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In this week’s Open:
- Agents of Impact claim their agency in the age of AI
- Podcasts: Smitha Das, Zuleyma Bebell and David Bank
- The Call: Building the back office for emerging fund managers
- Remembering Greg Krupa
Let’s jump in. – Dennis Price
Must-Reads on ImpactAlpha
- Impact investors seek to assert human agency over the future of AI. As AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio has famously observed, there’s more regulation of a sandwich in New York City than there is of the emergent power of artificial intelligence. David Bank and I looked into how impact investors are playing a role in funding ‘Good AI,’ as well as letting their voices be heard in the debate over how to regulate artificial intelligence. Check it out.
- Dear Shareholders: Your votes and your voice are needed more than ever. Just when major companies appeared to be taking shareholders’ concerns more seriously, the Securities and Exchange Commission is giving corporations license to blow them off. “The fundamental tenet of capitalism has not changed. When you own a share of a company, you own a piece of that enterprise,” As You Sow’s Andy Behar writes in a letter to shareholders on ImpactAlpha. “And with that ownership comes a basic property right – the right to ask questions about material risks and opportunities that affect long-term value.” Hear him out.
- Why has it been so hard to crack the code on clean cooking solutions? Two companies, two countries, two carbon deals. Two very different outcomes. Jessica Pothering reports on the divergent stories of Burn Manufacturing, a Nairobi-based maker of “clean cooking technologies,” and Koko Networks, another Nairobi-based clean cooking company that had sold its biofuel stoves to more than 1.3 million households in Kenya, before being forced to shutter when a carbon deal with the Kenyan government fell apart. Read on.
Sponsored by JPMorganChase
Mobilizing capital for sustainable growth: How to turn ambition into investable pipelines
Across emerging markets, investable opportunities are coming up in energy access, infrastructure modernization, food systems improvement and financial inclusion. Allocators want to tap into those opportunities, but too often, deals fall short of being inked. “I see the solutions as practical rather than philosophical,” JPMorganChase’s Faheen Allibhoy writes on ImpactAlpha. “Mobilization is a discipline: structuring risk so institutional capital can participate; partnering with multilaterals and development institutions to derisk what markets can’t price efficiently; and improving impact transparency so investors can underwrite outcomes with confidence.”
- Keep reading, “Mobilizing capital for sustainable growth: How to turn ambition into investable pipelines,” by Faheen Allibhoy.
Agents of Impact
💔 Remembering Greg Krupa, 1987-2026
Greg Krupa was larger than life. Anyone who knew him felt the energy he brought into every room – positive, radiant, impossible to miss. He spoke his mind, always. And in a space where we need people to actually move things forward, he did. He spent his life showing up for Latin America’s hardest to reach communities.
- Keep reading, “Remembering Greg Krupa,” by Erik Stein.
🏃 On the move
- Jory Cohen stepped down as Inspirit Foundation’s director of finance and impact investment to launch Silk Pin Capital, an impact investing consulting firm.
- Laurie Felker Jones, former fellow at the Newton Venture Program,joined FSE Group as an investment manager.
- Strada Education Foundation promoted Mike Hanagan to director of strategic investments.
The Week’s Podcasts
🎧 This Week in Impact
Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Why shareholders are fighting for their right to vote their proxies; how impact investors are seeking to assert human agency over the future of AI; and can nonprofit mergers help scale the impact of impact investing field-builders?
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
🦸 Agents of Impact: World Education Services aligns its assets with immigrants’ success
World Education Services has spent half a century helping immigrants and international students get their educational and professional credentials recognized in their new countries. That social enterprise became a successful business, amassing a nine figure balance sheet. Now WES is investing its assets in a diverse portfolio of investments intended to extend its mission of supporting immigrants.“Given our financial independence, given our set of resources, WES, if anything, is really looking to double down on our commitments and stay in solidarity with our communities,” WES’s Smitha Das says on the latest Agents of Impact podcast.
👩🏫 Women Changing Finance: How a media company is shaping the future of finance
ImpactAlpha’s Zuleyma Bebell joins host Krisztina Tora to explore how stories, data and community are shaping the future of finance. Zuleyma and Krisztina look back on ImpactAlpha’s decade-long journey from scrappy media startup to one of the field’s leading voices in spotting trends, identifying leaders and connecting Agents of Impact.
The Week’s Call
📋 Emerging fund managers’ back office may be the unsung hero of impact investing (video)
A new generation of impact funds are being designed with governance, capital structures and operational systems in service of their values. As unglamorous as it sounds, the back-end infrastructure of their funds is key to translating their vision into a driver of impact. Back office tasks like fund administration, compliance and investor reporting may sound like the “boring” side of the work, said Steve Petsos of Broadstreet Impact Services, which co-hosted this week’s Agents of Impact Call, “but that operational side is just as important, in many ways, if you want to thrive.”
- Keep reading and watch the replay.
Get in the Game
💼 Step up
- Boston Impact Initiative seeks an impact investing associate in Boston.
- The Nature Conservancy is looking for a climate and renewable energy policy associate in Salt Lake City.
- Upaya Social Ventures is hiring a strategic giving lead in Seattle or remote in the US.
🤝 Meet up
- April 27-29: Mission Investors Exchange (Atlanta)
- May 13 – 14: Total Impact Summit (Philadelphia, PA)
- May 19 – 21: ReFed Food Waste Solutions Summit (Charlotte, NC)
- May 26-29: GLI Forum Latam (Lima, Peru)
- May 27 – 29: Katapult Future Fest (Amsterdam)
- June 1 – 5: Sustainable Finance Initiative’s Impact Week (Hong Kong)
- June 8-9: SuperReturn Energy Transition, Berlin.
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