TGIF, Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
- Roundup: Leaning in to get deals done
- Podcasts: Activest, Impact(ed) and This Week in Impact
- Pop Impact: Mountainhead and Black Mirror
🗣 Built for this. It’s going to take more than a little political intimidation to stop the green buildout. That was the fighting spirit on this week’s Agents of Impact Call (see below). The kinds of deals that would have been financed through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund still make sense in terms of lower energy costs, improved health and, yes, reduced emissions, notwithstanding the Trump administration’s efforts to claw back as much as $20 billion approved by Congress and awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The stranded pipeline of green loans represents investable dealflow for private capital, as Amy Cortese and I wrote this week. “What we’re doing right now is looking at the full set of pipeline opportunities that we see in the market,” Climate United’s Beth Bafford said on the Call, “and seeing how we can get those deals done.”
Agents of Impact are finding dealflow – and capital – in pockets of resilience both local and global. In Europe, material risks are still material, as VentureESG’s Johannes Lenhard and Hannah Leach reported from SuperReturn in Berlin. New Energy Nexus’s Henri van Eeghen identified a pipeline of more than 300 early-stage startups working on solar deployment, grid efficiency, the circular economy, electric mobility and more in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Erik Stein mined ImpactAlpha’s deal reporting to identify limited partners that have continued to allocate assets to gender lens investment strategies in Latin America. Lucy Ngige reported on Upstart Co-Lab’s findings that art museums and other endowed institutions are moving capital to creative enterprises even as public funding for the arts withers. Roodgally Senatus dug into the emerging collaboration among Philadelphia’s foundations to deploy local endowments for local impact.
It will take toughness to renegotiate the power relations and embedded practices that have impeded human thriving. Entertainment industry superstars like Taylor Swift and Ryan Coogler have been able to claw back their own rights and residuals, but what about an equitable-to-artists ownership structure at scale, Mark Newberg proposed, suggesting a whole record label or movie studio built to revert ownership rights to the original artists. Adopting such an abundance mindset in investing, RSF’s Jasper van Brakel suggested, could yield not only financial returns but “the restoration of what’s been neglected, damaged or drained, and the creation of paths toward durable shared prosperity.” The pipeline of investable opportunities for both restoration and creation are well-stocked. “And so we need to lean in, regardless of what is happening in Washington and the policy implications,” Bafford said. “And that’s where this industry shines.” – David Bank
The Week’s Call
Green lenders are all dressed up and ready to roll (video). The deals pencil. The pipeline is vetted. The projects are shovel-ready. This week’s Agents of Impact Call surfaced a huge financing opportunity for impact and other private investors. Community lenders and green banks that had been set to deploy $20 billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund are combing through their extensive pipelines of projects in community solar, building decarbonization and truck, school bus electrification and other green solutions. They have a pipeline of deals representing billions of dollars that could move forward without the infusion of federal funding. “The whole reason we exist is to lean into these challenges and opportunities when others lean out,” said Beth Bafford of Climate United, which has taken the lead in challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to freeze and rescind GGRF funds approved by Congress and awarded last year.
- Project pipeline. Another GGRF awardee, Justice Climate Fund, analyzed 100 projects in its network’s pipeline and found that two-thirds, or $1 billion worth, could be viable without the government subsidies, JCF’s Amir Kirkwood said. Curtis Probst of the New York City Energy Efficiency Corp. said the pipeline is robust for sub-$5 million projects – too small for larger financiers – to retrofit multi-family affordable housing or install solar and EV charging infrastructure in buildings. “We see a lot of projects that are penciling out,” he said.
- Spinning the flywheel. The Milken Institute’s Rachel Halfaker said a half-dozen recent conference calls have surfaced $690 million in projects and nearly 100 capital providers “desperate to put their capital to work because they’ve just spent the last two years putting their products together.” Instead of a giant slug of new federal money, community green infrastructure will be built through the disparate capital sources and mechanisms that community lenders have developed over several decades, said Aaron Seybert of Kresge Foundation. “Let’s bring capital partners to the table, and let’s get this flywheel moving,” he said. “These are financeable deals, but you have to be adoption-ready and have the capital tools tweaked to meet the needs of these specialized industries.”
- Keep reading and watch the replay of Agents of Impact Call No. 71.
The Week’s Podcasts
🎧 This Week in Impact: Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Turning stranded green loans into investable pipelines for private capital. For European investors, material risks are still… material. And, Taylor Swift, Ryan Coogler and the emerging ownership economy in music and film.
