The Brief

The Brief: Bringing voices of young people into youth mental health investments

ImpactAlpha · June 23, 2025

Greetings Agents of Impact!

Tomorrow’s Call: Policy action for shared prosperity. Led by Fran Seegull, the US Impact Investing Alliance is emphasizing opportunities for small policy wins in the current environment (see below). Join Mindset’s Heather Slavkin Corzo, Ceres’ Andrew Collier, Economic Innovation Group’s Catherine Lyons and Dafina Williams of Opportunity Finance Network, in conversation with Seegull and ImpactAlpha’s David Bank, tomorrow, Tuesday June 24, at 10am PT / 1pm ET. RSVP now.

In today’s Brief:

Hopelab’s upstream investments in youth mental health
Africa as a renewable energy powerhouse
Budderfly’s energy efficiency financing
Policy action for shared prosperity

Featured: Healthy Youth

Key to effective investments in youth mental health: Voices of young people (podcast). A flood of state and federal funding to address the rising rates of anxiety, depression and more serious mental illness among young people has spurred many youth mental health startups in the last few years. The next challenge for Hopelab, a nonprofit research and investment organization, is to mobilize financing for “upstream” interventions in the social fabric that could improve the mental health of today’s young people. Key to the success of both kinds of investments is authentic youth involvement, which can inform both the efficacy of the approaches and whether teenagers and young adults will take advantage of them. “We’re investing in companies that help young people with eating disorders, with moderate to severe anxiety, with a whole range of things that are really clinical in nature,” says Hopelab’s Margaret Laws on the latest episode of the Agents of Impact podcast. “But there are also some interventions that we want to look at upstream – things that help young people find purpose, that help young people feel like they’re contributing, that help them build connections and support and relationships.”

Youth playbook. Hopelab, which spun out of Omidyar Network in 2020, is leveraging its network of mental health-focused funders, researchers and organizations led by young people to find opportunities to invest in social connectedness and meaning. Hopelab, alongside philanthropic backers like Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s Archewell Foundation, have contributed more than $4.5 million since 2023 to the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund, which supports youth-led organizations in responsible tech and mental health. Through a partnership with Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving and youth engagement nonprofit In Tandem, Hopelab developed the “Youth voice playbook: Engaging youth in research,” a guide for how to include young people in research that affects them. “We get the benefit of learning from all of those organizations in the ways that AI can be used to improve access to services [for mental health] and wellbeing for their generation,” Laws says.
Treatment startups. “When the pandemic happened, it opened up a lot of opportunities for folks who were not in this space before to really start thinking deeply about solutions to youth mental health and wellbeing,” says Amy Green, who leads Hopelab’s research. Hopelab’s venture portfolio includes Texas-based Hazel Health, which partners with schools and parents to help students become more engaged in learning environments. Mightier in Boston offers games and activities to help children and young adolescents manage anger and ADHD. New York-based ReflexAI creates role-play simulations to prepare mental health professionals for suicide threats and other emergency situations. Brave in Miami provides virtual behavioral healthcare for adolescents on Medicaid. “We come in as a mission-first or impact-first funder,” Laws says. “When we’re evaluating companies, we’re evaluating to the extent to which we believe they can have an impact in key pieces of our mission, which are increasing access, convenience, accessibility and equity.”
Keep reading, “Key to effective investments in youth mental health: Voices of young people themselves,” by Roodgally Senatus and David Bank. Listen to David’s conversation with Hopelab’s Margaret Laws and Amy Green. Hopelab supports ImpactAlpha’s coverage of Healthy Youth.

Dealflow: Energy Transition

Octopus Energy Generation raises $60 million for clean energy in Africa. The investment arm of UK-based clean energy developer Octopus Energy Group is partnering with South Africa-based Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Managers to invest in clean energy projects on the continent. Octopus is looking to raise $250 million for rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and grid upgrades. “Africa is abundant with clean energy potential – enough to build the next-generation renewable powerhouse and a greener, fairer future fueled by sunshine and wind,” said Octopus’ Zoisa North-Bond. The partners did not disclose Octopus Energy Power Africa Fund’s early investors.

Family of funds. Octopus Energy Generation says it manages 11 funds that have mobilized £3 billion from institutional investors. Four of its funds are actively raising, including Luxembourg-domiciled Octopus Renewables Infrastructure SCSp, which was anchored by UK pension provider Nest. Octopus Energy Power Africa Fund is the renewable energy group’s first fund in Africa.

Africa portfolio. Octopus Energy Generation last year announced a partnership with actor Idris Elba to set up a wind farm in Sierra Leone. The project will engage local universities to train young people for the wind farm’s maintenance. Octopus Energy Group made a strategic investment in UK-based MOPO, which provides pay-per-use batteries for lighting and household appliances, as well as e-bike battery-swapping, in West Africa.

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Nuveen reups debt financing with energy services firm Budderfly. Connecticut-based Budderfly partners with commercial property owners and managers to make energy upgrades, install usage monitors and survey energy consumption. Its focus is helping businesses cut ambient energy waste, which is a major contributor to real estate’s hefty greenhouse gas emissions. “With any existing facility in the country – office buildings, restaurants, fitness centers, retail shops – there’s generally a 30% waste factor,” founder Al Subbloie told ImpactAlpha. Building owners and users often don’t understand what systems are the most energy intensive, or lack the capital to make necessary upgrades. “It’s really hard to track return on investment when the only source document you have to measure is the utility bill,” said Subbloie. Budderfly maps building’s energy use and covers upgrade costs, like new HVAC systems or solar panel installations, to spur businesses to reduce their carbon footprints. Then its software monitors all of a building’s energy systems on one dashboard. “It’s the difference between fragments and outcomes,” said Subbloie.

