You are an Agent of Impact. You work across issues and geographies and stages and asset classes. You are inside and outside “the system.” Yet you share a mission to move capital – human, social and financial – toward an equitable and sustainable, er, regenerative future.
Each week, ImpactAlpha highlights Agents of Impact who are making things happen, have something to say or whom we just think other Agents should know about. We’ve featured investors like Kesha Cash, who is finding value in startups servicing underrepresented and underestimated communities. We’ve highlighted activists, including Victoria Barrett, who with 20 other teenaged activists is pressing the feds for a climate recovery plan in an historic climate-change trial. And we’ve spotlighted entrepreneurs and executives like Paul Polman, the outgoing CEO of Unilever, who are demonstrating that sustainable business practices can be driver of financial value as well.
Take a spin through the year’s Agents of Impact and follow ImpactAlpha on Instagram and #agentsofimpact all year long.
Victoria Barrett
Aged 19 from New York, Victoria is one of the 21 leaders from Our Children’s Trust taking on the President and Federal Government with a suit to secure the legal right to climate change.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn_B-4KjAOq/
Nathalie Molina Niño
Nathalie’s firm, BRAVA Investments, invests not based on whether the founders are women, but whether they benefit women economically.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoRDi5lASZ-/
Don Hinkle-Brown
At the Reinvestment Fund, Don Hinkle-Brown helped turn public bond markets into a reliable new source of capital for lending to childcare centers and charter schools, grocery stores and health clinics, energy efficiency upgrades and small businesses in low-income communities across the U.S.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BojBuBYl41K/
Christiana Figueres
“Exponential” is a favorite word of the former U.N. climate chief, who shepherded the Paris climate deal into existence and now leads Mission 2020, a global campaign to curb greenhouse gas emissions – fast.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo1IkmyFSsj/
Andrew Kuper
Andrew Kuper’s Leapfrog Investments has grown to manage assets of more than $1 billion and has built a portfolio of companies that provide access to financial services and healthcare to 140 million people in emerging markets.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpHKZShlFyI/
Kesha Cash
Kesha Cash isn’t looking to Silicon Valley for startup unicorns. With the $10 million Impact America Fund, she’s on the hunt for companies capturing billion-dollar markets by better serving America’s overlooked communities.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpZMtRHlO7q/
Vicki Saunders
SheEO’s Vicki Saunders has a radical idea to boost the flow of capital to women entrepreneurs: Collect $1,100 apiece from 500 women donors and lend it out to women-owned, women-led ventures at 0% interest, with no collateral.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BprOwztlsP2/
Yuliya Tarasava
The native of Belarus co-founded CNote in Oakland, Calif. with a no-minimum, no-fee savings product that lets retail investors put their capital to work through community development finance institutions that make loans for small businesses, affordable housing, health clinics and charter schools in underserved communities.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp9XL8FlIqo/
Richelieu Dennis
Richelieu has been a man on a mission since Unilever bought Sundial Brands, the personal-care products company he co-founded, for an estimated $1.6 billion. As part of the acquisition, Sundial and Unilever created the $100 million New Voices Fund, which has invested in three dozen businesses run by women of color.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqPYfrQFFi1/
Bobby Turner
After a midlife crisis of conscience, the “evolved capitalist” is moving money, and quickly, at Turner Impact Capital into what he calls “the three-legged stool of social injustice” – education, housing and health care.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqzoh8qF_Xh/
Paul Polman
The 62-year-old chief retired as chief executive of consumer packaged goods giant Unilever in December. The core of Polman’s vision of sustainable, stakeholder capitalism, remains intact. Running Unilever for the benefit of consumers, customers and employees also benefits shareholders, he said in a farewell message.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrFeyvQlgjW/
Vineet Rai
It took Vineet Rai more than five years to raise Rs 50 million (about $700,000) for his first fund. Since then, the founder of the Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group has raised hundreds of millions of dollars across south and southeast Asia and Africa.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrXeWy1FZPh/
Don’t miss: Follow the talent with career moves, job openings, events and opportunities in our weekly Agents of Impact special reports.
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Follow the Talent: Agents of Impact Special Report for Nov. 30
Follow the Talent: Agents of Impact Special Report for Nov. 16
Follow the Talent: Agents of Impact Special Report for Nov. 9
