The Brief

The Week in impact investing: Blueprints for prosperity

ImpactAlpha ¡ July 17, 2026

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

In today’s Brief:

  • How-tos on refugee entrepreneurship, secondary markets and faith-based investing
  • Podcasts: Agents of Impact John Kluge and Christine Mahoney 
  • The Call: Faith-aligned investors back ‘human flourishing’

🗣 Hot ticket. Brooklyn rapper-turned-business mogul Jay-Z last weekend returned to Yankee Stadium to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of “The Blueprint”. More than a landmark album, “The Blueprint” became shorthand for Jay-Z’s larger playbook, turning the hustle of the Marcy Projects into cultural influence, business ownership and generational wealth. Agents of Impact are writing playbooks of their own, including a “blueprint for belonging” by John Kluge and Christine Mahoney of the Refugee Investment Network (listen to our podcast conversation). In an exclusive excerpt from their new book, the duo offer eight strategies to support forcibly displaced refugees as both an economic opportunity and humanitarian imperative. 

In Africa and Nepal, the blockchain venture Kula is demonstrating how to “tokenize” community-led governance of the local development projects to raise capital from retail investors, as Lucy Ngige reported. Capshift’s Haley Aubuchon-Jones offered a framework for healthcare investing. And faith-based investors are developing toolkits, frameworks and a “center of excellence” to help religious institutions invest their capital for greater impact, as we explored on this week’s Call (see below). In a guest post, HalalWallet’s Kyle Natter suggests Islamic finance may already provide the blueprint.

Other solutions are more emergent. With exits scarce, limited partners looking for liquidity are meeting other LPs looking for discounts in the budding impact secondaries market, as Amy Cortese reported. Anita Foster Washington, a data fellow at ImpactAlpha, offered alternatives to the new “Trump accounts” for parents looking for values-aligned investment options. And Jessica Pothering dug into sustainable cooling and found CoolPact Capital in India, one of the few funds dedicated to such technologies for climate adaptation. India, she reported, may provide a valuable blueprint for cities in Europe and North America waking up to our hot (and smoky) future. Stay cool! – David Bank and Dennis Price

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Cooltech investors seek sustainable solutions to help billions of people beat the heat; the impact LPs buying and selling stakes in the secondaries market; and, highlights of this week’s Call, featuring faith-aligned investors who want to be known for what they are for, not just what they’re against.

🦸 Agents of Impact: The economic case for investing in refugee entrepreneurs. Given the chance to work, build businesses and access capital, displaced people are a boon for local economies, say Christine Mahoney and John Kluge of the Refugee Investment Network. Their new book, “Banking on Belonging: Why Investing in Refugee Entrepreneurs Benefits Everyone,” makes the case that the global refugee crisis is an overlooked opportunity for impact investors. “When governments create policy that’s a bit more welcoming, the economic returns happen almost simultaneously,” says Mahoney.

The Week’s Call

Helping faith-aligned investors direct their assets toward ‘human flourishing’ (video). Every Sunday, the Pope appears at a window above St. Peter’s Square to preach on peace, the poor, the care of creation and to pray the Angelus. Three floors below sits the office of the president of Vatican Bank. “On Monday morning, the team would come in and do exactly the contrary in the investments we made,” recalls Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, who took over leadership of the bank in 2014. Over the following decade, de Franssu led an effort to align the Vatican Bank’s investments with Catholic social teaching. Since leaving the bank earlier this year, he has been advocating for broader adoption of faith-aligned investing across religious institutions. “If the faiths collectively stand up to the challenge, we can certainly have a massive impact for the common good,” de Franssu said. “There is more that unites us than [sets] us apart.”

  • Center of excellence. On ImpactAlpha’s Agents of Impact Call this week, de Franssu joined Sue Ernster of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, John Coleman of Sovereign’s Capital, and Terry Keeley of Impact Evaluation Lab to explore what it would take to build a stronger ecosystem for faith-aligned investing. With de Franssu, Keeley participated in the “Faith in the Common Good” convening in April, organized by FaithInvest, with representatives from a dozen religious traditions, including Christian, Muslim and Hindu leaders, at Collège des Bernardins in Paris. Quoting interfaith leader Martin Palmer, Keeley asked: “How can men and women of faith be known through their finances by what they’re for, rather than what they’re against?” With Jim Sorenson of the Sorenson Impact Foundation, Keeley co-authored “A world made new,” as well as a recent guest post on ImpactAlpha, “How faith-based investing could and should become more impactful.”
  • Truth and healing. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration screens investments against Catholic social teaching and sources investments and diligence partners through Charism Capital and the Catholic Impact Investing Collaborative. Ernster said the congregation has also leaned into what it calls “truth and healing.” The order had administered St. Mary’s, a boarding school for Native Americans, until 1969. The sisters have acknowledged the school’s role in the trauma experienced by Native communities. That history shaped the order’s disposition of a retreat center on land sacred to the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The sisters transferred it to the tribe last October for just $30,000, equal to the price the order paid in 1966 and representing about 1% of its market value. “This is what we could do to make a difference and break the trauma,” Ernster said.
  • Keep reading, “Helping faith-aligned investors direct their assets toward ‘human flourishing’,” by Erik Stein. Watch the full video replay. 

The Week’s Dealflow, 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. And catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

Amit Bouri will step down as CEO of the Global Impact Investing Network at the end of the year. He helped found the impact network in 2009 and has served as its CEO for more than a decade… Dalberg’s Kusi Hornberger, a long-time contributor to ImpactAlpha, is leaving the consulting firm to join IDB Lab as chief strategy officer.

Incofin Investment Management promoted Aparna Pittie to partner and fund manager of the Water Access Acceleration Fund… Norfund promoted Naana Winful Fynn to executive vice president for financial inclusion… The International Finance Corp. appointed Olivier Buyoya as division director for Nigeria and Central Africa… Alex Kuprasov stepped down as New Forests’ associate director of investments.

Community Preservation Corp. welcomed Kristen Fontana as head of capital strategies, Rachel Grossman as head of permanent mortgage lending and capital solutions, Doug Stevinson as deputy general counsel, and Serge Suponitskiy as chief information officer… Norfund promoted Naana Winful Fynn as executive vice president of financial inclusion.

Boston Impact Initiative tapped Brian Mbuya, previously with Samawati Capital Partners, as an impact investment associate… Timothy Cho was promoted to principal at Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– July 17, 2026