Agents of Impact | August 23, 2019

Follow the talent: Agents of Impact special report for Aug. 23

Dennis Price
ImpactAlpha Editor

Dennis Price

Greetings, Agents of Impact!

Welcome to ImpactAlpha’s weekly “follow the talent” roundup of impact investing career moves, job openings, events and opportunities. Help the growing ImpactAlpha community follow your talent: Send job moves, mandates, event announcements and other news to [email protected].

– Dennis Price, editorial director

Agent of Impact

Tala’s Shivani Siroya. A stint at the U.N. Population Fund exposed Tala founder and CEO Shivani Siroya to the realities of financial exclusion. She began making micro-loans of around $300 out of her own pocket to small and informal business owners. To decide who to lend to, she used “daily life” information from the people she had gotten to know. “The answer was easy in my mind, almost unconscious,” she says. “Mutual trust,” she decided, was the missing piece in the financial inclusion equation. This week, Tala scored $110 million in fresh funding to expand lending in India; it also operates in Kenya, Tanzania, the Philippines and Mexico and now serves more than four million customers (see, “Tala clinches $110 million for inclusive micro-lending and alt-credit scoring).

Tala’s “alternative” complements Kiva’s “systems” approach to bringing the unbanked into the formal financial sector. Indeed, Siroya’s early out-of-the-box thinking about what makes someone credit-worthy could ready millions of borrowers for formal financial services. Siroya’s path began in traditional banks like Credit Suisse and UBS. After her work with the population fund, Siroya launched the micro-lending platform in 2014, using data from potential borrowers Android devices as underwriting criteria. In the past year, Tala tripled its lending volume to $1 billion. “Our system is not all that different from a digital credit card or a working line of capital,” she says, “but for an untapped population.” – Jessica Pothering

Seize the opportunity

ImpactAlpha is hiring: Director of Growth. Hot business trend meets scalable media model. Our new Director of Growth will drive subscription marketing to grow recurring revenues so we can serve the growing community of Agents of Impact even better. Join ImpactAlpha’s team (and spread the word).

Bamboo Capital Partners is hiring an investment manager of energy access in Haiti to be based in Haiti or at Bamboo’s office in Bogota, Colombia… Hedge + Impact headhunting is looking to fill an impact investing role of head of southeast Asia debt origination for a tech-enabled lending client in Singapore… The Enza Capital team in Nairobi, Kenya seeks an investment analyst… The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment is recruiting candidates to fill three positions: NAB service manager, market development manager Asia and market development manager Africa… 

Omidyar Network’s education team is recruiting a global head of people and culture in Redwood City, Calif… Shell Foundation is looking for a regional manager for East Africa in Nairobi… AgDevCo is hiring an investment manager in Nairobi or London… Blue Haven Initiative seeks an operations assistant in Cambridge, Mass… Social Finance is hiring for five roles in Boston: director of social investment, director of advisor services, associate director of performance management and evaluation, associate director of investment management and an associate… 

Blue Haven Initiative launches a job board with openings at its portfolio companies, including M-Kopa Solar, Twiga Foods and CrossBoundaryShortlist, also in Blue Haven’s portfolio, is hiring a chief operating officer in Nairobi or Mumbai… US SIF is looking for an operations and membership services manager in Washington, DC.

Apply, respond, submit 

U.S. social ventures are encouraged to apply to Acumen Civic Accelerator’s future of work program.

Where to be

Join more than 100 institutional investors and asset owners at Phenix Capital’s Impact Summit France, Sept. 9 in Paris and Impact Summit America, Nov. 14 in New York… Marketing, capital, impact and marketplaces are on the agenda at Social Enterprise Alliance’s 2019 summit September 9 to 11 in Chicago.

That’s a wrap! Help the growing ImpactAlpha community follow your talent: Send your own job moves, new opportunities and event announcements to [email protected]