The Brief

ImpactAlpha Latin America: Potencia Ventures’ market-building power in Brazil

ImpactAlpha · May 7, 2026
Credit: Bianca Neves on Unsplash

Saludos, Agents of Impact! 

In this month’s newsletter:

  • Potencia Ventures’ market-building power in Brazil
  • Restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Forest
  • Building catalytic capital ecosystems 

Strength and capacity: Planting the seeds of potência in Brazil’s impact investing ecosystem. Kelly Michel and Daniel Izzo were pretty lonely as impact investors in 2009, when they helped launch Vox Capital as one of Brazil’s first impact funds. The pair have since watched Brazil’s impact ecosystem grow into a $280 billion market, with dozens of impact fund managers, and investments in everything from financial services to small businesses to forest restoration to carbon sequestration. “In the future, investing without thinking about impact is going to be as crazy as smoking in a restaurant,” predicts Izzo, who manages about $250 million in assets and seven funds covering  nature-based solutions, venture capital, private credit, real assets and public equities.

  • Wealth networks. For years, it was impact investing that was the crazy idea for many investors, Michel recalls. The American, who lived in Brazil in the early aughts, anchored Vox through Potencia Ventures, an endowment she set up in 2002 to nurture impact ecosystem building. Michel recalls thinking that “using business to solve social issues seemed practical: you could reinvest profits in the business, and you could improve your offering based on market feedback.” She helped pull together capital for Vox’s first fund from “networks of very wealthy people who wanted to do good but who also wanted to do it differently from their parents,” she tells ImpactAlpha. “They were curious about harnessing business principles to improve people’s lives. Their willingness to take early risks made a real difference.”
  • Market building. Potencia has invested in more than 50 impact funds from emerging managers in Latin America and the US, including Amplifica Capital, Village Capital, Liv Capital and IThink VC, and more than 30 social enterprises. In addition to Vox, Potencia’s other early project in Brazil was Artemisia, an accelerator that has supported nearly 1,000 social enterprises in the country, such as Geekie, an adaptive learning platform that has reached millions of students, and Hand Talk, a sign language translation app. Many impact fund managers and entrepreneurs in Brazil credit Michel and Potencia for being among the first to “bring awareness to impact investing in Brazil,” says Vitoria Junqueria of Aliança pelo Impacto, Brazil’s national advisory board for impact investing.
  • Impact frontier. In its early years, Potencia focused on nurturing emerging impact fund managers. Managers Potencia has backed are now raising their third, fourth and fifth funds. Education and workforce development looked to be the new impact frontiers to nurture in Brazil and the broader Americas. “Very little [impact] funding has gone to higher education and K-12 initiatives, where you can have the highest impact,” says Ana Maria Aristizabal, who heads up the strategy for Potencia. The organization has backed education-focused fund managers investing in Latin America and the US, including Chingona Ventures, Rethink Education and Roble Ventures. Potencia has made direct investments in companies like Letrus, a writing platform for Brazil’s public school students. And it runs an accelerator called Potencia UP to build the investable pipeline. Opportunities in the AI age are rolling in fast, says Aristizabal. “There is a huge window of opportunity coming, if the right founders can seize it.”
  • Keep reading, “Strength and capacity: Planting the seeds of potência  in Brazil’s impact investing ecosystem,” by Erik Stein.

Dealflow: Conservation Finance

Tree+ receives $8 million from BNDES for reforestation in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest in Brazil is one of the richest biomes in the country. It is also one of the most degraded. Nearly 88% of its original vegetation has been destroyed or degraded by agriculture and other human activity. Rio de Janeiro-based restoration company Tree Agroflorestal is helping to restore some 37,000 acres. Last week, the company, which goes by Tree+, received $8 million from Brazil’s development bank BNDES, representing the first tranche of a roughly $31 million commitment made by the bank in February. Tree+ has developed and managed 5,000 acres of ecosystem restoration projects. It will use the capital to reconnect fragmented Atlantic Forest patches using native trees, improve soil and water health, and develop carbon credits. The project, says BNDES’ Aloizio Mercadante, “is Brazil showing that it is possible to restore the planet and develop a green economy.” 

  • Private capital. The Tree+ project is part of BNDES Florestas, a restoration initiative that has mobilized seven billion Brazilian reais ($1.4 billion) since 2023 to plant nearly 300 million trees and support 70,000 green jobs. Atlantic Forest projects have also secured private capital. Last year, software giant Salesforce, Dutch beer maker Heineken and others joined the Atlantic Forest Alliance, a business coalition committed to restoring 12,400 acres by 2030. Brazil-based Symbiosis Investimentos, another restoration project developer, raised funding in 2021 from the $200 million Restore Fund, launched by Apple, Conservation International and Goldman Sachs. 

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Vox Capital invested 10.8 million reais ($2.2 million) in rapid soil diagnostic startup Agrorobótica. (Startups) 
  • Brazil-based Hiker Ventures launched its second fund, which will invest in fewer tech startups and more “real economy” companies. (Pipeline)
  • Chilean small business lender Blanco raised $2 million from more than 160 investors on the crowdfunding platform Broota to ramp up lending to small businesses. (Latam Republic)

Impact Voices: Catalytic Capital

Latin America needs catalytic investors who can play the role of ‘market architect.’ Many of Latin America’s impact companies that could one day be commercial opportunities “remain at an early stage, operating in fragmented markets with limited infrastructure and constrained access to finance,” writes Catalina Herrera of Latimpacto. Investors’ quest for commercial returns in impact deals only deepens the need for catalytic capital. In a guest post, Herrera highlights cases in which catalytic impact investors are serving as “market architects” by seeding intermediaries, absorbing first-loss risk, and signaling deal quality to other investors. “The most effective catalytic deployments build the conditions for future capital to flow with less friction and greater scale,” Herrera says.

  • Role models. In Guatemala, Switzerland-based Argidius Foundation invested $750,000 in the nonprofit Alterna to spur local lenders to support businesses that are smaller than their usual clients. IDB Lab came in with $500,000 in co-financing. The capital incubated two loan facilities that have deployed $2.8 million to more than 70 businesses. In Brazil, Estímulo launched the country’s first climate emergency fund for small businesses just days after the catastrophic Rio Grande do Sul floods in 2024. Instituto Ling anchored the facility, bringing along Itaú Unibanco, Banrisul and wealthy families. The fund reached nearly 800 businesses and protected nearly 10,000 jobs. In Colombia, Fondo Acción developed Fondo de Inversiones Misionales de Impacto, an early-stage impact fund that also supports governance, impact measurement and investor connections. Says Herrera, “The challenge ahead is not only to increase the volume of catalytic capital but to build the infrastructure that allows it to flow effectively.”
  • Keep reading, “Catalytic capital in Latin America: From isolated wins to market architecture,” by Latimpacto’s Catalina Herrera.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha Latin America partner events:

Nonprofit Propel announced the ninth cohort of its Propel Fellowship, which supports social impact leaders across Latin America with technology, mentorship and ecosystem connections… WRI México seeks a climate finance coordinator in Mexico City… EDF Power Solutions has an opening for a financial structuring manager in Rio de Janeiro… CGN Brasil is looking for an energy transition specialist in São Paulo… iGravity seeks an advisory fellow in Bogotá for a six-month blended finance engagement. 

ThirdWay Partners is hiring an associate in Bogotá for a new Latin America climate fund… Upwell, a three-month venture program for ocean-focused startups in Latin America and the Caribbean, is accepting applications until Friday, May 15… The ANDE and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, or CAF,  are still surveying impact investors across Latin America to size and map the ecosystem.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– May 7, 2026