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
🗺️ The Activest Podcast: The Reconstruction will not be televised. Activest co-founder Napoleon Wallace joins the hosts to share his remix of Gil Scott-Heron’s seminal 1971 record “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Wallace, the subject of ImpactAlpha’s mini-documentary, “Equity and ownership,” which charts his quest to build strategies for shared prosperity while living with the challenges of ALS. In the remix, Napoleon uses his AI voice, cloned from pre-diagnosis recordings; in the podcast conversation, Napoleon speaks through his text-to-voice eye pad. Check it out.
🧑🏽🎓 Impact(ed): Empowering communities through CDFIs. Community development financial institutions play a critical role in promoting economic equity and supporting underserved communities. Kim Lyle of Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp. joins Eric and Lucas to talk about the importance of micro-lending, innovative approaches to green financing, and lessons from her non-linear career path. She shares her love for building things that don’t yet exist, passion to get money to people out there who hustle, and why green lending ticks all of the organizations’ impact areas. Tune in.
Weekend Watching: Pop Impact
Artificial imagination. Sci-fi writers are having a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace of change. One person’s idea of a dystopian future is another entrepreneur’s vision of a $1 trillion market opportunity. In his latest Pop Impact column, reviews, Dmitriy Ioselevich looks at two depictions of how technology is reshaping our social fabric. The lesson he draws is that new technology is neither dystopian nor utopian – what matters is how society learns to live with technology and whether the guardrails are strong enough to prevent disaster. As always, Ioselevich assigns a total score of up to 15 points, with five each for accuracy, impact, and entertainment.
- Mountainhead (2025): The techno-utopia nobody asked for. This satire of tech elites, streaming now on Max, feels dated despite being written and released in just six months, Ioselevich says. Created by Succession’s Jesse Armstrong, the film is inspired by real-world absurdities in tech and politics. Centering on a deepfake platform called Traam, the film delves into the dangers of AI-generated misinformation. Real-life moderation efforts are “like putting a Band-aid on a bullet wound,” Ioselevich writes. Mountainhead’s bleak vision raises urgent questions about media literacy, misinformation, and the unchecked hubris of tech elites who, as one character bluntly states, believe “we literally have the resources to take over the world.” Total score: 9 (Accuracy: 3, Entertainment: 3, Impact: 3). Keep reading.
- Black Mirror (2011-2025): A reflection of our not-too-distant future. The latest season of Netflix’s Black Mirror continues to explore the plausible, often chilling implications of emerging technologies. “Technology can be used for both good and evil, which means the difference between a dystopia and a utopia is often just a matter of perspective and willpower,” writes Ioselevich. In the episode Eulogy, a memory-immersion system helps a grieving man revisit his past. Hotel Reverie engages the hot-button issue of AI in entertainment, imagining a film industry where “a few tech geeks and an advanced AI algorithm” replace entire creative teams. And in Common People, a brain implant with a subscription fee reflects a future where life-saving tech is accessible only to the wealthy. “The result is a caste system,” Dmitriy warns, “where those with money get access to premium features while those with limited funds are forced to get by with basic features,” supported by advertising. Black Mirror challenges viewers to ask not just what technology can do, but who benefits – and who gets left behind. Total score: 12 (Accuracy: 4, Entertainment: 4, Impact: 4). Read more.
The Week’s Deals, 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.
World Resources Institute appointed David Widawsky, previously with former President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, as US program director to advance climate action and sustainable development across US federal, state and local governments… Heron Foundation tapped Felecia Lucky, former head of the Black Belt Community Foundation, as president and CEO, effective Oct. 1.
Inspire Access welcomed Rashmi Shastry, an MBA candidate at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, as a summer venture fellow… Sam Walsh, Avi Zevin, Miles Farmer and Kim Smaczniak, former attorneys in the Biden administration’s Department of Energy and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, launched Roselle LLP, a law firm focused on the energy transition.
Eneasz Kadziela is planning to step down as the Bureau of Asset Management’s deputy CIO and head of private equity assets… Trisha Miller, who has led the DC Green Bank since 2023, stepped down as CEO. Board chair Brandi Colander will replace her as interim CEO, and Ed Hubbard will become acting board chair… Congruent Ventures welcomed Austin Pringle, previously with Summit Nanotech, as an analyst for its Continuity Fund.
That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend.
– June 13, 2025
