of work with social entrepreneurs, impact investors and donors to build the networks and structures needed to create positive systems change.
She developed and incubated the Just Economy Institute, formerly the Integrated Capital Institute, for five years as vice president of client and community engagement at RSF Social Finance, from 2016 to early 2021. Her initiatives there also included launching the impact sector’s first Women’s Capital Collaborative in 2016. The fund provided integrated capital—loans, grants and other forms of financing and support—for women-led social enterprises that serve women and girls.
Prior to joining RSF, Nelson was executive director of Social Venture Network for 15 years, leading a community of over 500 mission-driven entrepreneurs, business leaders and investors dedicated to using business for social and environmental good. The organization merged with the American Sustainable Business Council in 2021 to form the American Sustainable Business Network, a movement builder working with companies, investors and policymakers.
Nelson is a pragmatic idealist. Her social conscience blossomed early—she marched for the Equal Rights Amendment as a 12-year-old and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon—and she has earned recognition for her effectiveness. Nelson was named a 2019 “World-Changing Woman” by Conscious Company magazine for her pioneering work advancing economic justice, women’s rights and diversity in leadership. In 2015, Real Leaders magazine named her one of 100 Visionary Leaders. She has written for publications including Worth, See Change and TriplePundit, was quoted in Newsweek and The New York Times, and has spoken at the White House, SOCAP, TEDx Presidio and other events.
Nelson is a leading voice on how to change the way our economy works—and whom it works for. She is an articulate source on the growing movement of financial activists, what it will take to create an economy that serves all people and the planet, how to build high-impact collaborative programs, why we need more women in positions of power and influence, and capital strategies that help social enterprises grow. She resides in San Francisco and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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 publishes Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. 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, and the author of numerous articles on entrepreneurship and impact investing.
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