Agents of Impact | July 19, 2019

Follow the Talent: ImpactAlpha’s ‘Agents of Impact’ Special Report for July 19

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 

Valerie Red-Horse Mohl of Social Venture Circle. Long before Valerie Red-Horse Mohl was raising and structuring billions in capital for tribal nations and managing a network of impact investors, she was in film school on scholarship at UCLA. When she answered a Drexel Burnham ad for a “Girl Friday,” a Mad Men-era term for an office helper, her prospective employer explained that his growing firm did leveraged finance and high yield bonds. “He was speaking Chinese to me,” recalls Red-Horse Mohl, who got the job anyway. Her interviewer, it turns out, was famed financier Mike Milken. She spent almost a decade at the investment bank learning the intricacies of high finance. That knowledge would serve her well when she started her own investment firm, Red-Horse Financial Group, to help Indian tribes (she is Cherokee) take control of their economic futures. After the Indian Gaming Act passed, “A lot of my people needed financial advice because the capital markets were taking advantage of them,” she says.

Red-Horse Mohl has since structured over $3 billion in capital for tribal nations. She’s also launched nonprofits and produced and directed films; the most recent, about Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to lead the Cherokee Nation, debuted on PBS last year. All of that led her to her current role as executive director of Social Venture Circle, a network of entrepreneurs and impact investors. The network is the result of a merger of two pioneering organizations, Social Venture Network and Investors Circle, which together nurtured a generation of values-driven businesses from Ben & Jerry’s to Seventh Generation. Red-Horse Mohl has helped SVC expand beyond angel investing to embrace a range of integrated capital solutions. “We’re looking at every possible structure of finance that could be available to an impact company,” she says. Married four decades to former NFL player Curt Mohl, she is a self-described team player. “I don’t look at anyone as a competitor. We all need to work together,” she says. Follow ImpactAlpha on Instagram.

Seize the Opportunity

ICA Fund Good Jobs is looking for a managing director of investments in Oakland… Korn Ferry is recruiting a director of environmental, social and governance impact reporting for an unnamed financial services company… Impact Capital is hiring an associate program officer of lending in Seattle… Silverstrand seeks an investment professional of impact investing in Singapore… The College for Social Innovation is recruiting an adjunct educator of social innovation in Boston… RSF Social Finance is looking for a senior manager of client engagement… The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs is hiring a partnerships associate in Washington D.C… BlocPower seeks a financial analyst, senior analyst or associate in Brooklyn… 10Power seeks a solar finance professional.

Follow the Talent

Sonal Shah joins the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg as national policy director. Shah will take a leave of absence from her role as executive director of Georgetown’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation… Danielle Burns, ex- of First Affirmative Financial Network, joins CNote as head of business development… Schan Duff joins Kiva as vice president of strategy and protocol… Lindsay Hadley of Hadley Impact joins Cicero Group’s council of senior advisors.

Apply, Respond, Submit 

The Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Catholic Charities USA are accepting applications from U.S.-based social enterprises for their Pathways Out of Poverty online accelerator… The Workers Lab seeks applications to its Innovation Fund for new solutions to problems faced by working people… WeFunder’s XX accelerator is offering $20,000, training and networking opportunities to venture partners in local tech hubs around the U.S… Duke University’s CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing is looking for clients to work with business students on an impact investing challenge.

Where to be

Transform Finance is hosting “Pooling Loan Guarantees,” a July 24 webinar featuring Catherine Covington of MCE Social Capital and Aner Ben-Ami of Candide Group… In September, Transform Finance is hosting its two-day Institute for Social Justice Leaders in New York.

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]