Investor interest. Budderfly’s core customers include restaurant chains, retail franchises and assisted living facilities. The company says it has helped customers avoid more than 220,000 million tons of CO2 emissions. The $100 million in debt financing comes from Nuveen’s Energy Infrastructure Credit facility and follows a $400 million debt round from Nuveen and Vantage Infrastructure last year. Budderfly has also raised $500 million in equity, bringing its total funding to date to more than $1 billion. Given the challenging fundraising environment, Subbloie said, “it’s clear validation of the importance of energy efficiency in the built environment.”
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

Berlin-based Ostrom, a subscription-based household energy provider that offers green energy plans, raised €20 million ($22.9 million) from Eneco Ventures, SE Ventures and others. (Tech.eu)

Wetility, a subscription-based rooftop solar provider in South Africa, raised 500 million rand ($27 million) in debt and equity from South African solar investor Jaltech. (Solar Quarter)

Somalia’s KIMS Microfinance received a $1 million loan from Acumen’s Hardest to Reach energy access initiative to expand off-grid solar financing for 17,000 people and more than 400 businesses. The loan was designed to be compliant with Islamic finance principles. (Acumen)

Finland-based Hailia, which upcycles fish parts that are typically wasted in seafood processing, secured €1.8 million ($2 million), backed by Finnish seafood processor Kalavapriikki. (EU-Startups)

The Call: Policy Corner

Laying the groundwork for shared prosperity with spirited defense and small policy wins. State legislatures in New York and New Jersey are following California by requiring corporations to disclose their carbon emissions and climate risks, possibly creating a de facto national standard. The US Senate appears likely to restore New Markets Tax Credits and make them permanent in the massive tax and budget bill now under consideration. And in dozens of states, including Georgia, Oklahoma and West Virginia, bills that would have prohibited the consideration of environment, social and governance factors in investment decision-making have been reversed, reformed, defeated or stalled, in some cases with the support of right-leaning taxpayer advocates. “Each one of these defensive pieces is a win. We are slowing them down,” says Andrew Collier, who heads the Freedom to Invest campaign for Ceres, the nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization. “As anti-ESG bills don’t get passed, we’re changing the narrative.”

Forward progress. Collier is joining tomorrow’s Agents of Impact Call, “Policy action for shared prosperity,” produced by ImpactAlpha with the US Impact Investing Alliance. Led by Fran Seegull, the Alliance is emphasizing the need for rapid response and spirited defense against attacks on sustainable finance and impact investing, as well as opportunities for small policy wins in the current environment. Mindset’s Heather Slavkin Corzo, who spent three years as policy director for the Securities and Exchange Commission, will trace prospects for longtime policy priorities, such as human capital management and climate-risk reporting. Opportunity Zones, which leverage capital-gains tax breaks for real estate and small business investments in low-income neighborhoods, appear poised to get permanent status. Catherine Lyons of Economic Innovation Group will point to research that Opportunity Zones roughly doubled the number of new housing units in designated zones between 2019 and 2024, at a low cost per unit to taxpayers. “We hear a lot of the critiques of this policy saying, ‘Well, it’s just incentivizing things that would have already happened anyway or in places that would have already received this investment.’ This essentially puts that argument to bed,” Lyons said.
Pushing back. Community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, are often the only lenders remaining in many communities, including in red states and districts. Bipartisan support was critical in bating back a March executive order to dismantle the Treasury Department’s CDFI Fund (for background see, “Threat to CDFI Fund gives community lenders a chance to flex bipartisan support”). The fund, budgeted at $324 million last year, catalyzes eight times that amount in private sector investments, according to advocates, who are fighting to maintain or increase the fund’s budget authorization, and to make sure existing funding is deployed, said Dafina Williams of Opportunity Finance Network, a network of leading CDFIs. Collier said state banking alliances, as well as taxpayer organizations such as Taxpayer Protection Alliance and National Taxpayers Union, have been helpful in pushing back on anti-ESG legislation that could raise costs for municipal bonds and other state financing mechanisms. Of more than 100 such bills introduced this year, less than a half-dozen have been signed into law. “The big success has been the pushback on this,” Collier says, “but the attack hasn’t slowed down at all.”
Keep reading, “Laying the groundwork for shared prosperity with spirited defense and small policy wins,” by David Bank. And RSVP for The Call, tomorrow, June 24, at 10am PT / 1pm ET. Catch up on all of ImpactAlpha’s policy coverage at Policy Corner, supported by the US Impact Investing Alliance.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Baltimore Development Corp. welcomes Otis Rolley, previously with Wells and Rockefeller foundations, as president and CEO… Ownership Works adds Maddy Banker, previously with US Impact Investing Alliance, as a marketing and communications senior associate… Social Finance promotes Erin Flaherty to communications coordinator… Capricorn Investment Group’s Kunle Apampa joins the Clara Lionel Foundation as a board member… JPMorgan Chase seeks a manager of impact finance and advisory for its business management team in New York.

Cboe Global Markets is looking for a community impact specialist… The Impact Venture is recruiting a cleantech venture capital fellow… The Social Impact Firm is on the hunt for a part-time development manager… PwC has an opening for a renewable energy tax manager in Indianapolis… Wellington Management is on the lookout for a private climate investing associate… Macquarie Group is hiring a vice president of green investments… LISC is searching for a community investment director in Oakland, Calif.