The Week in impact investing: From backlash to breakthrough

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

Re:Construction. ImpactAlpha is on the road with our mini-doc, “Equity and ownership.” Join us in Washington, DC (Tuesday, April 8) and Boston (Saturday, April 12).

In today’s Brief:

• Roundup: Building the alternative 
• Podcast: Insurance incentives for wildfire prevention
• Weekend Watching: Adult Swim’s “Common Side Effects”
• PluggedIn: Symphonic Capital’s strategy for resilience and equity in climate tech

🗣 Ancien régime. Don’t look at your 401(k) balance. Look at the arc of history. “You don’t deploy a global economic weapon unless you’re terrified of the alternative. And the alternative is already being built — in climate tech, policy, finance and above all: human alignment,” Ingmar Rentzhog of We Don’t Have Time wrote in a concise and brilliantly counterintuitive post. “This is the backlash before the breakthrough.” In that way, President Donald Trump’s tariff tantrum is of a piece with his administration’s attacks on diversity and equity, on climate action, on scientific research and expertise, on the rule of law. “Don’t be distracted,” Rentzhog, one of the most effective climate activists around, advised from Stockholm. “The old world is not fighting because it’s strong – but because it’s falling.”

Agents of Impact are not distracted, and are responding to the very real damage being done even as they continue to build ventures, funds and asset management strategies for a more regenerative, inclusive future. In a small but significant effort, Open Road Alliance raised $14 million to bridge funding gaps to keep alive some of the projects from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, writes Amy Cortese. At the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, the Skoll Foundation chipped in its own $25 million to compensate for “inhumane” spending cuts, as our friends at Pioneers Post reported. I’ve been in North Carolina this week for the Neighborhood Economics gathering in Asheville, a defiant demonstration of mutual aid and local resilience in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene (and amid the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s uncertain future). Nearly all 70 employees of the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency, the only federal agency dedicated to supporting minority business enterprises, have been put on leave as the result of an executive order. Today, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, at our own Re:Construction event with Napoleon Wallace’s GOOD TRBL network, we are inviting Agents of Impact to help collect a “playbook for shared prosperity” to document what’s working and what’s needed to build wealth, support families and restore communities.

Shareholders, likewise, “can reject false narratives, stand firm in our free-market principles, and make good business decisions based on data – not politics,” As You Sow’s Andrew Behar wrote. Shareholders overwhelmingly supported Costco, Apple, John Deere and Disney in upholding diversity, equity and inclusion. Even BlackRock’s Larry Fink, who always has his finger to the wind, came out as something of an economic populist, though as Imogen Rose-Smith and Amy point out, his share-the-wealth strategy of opening private equity and debt markets to retail investors might also serve to pad BlackRock’s fee income (Legal & General is also moving to offer retirement savers access to emerging markets impact investments). Jessica Pothering spotted an insurance innovation in California that gives landowners incentives to reduce wildfire risks and explored ways to make concessional capital smarter by targeting them to Africa’s farmers, not asset owners. Contributor Clint Wilder spoke with Climate Cabinet’s Caroline Spears, who’s using a “moneyball” approach to help elect state and local climate champions, many of whom won their races this week. “The system built on oil, extraction and inequality is losing control. And it’s panicking.” Rentzhog declared. “The tipping point isn’t somewhere far ahead – it’s now.” – David Bank

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor Jessica Pothering. Up this week: Climate insurance in California that incentives landowners to reduce wildfire risks. Plus, making concessional capital smarter by targeting the operating needs of African agriculture businesses and the funds that support them.

• Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.

Weekend Watching: Pop Impact

Pharmaceutical fallout in Adult Swim’s ‘Common Side Effects.’ What if there were a medicine that could heal almost anything? That’s the central question of the animated series “Common Side Effects” from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The show, streaming on Max, explores the sociopolitical ramifications of the discovery of a Peruvian mushroom that can reverse any injury or ailment with (seemingly) minor psychedelic side effects. “Not everyone is thrilled with the idea of a naturally occurring substance that can’t be patented and that would upend the healthcare industry as we know it,” explains Dmitriy Ioselevich of 17 Communications in his latest Pop Impact review. Dmitriy scores the show from zero to 15, with up to five points each for accuracy, entertainment and impact. 

• Moral hazard? The show’s protagonist, Marshall Cuso, aims to change the world by making the mushroom free for all – a stark contrast to a pharmaceutical industry that seems “more focused on curing illness rather than preventing it,” Dmitriy writes. The mushroom poses a direct threat to the established pharmaceutical industry (not to mention private equity-backed healthcare providers), as powerful financier Jonas Blackstein articulates: “It could replace everything… Cure everybody, and you’re out of business.” As such, Blackstein uses his connections in Washington to try to take Cuso down.
  
