Hi there, Agent of Impact! The beat rolls on. This week, my colleague Lucy Ngige is at the AVPA conference in Nairobi and Zuleyma Bebell will be in San Jose, Costa Rica for FLII Central America and the Caribbean. Say hi!
🔌 PluggedIn: How BIPOC designers are disrupting fast fashion with sustainable luxury. Join ImpactAlpha contributing editor Sherrell Dorsey, in conversation with Felita Harris, a former Saks and LVMH executive and current executive director of RAISEFashion, and designer Jacques Agbobly, to explore how the luxury sector is innovating in waste reduction, equity and inclusion. RSVP for the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube, this Thursday, Nov. 7, at 9am PT / 12pm ET.
🎉 Final SOCAP special-offer (just for you). Check out our dispatch from SOCAP – and grab 75% off an ImpactAlpha subscription.
In this week’s Open:
- $18.3 billion in blended climate finance
- SOCAP’s ‘best dressed’
- Podcasts: On-the-ground at SOCAP
- Deal Spotlight: Guaranteeing community climate lending
Let’s jump in. – Dennis Price
Must-reads on ImpactAlpha
- Climate finance. “Private investors drive blended climate finance to record $18.3 billion,” by Jessica Pothering,and “Global wealthy family offices are warming up to climate investment (Q&A),” by Lynnley Browning.
- Sustainable agriculture. “Failure of a California almond grower shows the unsustainability of some sustainable agriculture investments,” by Imogen Rose-Smith, and “How concentrated ownership in the food system increases risk – and what we can do about it,” by RE•Leverage Consulting’s Arianna Muirow and As You Sow’s Andrew Behar.
- Catalytic capital. “Harnessing global momentum for catalytic capital,” by MacArthur Foundation’s Urmi Sengupta, and “Why Ceniarth is providing grant funding to the Catalytic Capital Consortium,” by Ceniarth’s Diane Isenberg and Greg Neichin.
- Latin America. “Putting Central America, and the Caribbean, on the impact investing map,” by Jessica Pothering, which led the latest “ImpactAlpha Latin America” newsletter.
Agents of Impact
💃 SOCAP’s ‘best dressed’ choose substance and style
At this year’s SOCAP gathering in San Francisco, attendees were asked to bring their authentic selves to the annual impact investing conference. That extended to their sartorial style. ImpactAlpha again fanned out across the hallways and gardens of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to spot some of the coolest fits, on the theory that appearances can reflect leadership and optimism (thank you, Nicole Lasasso and Lindsay Smalling for helping us scout!). We asked SOCAP’s Best Dressed what they are most excited about now and for the future. Meriko Kawashima (at left), co-founder of Game the System, is driven by making, acquiring and developing games that encourage transformation in systems that need reimagining.
- Take a look at SOCAP’s Best Dressed, by ImpactAlpha’s Zuleyma Bebell.
🏃🏽♀️ On the move
- Antony Bugg-Levine stepped down as president of Lafayette Square Institute to create an impact investing advisory practice at Bugg-Levine Inc., the consulting firm his wife, Ahadi Bugg-Levine, launched in 2010.
- Transform Finance recruited Susan Ozawa Perez, formerly with Impact Investors, as a lead researcher.
- Carissa Sanchez, a former consultant with Boston Consulting Group, joined Raven Indigenous Capital Partners as an investment associate.
The Week’s Podcast
🎧 This Week in Impact: Systemic change at SOCAP
Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: The ImpactAlpha team was at the SOCAP conference in SF, where the focus was on systemic change; how private investors are pouring more money into blended climate finance transactions; and, why global family offices are slowly warming up to climate investments.
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.
Deal Spotlight
💰 Bank of America offers guarantees to help community lenders leverage green funding
How do you turn $27 billion into nearly $190 billion? In the case of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, by leveraging the $27 billion in federal grants for green lending with seven times that amount of private capital. The community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, and green banks that are charged with implementing the GGRF program are scrambling to line up projects and co-investors. Now is the perfect time for private investment dollars to work alongside community green lenders, Bank of America’s Dan Letendre told attendees at Opportunity Finance Network’s 40th annual gathering in Los Angeles last week. CDFIs’ net asset ratios “are at all time highs in our history,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to leverage that with a significant infusion of low-cost private sector capital.”
- Keep reading, and catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting on ImpactAlpha.
Get in the Game
💼 Step up
- Confluence Philanthropy is hiring a climate solutions program director in New York.
- New Majority Capital is looking for an acquisitions deal analyst in Boston.
- Impact Shakers is on the hunt for an impact investment manager.
Sign up to Impact Careers get the top impact investing job listings and internships right in your inbox. Register for free.
🤝 Meet up
Don’t miss these upcoming impact investing events:
- November 5-7: FLII CA&C (Costa Rica)
- November 13-15: European Microfinance Week 2024 (Luxembourg)
Subscribe (with 75% off) to access substantial discounts on partner events.
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