If you missed any of our look-aheads to 2025, you can find them all here.
We had a hunch when we launched ImpactAlpha Latin America this year that Latin America was poised for an impact takeoff. The growing ecosystem of LPs and GPs, the accelerating dealflow for innovative founders and fund managers, and the sheer enthusiasm of the region’s Agents of Impact signaled that Latin America was the right place for ImpactAlpha’s first regional edition. We were delighted by the warm reception from the region’s vibrant ecosystems, including FLII, New Ventures, Alterna, Latimpacto, Aliança pelo Impacto, Pro Mujer, Impaqto and GSG NAB Chile, who have been true partners in plugging us into their networks both to gather the news and to share it out broadly.
Our hunch has more than proved out as we’ve worked the Latin America beat. We could feel the pulse of activity at the FLIIs in Mexico and Guatemala, the GLI Forum Latam in Buenos Aires, Platform for Social Impact in San Juan and Impact Minds in Oaxaca. We could see it building as we spotlighted impact ecosystems in Brazil, Chile, Puerto Rico and Central America. We met family offices, fund managers and female entrepreneurs, seasoned players and new entrants who are capitalizing on the region’s tremendous assets to meet its urgent challenges. Over the year, we have pushed out a dozen newsletters, surfaced more than 100 impact investments and fundraises and published more than a dozen op-eds from practitioners, thought leaders and Agents of Impact like you.
And the Latin beat goes on. Let’s take a look back at this year’s coverage for signals of what’s to come in 2025.
Nine storylines to watch:
1. Latin America’s impact ecosystem is primed for takeoff. Impact investors have built a robust Latin American ecosystem of asset owners, fund managers, entrepreneurial support and policy expertise as impact assets under management and venture capital and other investments in the region have surged in the past decade. Keep reading.
2. The push and pull of impact investing for wealthy families. The push: Next-gen family members nudging previous generations to tilt family portfolios toward impact. The pull: Large, overlooked markets, ample opportunities to mitigate risks, and a growing set of investable impact products and funds. The number of wealthy families with allocations for impact investments is increasing across Latin America. Go deeper.
3. Going big by going niche: How one fund manager is specializing for deeper impact. Many impact fund managers seek scale by raising ever-bigger funds. To deepen its impact, Mexico City-based New Ventures is instead going niche, with specialized financing products for companies tackling specific challenges. Keep reading.
4. An overlooked source of climate solutions: Female entrepreneurs. Biodegradable plastics made from invasive sargassum algae. Seaweed-based biofibers that can decarbonize global fashion. Water-insulated panels and other nature-based construction materials. Female entrepreneurs from Mexico to Chile and back up to Brazil are leveraging Latin America’s vast natural resources – and deep scientific know-how – to develop and deploy climate solutions. Take a look.
5. Path to growth in Brazil runs through the impact economy (videos). Thousands of visitors descend on São Paulo each year for the Feira Preta festival, the largest Black cultural and entrepreneurship event in Latin America. Founder Adriana Barbosa has over two decades grown Feira Preta, or Black Fair, into a platform that has helped plug more than 10,000 Black and Indigenous creative entrepreneurs into the Brazilian economy. Have a look.
6. Families and fund managers tilting Chile’s startup ecosystem toward impact. The term “impact” doesn’t yet have wide recognition in Chile, but as a startup culture takes hold, investors are finding that many of the new investment opportunities include an impact lens. Check it out.
7. Putting Central America, and the Caribbean, on the impact investing map. There wasn’t much to look at in terms of impact activity in Central America back in 2015. That’s when Daniel Buchbinder, founder of Guatemala-based business services company Alterna, approached New Ventures about launching an edition of its Latin American Impact Investment Forum in Antigua. Catch up quickly.
8. Puerto Rico is mobilizing billions for economic mobility. Puerto Rico has a window in which to turn disaster recovery into economic revival. “We didn’t choose it, but this is our time,” declares Eduardo Carrera, founder of Platform for Social Impact, which aims to steer capital to Puerto Rico’s social infrastructure. Go deeper.
9. In Latin America, investors see economic opportunities through a gender lens. In the pursuit of women’s economic empowerment, “Pro Mujer will not yield,” declared Pro Mujer’s Carmen Correa to open this year’s GLI Forum Latam. On the gender-lens agenda: More women in leadership roles, more gender-smart fund strategies and more financial innovation to bring more women into the formal economy. Have a look.