• The verdict. The questions posed by the show are resonant in a US healthcare system that is among the least cost-effective in the world. “Healthy people don’t need to spend huge sums of money on procedures and medications,” Dmitriy writes. They don’t make any cameos in the show, but impact investors are working on improving health outcomes and democratizing access to care. Says Dmitriy: “We need more of this type of leadership – not just from investors but from the pharmaceutical industry as well.” Score: 10 (Accuracy – 2; Entertainment – 4; Impact – 4). 

• Read the full review and catch up on all of Dmitriy’s Pop Impact reviews.

The Week’s Call

How Symphonic Capital is setting up pre-seed founders for success (video). Sydney Thomas was working for an early stage venture capital firm when she noticed that some of the firm’s portfolio companies from unconventional backgrounds would get “lost in the sauce” when they went to raise follow-on rounds from investors. That led her to launch Symphonic Capital with former entrepreneur and Y Combinator alum Shruti Shah. The pre-seed venture firm invests in founders building solutions for underserved communities. “The thesis was, how are we investing in companies that are closing access gaps around health and wealth for overlooked communities?” Thomas told Sherrell Dorsey on this week’s PluggedIn. “A consistent theme that we saw was that climate intersects with both of these.” 

• Adaptation: Climate change is no longer a future concern, as increasingly volatile weather patterns show. “We have to start thinking about, ‘what are the things that need to exist in our society to be able to adapt to a changing climate?’” said Shah. Limited partners are paying attention. “For LPs, in my opinion, this is actually a risk mitigation strategy. So many limited partners are investing across asset classes, which means they hold real estate assets. It means that they hold insurance assets, they hold bonds,” she said. “All of these things are going to be impacted by climate change. So investing in products and services that allow them to mitigate that risk is actually extremely important.” Some examples: insurance tech, data and analytics for detecting disasters, and products and services that help employees adapt to extreme heat.

• Seed strapping. In a tough fundraising environment, more startups are using their seed funding to get to profitability before they raise a follow-on round, in what’s become known as “seed strapping.” Shah says she’s a big fan. “It really does give the founders a lot more control over the destiny of the business, and also gives them the opportunity to really focus and build something that people really find valuable.”

• Read the recap – and watch the video replay.

The Week’s Dealflow, Talent and Jobs

💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here. And check out all of this week’s dealflow reporting. 

Homium’s Marcus Martin will replace Tommy Mercein as CEO. Mercein will remain vice chair of the firm’s board. Mike Chu, Homium’s chief technology officer, will become president of the board… Mission Driven Finance promoted Thai Thuan Nguyen and Stephen Nunes to managing director, Joseph Pileri to chief legal and compliance officer, Kyla Garrison to vice president of human resources and IT assistance, Quita Liu to fund operations director, Monique DeSimone to investor relations director, and Peter Metz to senior investment analyst.

Align Impact acquired the wealth advisory business of Conscious Endeavors, bringing on Jack Meyercord as president, and Kristin Viola as director of finance… Fathia Murphy stepped down as head of ESG solutions for Swiss financial services firm SIX to launch Fractional Impact Partners, an ESG advisory firm for corporate sustainability reporting and product development… Apis & Heritage Capital Partners welcomed Tobi Adewodu, previously with Morgan Stanley, as associate director… Anna Fogel, previously with the US Department of Health and Human Services, returned to Social Finance as a senior advisor.

SustainVC promoted Kendall Bedford to senior associate…Mark Wiedman will leave BlackRock “to return to my entrepreneurial roots for the next phase of my career,” he shared on LinkedIn… LeapFrog Investments promoted Tapiwa Muranda to director of financial services for Africa, Johan Vivier to head of finance, Rebeca Kwee to associate director of impact measurement and management, Melissa Yeo to external affairs senior manager, Betty Weng to strategy senior manager, Akshi Sharma to climate investment officer, Toba Fatimilehin to financial services investment officer for Africa, Niyati Dangi to healthcare impact and measurement officer, and Nabisha Syed to executive assistant and office manager.

Lane Genatowski, formerly of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, was appointed director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy… Mission Driven Finance promoted Lauren Mathis to fund services senior manager… Illumen Capital promoted Leila Mengesha to vice president of product development and impact… Jed Emerson departed ALTi Tiedemann Global to return to Blended Value Group… Ownership Works added Leslie Grueber, previously with Results for America, as a principal to focus on movement building.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– April 4, 2025