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The ImpactAlpha Podcast Network is growing.
In addition to nearly 50 episodes of This Week in Impact, our weekly news roundup, and more than a dozen provocative podcast conversations with Agents of Impact, we’ve expanded our network of aligned productions to include The Market Makers from Troy Duffie and Lenore Champagne Beirne, (Impact(ed) from Lucas Turner-Owens and Eric Horvath, and Capitol Gains from James McIntyre and Matt Posner.
In 2025, we’ll be expanding the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network, to amplify more smart conversations by and for impact investing professionals than ever before. To wrap up 2024, we sifted through dozens of interviews and shows to bring you a half-dozen of our favorite episodes of the year.
Have a listen while you’re baking a yule log, sharing a Kwanzaa feast, frying up latkes, ringing in the New Year or recycling that wrapping paper. Happy holidays to all!
This Week in Impact
1. Looking ahead to 2025. In the last episode of our weekly news show, host Brian Walsh took up the trends that ImpactAlpha will be following in 2025 with editor David Bank. On our radar: Impact investors lean into economic populism with the ownership economy; climate gets a new narrative for the Trump era; and emerging markets attract local capital for local needs as better data rebuts misperceptions of risk. Listen.
Agents of Impact
2. Lafayette Square’s Damien Dwin: Investing in working-class people and places. As a lender to the middle-market companies that employ vast swaths of the country’s skilled workers, Lafayette Square discounts its interest rate for borrowers that demonstrate they understand the value of such employees. The firm offers borrowers a package of “workforce solutions” to help low- and moderate-income workers save for retirement, access health benefits, reduce their families’ financial insecurity, and increase economic mobility. “It makes sense that we would provide an economic reward for something that gives us a better chance of getting our money back,” Lafayette Square’s Damien Dwin told David Bank in May. At the end of the year, Lafayette Square received SBA designation as a Small Business Lending Company, enabling it to expand its lending and support for entrepreneurs “in working-class places.” Listen.
3. Clara Miller on investing for communities with common sense and humility (podcast). As president of the Heron Foundation, Clara Miller in 2012 set a five-year goal to invest 100% percent of the foundation’s then-$250 million in assets to fight poverty. Heron beat the deadline by a year to become one of the first foundations to align its full endowment with its mission. For our special series Finding Alpha, ImpactAlpha contributing editor Rob Brown speaks with Miller about the innovations she fostered in impact lending, the value of starting your career at the bottom, and her favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney. Tune in.
The Market Makers
4. Responsibly investing at Trinity Church with Bhakti Mirchandani. Amid the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s financial district is the iconic, centuries-old Trinity Church – and its $6 billion endowment. Trinity Church’s Bhakti Mirchandani joined the Milken Institute’s Troy Duffie and Bright Ventures’ Lenore Champagne Beirne to discuss “sustainable investing plus advocacy and field building.” Mirchandani says she looks at the diversity of both portfolios and managers, “and we strengthen and support manager transitions to sustainability and inclusion.” Tune in.
Impact(ed)
5. CDFIs and equitable community lending with Jocelyn Velazquez and Ana Ramos. Community development financial institutions and other local lenders support economic opportunity in low and moderate-income communities across the country. Jocelyn Velazquez of IFF and Ana Ramos of Common Future join hosts Lucas Turner-Owens and Eric Horvath to reflect on how they’re pushing the boundaries of equitable community lending. Listen.
Capitol Gains
6. The future of fiscal justice with Activest’s Homero Radway. Activists uses data and research to quantify the risks of unjust practices and policies, “and create investor campaigns that can hold issuers accountable for their behavior,” Activest’s Homero Radway told hosts James McIntyre and Matt Posner. Activest tries to see through discriminatory credit ratings and tap hidden opportunities to achieve positive social impact. Citing examples of successful community investing in Flint, Mich., and in New Jersey, Radway calls for a rethinking of how credit ratings are applied. Tune in.
For all of the shows on the network, head over to impactalpha.com/podcasts. For more information about the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network, drop a note to podcasts@impactalpha.com.
