Podcasts | December 24, 2021

ImpactAlpha’s Holiday List No. 1: Highlights from a year of podcasts

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ImpactAlpha, Dec. 24 – “Too often impact investing is heavy on the investing and diet on the impact,” tweeted the Surdna Foundation’s Mekaelia Davis, sending a shoutout to ImpactAlpha and The Reconstruction podcast “for showing us how to super-size impact!”

At a meeting of ImpactPHL, Philadelphia’s impact investing initiative, Megan McFadden played a clip from our interview with Melissa Bradley. “Great content,” McFadden wrote on LinkedIn.

Reported Rachel Korberg of the Families and Workers Fund: “It was a blast to chat with host David Bank.” MacArthur Foundation’s Debra Schwartz said of her podcast conversation, “I am finding it super handy as a ‘pre-listen’ for the various talks and classes that I am always doing.”

And Allianz Global Investors’s Sustainable and Impact Investing team put ImpactAlpha’s podcasts at the top of its recommended resources. “Why listen? ImpactAlpha is redefining business journalism around social and environmental value.”

In all, ImpactAlpha produced more than 80 podcasts this year across three shows: The Reconstruction (see the roundup and lookahead), our weekly Impact Briefing co-hosted by Brian Walsh and Monique Aiken, and Bank’s occasional Agents of Impact interviews. Follow ImpactAlpha podcasts on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.

ImpactAlpha’s editors and reporters Amy Cortese, Dennis Price, Jessica Pothering and Roodgally Senatus often join the podcasts to share their insights, and contributing editor Imogen Rose-Smith can be counted on to stir the pot in regular roundtables with Walsh and Bank. We also engaged some of the brightest lights in impact investing and beyond. Have a listen to some of our favorite conversations from the year (and share the full post with a friend):

Climate finance

  • Generate’s Jigar Shah (just before he joined the Biden administration as director of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office) on “deployment, deployment, deployment” as the rallying cry for sustainable infrastructure. (listen in)
  • BlocPower’s Donnel Baird about infrastructure opportunities and climate emergencies. (listen in)
  • Venture capital and private equity investor Edwin Datson on how to play the rising price of carbon. (listen in)

Returns on Inclusion

  • Lisa Mensah of Opportunity Finance Network reflects on Juneteenth, community lending and today’s opportunity for a just Reconstruction. (listen in)
  • Catalyst at Large’s Suzanne Biegel reports out from the GenderSmart Investing Summit. (listen in)
  • Illumen Capital’s Daryn Dodson on bias in asset management and the new era of diversity disclosure. (listen in)
  • The Plug’s Sherrell Dorsey spoke about her approach to covering Black tech ecosystems. (listen in)

Capitalism Reimagined

  • Omidyar Network’s Chris Jurgens on mobilizing policies and power for an economy that works for all. (listen in)
  • B Lab’s Andrew Kassoy explains how impact-driven businesses and investors are stepping up their policy advocacy. (listen in)
  • John Cochrane from the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance joined to talk policy developments in Washington, D.C. (listen in)
  • Rachel Korberg, executive director of the Families and Workers Fund, on unemployment and labor shortages. (listen in)

Catalytic Capital

  • MacArthur’s Debra Schwartz on catalytic capital, cost curves and contributing to solutions. (listen in)
  • Surdna Foundation’s Don Chen on mobilizing resources and redefining risk to respond to the pandemic. (listen in)

Institutional Shift

  • Equilibrium Capital’s Dave Chen on Charting the flow of capital through dairy waste, SPACs and the end of externalities. (listen in)
  • Strategy Risks’ Isaac Stone-Fish on transparency as a governance risk for investors in China. (listen in)