TGIF, Agents of Impact! We’re taking a Brief break for Monday’s US holiday. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, Feb. 18.
- Roundup: Long haul
- Agents of Impact: Brian Trelstad, Cynthia Muller and Kendall Bedford
- Spotlight: Pathways for US immigrants
🗣 Long haul. After a head-spinning three weeks, the contours of the new landscape are slowly coming into focus. For Agents of Impact, there will be daily and weekly battles, like this week’s efforts to protect lending from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for electric buses and trucks, school solar projects, energy efficiency retrofits, and other green community infrastructure. As Amy Cortese and I reported, courts will decide whether parking $20 billion at Citibank was a smart move to safeguard a generational opportunity to finance a just transition. Jessica Pothering highlighted efforts to rally private capital to make up for frozen, paused and cancelled public funds, like the new accelerator Human Planet, which aims to match investors with humanitarian projects to bridge the USAID funding gap. Shareholders and other stakeholders will try to stake out the business case for diversity and inclusion even as public policy reverses course, as Dennis Price explained. And, as Amy reported, there will be scrambled allegiances over issues like ending the tax break for “carried interest,” which could close a loophole for the rich, but also cripple many impact fund managers.
As we heard repeatedly this week, “The work goes on.” Local enclaves are nurturing new models and demonstrating possibilities for shared prosperity, as Roodgally Senatus documented in his profile of a strip mall in Portland that is helping neighborhood families build wealth and community ownership. In global supply chains, where forced labor remains distressingly common, investors are more important than ever in identifying abuse of low-wage migrants and pushing portfolio companies to disclose their “social audits,” good or bad, argued E. Benjamin Skinner of the nonprofit investigative group Transparentem. Monitoring impact is not an overhead burden, but “an important part of building a business and reaching the holy grail for any startup: product-market fit,” argue 60 Decibels’ Ellie Turner and Tom Adams, and Malika Anand of Catalyst Fund, who introduced a new design goal: “product-impact” fit.
Below, Amy profiles Cynthia Muller, Brian Trelstad and Kendall Bedford, who will be honored by Impact Capital Managers next month. There are many more such talented managers on The Liist, our newly upgraded database of impact fund managers who are actively raising capital. This month’s roundup from Jessica and Lucy Ngige highlights emerging managers forging ahead with inclusive and climate investment strategies. There has been a lot of loose talk about “creative destruction,” and the destruction is certainly ongoing. The creative solutions of Agents of Impact will be vital for the reconstruction ahead. – David Bank
The Week’s Podcast
🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: An innovative investment vehicle turns a strip mall in Portland into a community investment trust that’s helping local renters build family wealth; the Liist gets an upgrade to highlight impact fund managers who are actively raising; plus, why impact investors are split on President Trump’s proposal to axe the carried interest tax loophole for private equity fund managers.
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.
The Week’s Agents of Impact
Impact alpha fund managers chart a path through uncertain times. Eight years ago, about two dozen impact fund managers gathered at Harvard Business School to create a network for market-rate investment managers committed to positive social impact. Fund managers like DBL Partners, Bridges Fund Management and SJF Ventures didn’t quite fit in with either the impact-first or the purely returns-seeking asset management firms. Next month, Impact Capital Managers, an association of fund managers seeking “superior returns and meaningful impact,” will honor individuals that have been central to building the network, which has grown to more than 140 members with $70 billion in assets under management. Brian Trelstad, a partner with Bridges’ US Sustainable Growth Fund, helped catalyze ICM and other core institutions of impact investing. Cynthia Muller of the WK Kellogg Foundation was an early funder and a trailblazer in broadening the scope of impact investments. Kendall Bedford, an associate at SustainVC, won this year’s “emerging leader” award.
- Private capital for public good. Misperceptions around impact and financial performance have been put to rest by the track records of these early pioneers. The business case these managers helped build will be critical in navigating an uncertain and sometimes hostile new landscape. Impact Capital Managers’ members will converge on Capitol Hill to press their case ahead of the awards gala on Tuesday, March 18. Even in these uncertain times, “there are huge opportunities for private capital to step in and continue to finance solutions that really make a measurable difference in everyday people’s lives,” Trelstad tells ImpactAlpha.
- Business case for diversity. As director of mission investments at WK Kellogg Foundation, Muller has championed first-time fund managers such as VamosVentures, Founder’s First Capital Partners, and Harlem Capital Partners, all of which are diverse-led and focused. “It has been truly a gift watching and supporting each one of these general partners through their journeys,” she says. Muller is concerned with what she sees as a “dismantling” of much of the impact support system and urges impact professionals to separate the signal from the noise and find opportunities in the tumult. “It’s all about the business case,” she says. “And we have to adapt that voice into our work.”
