The Brief

The Week in impact investing: Perception arbitrage

ImpactAlpha · May 30, 2025

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

  • Looking for bargains and outsized impact
  • Why Pegasus Capital Advisors’ Jean Rogers calls herself ‘a material girl’
  • New podcasts from ImpactAlpha, Impact(ed) and Activest
  • Dmitriy Ioselevich reviews the documentary “Secret Mall Apartment”

Undervalued assets. Wall Street sharks have quickly learned to buy public equities on the cheap when the market is roiled by tariff threats, in order to profit when stocks bounce back as the levies are invariably put on hold. They call it the TACO trade – google it if you’re not yet familiar with the acronym. Other traders are also playing the current global volatility, for example buying up renewable energy and climate adaptation assets in emerging markets that have been marooned by shifting policy priorities or skittish investors. “There are compelling orphaned deals,” Pegasus Capital Advisors’ David Cogut told Amy Cortese and me. That unfamiliar investors overstate the risks of investing in Africa, Asia and Latin America just lowers valuations for others looking for bargains. “The perception arbitrage is our opportunity,” Cogut said.

Other undervalued assets also present compelling opportunities. Patrick Ayota of Uganda’s National Social Security Fund articulated a brilliantly simple strategy for recruiting new members to the pension fund, as Lucy Ngige and I reported. By creating jobs and improving livelihoods through investments in small businesses and farmer’s access to markets, the NSSF is making it possible for more Ugandans to also save for their future financial security, topping up the pension fund. In his latest Re:Construction column, ImpactAlpha contributing editor Napoleon Wallace detailed the high price of being poor – and the scalable, investable, measurable and impactful strategies to redress exclusion. “Investing in the potential of those who just need a fair shot tends to pay off.” – David Bank

Other must-reads on ImpactAlpha this week: 

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: Risk misperceptions. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Pegasus Capital’s contrarian play for orphaned climate projects in emerging markets. How a Ugandan pension fund is creating its own new savers with investments in small business and agriculture. And, should impact have a veto in investment decision-making?

🧑🏽‍🎓 Impact(ed): Illumen’s approach to measuring and managing impact. Illumen Capital’s Joanna Kuang and Leila Mengesha join Lucas and Eric to talk about the lived experiences that brought them to investing, the risks of not measuring and managing impact, and how IMM roles once barely existed. Check it out.

🗺️ The Activest Podcast: Ending structural precarity. Precarity (noun) – a state of persistent insecurity with regard to employment or income. Micah, Ellen, Homero and John discuss the ways precarity is threaded through American life. In this era of abundance, disconnection and inequality, how can control and power change with regard to housing, education and work? What can local governments do to rebuild the commons? Listen now.

This Week’s Agent of Impact

Jean Rogers, Pegasus Capital Advisors: Material girl. “When I founded SASB, the words sustainability and materiality were not uttered in the same breath,” says Jean Rogers, who is helping lead climate investments in emerging markets at Pegasus Capital Advisors. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, now part of the International Sustainability Standards Board, created standards for sustainable investing that quantified the inherent risks of climate change in dozens of industries, streamlining the process of measuring and managing such risks. Today, it’s routine for public market analysts and institutional investors to factor in social and environmental issues when analyzing opportunities and pricing risk. “I will always come back to that – I’m a material girl at heart,” she says.

Rogers took her materiality mindset to the private markets in what she calls “a very intentional move,” first at Blackstone, as global head of ESG and investment committee member, and then as of last month, to Pegasus. She is applying the insights she gleaned from vetting energy transition deals to help drive impact in emerging markets. “That’s where the energy transition is really happening,” she says (see, “Ever contrarian, Pegasus Capital eyes orphaned climate projects in emerging markets”). As a member of the investment committee at Pegasus, Rogers is advising on blended finance funds for ocean and land health in emerging markets. The funds are anchored by the UN-backed Green Climate Fund. “Climate risk is a systemic risk. You cannot diversify,” she says. “You have to build better companies. You have to invest in solutions. You have to care about the outcomes.” In a warming world, the rest is immaterial. 

Weekend Watching: Pop Impact

Secret Mall Apartment (2024): A covert living space for artists reveals the urgency of affordable housing. “Secret Mall Apartment” is more than just a quirky caper; it’s a sharp-edged critique of America’s housing crisis, writes 17 Communication’s Dmitriy Ioselevich in his latest Pop Impact review. The 2024 documentary, now screening in indie theatres, follows a group of artists in Providence, RI who in the early 2000s lived undetected in a makeshift apartment inside the city’s central mall – neatly inverting the economic development that had displaced them from their homes. “What initially started as a challenge between friends quickly turned into an art project that was part adventure and part protest movement,” explains Iosolevich. The film, produced by Jesse Eisenberg, highlights the surreal, often comedic lengths to which individuals will go when affordable housing is out of reach.

  • Contemporary echoes. With housing costs and rentals at historic highs, Millennials and Zoomers are being forced into unconventional or crowded living situations – or back in with their parents – to survive financially. In the film, the apartment-in-a-mall becomes a metaphor for what happens when public policy and private capital fail to meet basic human needs. Dmitriy explains that impact investors have a role to play in reversing this trend. “There are all sorts of societal and economic advantages to providing affordable housing,” he says, from fostering creativity to enabling upward mobility. Not everyone can convert an underutilized space into a home. It’s time for systems, not individuals, to fill the gaps.
  • Total score: 12 (Accuracy: 5, Entertainment: 4, Impact: 3). Read the full review.

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. 

Social Finance appointed Pamela Yang, formerly chief operating officer at Bulfinch, as chief financial officer… ImpactA Global welcomed Isabella Craft, previously with INOKS Capital, as an ESG and impact manager… Raise Up’s Liezl Van Riper, ePesos’ Oscar Robles, and Rilwan Meeran of American Student Assistance joined the board of Village Capital…. Nafisa Bhikhoo, previously with Dalberg, joined 2X Global as programme lead… Doménica Good, Nalee Yang, Walther Morales Rios and William Tsoules joined the Boston Impact Initiative… First Nations Foundation appointed Leah Bennett as managing director… Norrsken VC welcomed Viola Theresa Stadler, previously with Project A Ventures, as director… Alma Gutierrez, previously with Elevar Equity, joined Regenera Ventures as an investment principal.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– May 30, 2025