- Creating the future. Bedford, an associate at SustainVC and a former ICM Mosaic fellow, started as an ecologist. “Over time, the conversation about climate just wasn’t enough,” she says. As a woman of color, “I wanted to start having more conversations about, ‘How can we help Americans that look like me, or who don’t have access to the same quality of resources, get those services?’” Her masters thesis at Wharton analyzed diversity in impact investing (impact firms scored better on gender than racial diversity, she says, though the methodology was imperfect). At SustainVC, she works on sourcing and vetting deals across the firm’s themes of climate and inclusive access to education, healthcare, finance and jobs. “The most important thing that I would advocate for right now is that we all keep on keeping on, doing the work that we’re proud of and we believe in,” she says. “We shouldn’t let any discouragement get in the way of creating the future that we want to see in the world. That’s why I’m happy to be involved in impact.”
- Keep reading, “Impact alpha fund managers chart a path through uncertain times,” by Amy Cortese on ImpactAlpha.
The Week’s Spotlight
Mobile Pathways raises $1 million for AI tools for US immigration attorneys. Immigration legal and advocacy groups in the US have had a lot more work to take on since President Donald Trump came back into office. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s social media pages have been repurposed to name and shame undocumented immigrants. San Francisco-based nonprofit Mobile Pathways is using artificial intelligence to help immigrants get access to reliable and timely legal assistance and representation. Its Pathfinder software provides immigration law firms and nonprofits with a case repository and automated status alerts for clients and their families. Pathfinder collects and analyzes government case information to provide, in under two minutes, a ready file of information that would otherwise take a paralegal or case worker up to an hour to assemble. “Pathfinder in about 90 seconds will tell you everything the US government knows” about an immigrant, Mobile Pathways’ Bartlomiej Jan Skorupa told ImpactAlpha. The tool is being used by hundreds of organizations in more than two dozen states; most of its users are based in California and Texas. GitLab Foundation, Firedoll Foundation, AlleyCorp and Fast Forward last week provided $1 million to accelerate the technology’s development and rollout.
- Security sensitivity. Skorupa, himself an immigrant to the US from Poland, recalls his family’s difficulties navigating the US’s complex immigration system. Detentions and deportations reached a 10-year peak last year under President Joe Biden. “You have to have an attorney,” Skorupa said, but two out of three immigrants in court can’t afford legal representation. Organizations like the San Francisco Bar Association’s Justice and Diversity Center send attorneys to volunteer at immigration court proceedings. “It’s like firefighting,” said Skorupa. “They’ve got five or 10 minutes to learn about [each case].” Mobile Pathways’ AI tool is free, but the organization first vets each attorney and organization, “making sure the people that get access to Pathfinder are acting in the best interest of immigrants,” Skorupa said. “We make it very hard to get into, and we keep the security, from a digital perspective, as tight as possible.”
- Time saving. Mobile Pathways has gone the difficult route of building most of its AI capabilities in-house. Pathfinder was co-designed with many of the organizations now using it. Their feedback: “This is amazing – and a little scary,” Skorupa said, adding, “That’s a healthy attitude.” Legal nonprofits need to integrate AI to speed up grant writing, legal briefs and other necessary, routine tasks. “Ultimately AI is a tool – and a very powerful one. How you wield it should be taken with great care.”
- Share this post, and catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.
The Week’s Talent and Jobs
💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.
Ninety One appointed Samantha Cleyn, previously with BMO Global Asset Management, as head of its institutional division in Canada… BMO Commercial Bank welcomed Taylor Sekhon, previously with Social Capital Partners, as employee ownership managing director… Vanina Farber of the International Institute for Management Development joined the Global Future Council on Innovative Financing for Nature and Climate… John Morton is stepping down in March as managing director and head of Americas at Pollination.
Sustainable Capital Advisors welcomed four research and analyst fellows: Georgetown University’s Manon Fuchs, Arizona State University’s Cody Miller, Duke University’s Keanu Valibia, and Alessandra Pelliccia of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business… HSBC selected Julian Wentzel to replace Celine Herweijer as chief sustainability officer… Azolla Ventures promoted Ally Harada to head of finance and operations.
Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation tapped Mandy Price, previously with Kanarys, as managing director… Former US Senator Joe Manchin has been named as an advisor to Apollo Global, including on energy markets, and will join the board of the firm’s retirement services unit, Athene Holding… Kiva recruited Beatriz Ospina, former head of international members and programs coordinator for Latimpacto, as investment manager… Anthony Bugg-Levine joined Axum as a part-time senior advisor.
That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend.
– Feb. 14, 2025
