The Week in impact investing: Taking the high road

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

• Roundup: High road economics
• Podcasts: ImpactAlpha, Impact(ed), Criterion Institute, Community Capital Live and Activest
• PluggedIn: Combatting displacement on Main Street
• Pop Impact: The Greenhouse Effect

🗣 Non-zero. I’ve been fascinated by “high road” economics ever since I met Joel Rogers, the social scientist who coined the term, two decades ago. “High road development is essentially about prospering better together in places forever,” Rogers said last year on Capitol Gains, part of the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network. It’s not that there are never tradeoffs; it’s that mutually reinforcing benefits can create virtuous cycles of uplift. Win-wins that make money as well as impact can catch on broadly. For example, KKR, the $638 billion private equity buyout giant, is winning deals from competitors because of the firm’s commitment to employee ownership plans, as KKR’s Pete Stavros told Roodgally Senatus and me in an interview. That’s not all: KKR is also seeing better employee retention, and thus better performance, at most of its companies that have implemented such broad ownership plans. JFF Ventures is focused on the massive market of 140 million adults in the US earning less than $55,000 a year. “If we’re able to position these individuals into better jobs and career pathways, we’re solving real systemic problems,” JFF Ventures Yigal Kerszenbaum told me on our Agents of Impact podcast. “That creates massive value and opportunity for our entrepreneurs, and ultimately for our LPs as well.”

High road strategies are even more important as an antidote to zero-sum thinking around everything from AI to budgets to trade. Amy Cortese reported from the Milken Global Conference that Vista Equity Partners’ Robert Smith touted an initiative to bolster the AI skills of students at historically Black colleges and universities. “Part of our responsibility is to distribute knowledge, distribute capabilities,” Smith said. The Asia Venture Philanthropy Network is calling for an “AI just transition” to equip the region’s workforce with AI tools and know-how, as Lucy Ngige wrote. Jessica Pothering detailed Adjuvant Capital’s use of blended financing, volume guarantees and the sale of review vouchers by the US Food and Drug Administration to find treatments for diseases neglected by Big Pharma and, increasingly, by government funding for research as well. “There are many creative ways that you can earn a return that most VCs aren’t familiar with,” Adjuvant’s Glenn Rockman told her. Even the toxic tailings from coal mining can be repurposed as a source for rare earth elements necessary for EV batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. “One of the most exciting aspects of turning coal waste into wealth is the pathway for coal workers to become the heroes of the solution,” As You Sow’s Andy Behar wrote in his latest Fiduciary Future column for ImpactAlpha.

We all can learn to spot such solutions. ImpactAlpha’s Erik Stein and his Columbia University Climate School team didn’t win this year’s Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, but they came away with an appreciation for the range of global climate solutions that can be profitably financed. “We all were motivated by the need for replicability and scalability in sustainable finance,” he wrote in his dispatch from London. Bill Gates, in his thoughtful interview about raising the Gates Foundation’s payouts (and putting itself out of business) in 20 years, takes on the outworn notion of perpetuity in philanthropy. “We’re not running out of rich people,” who can tackle problems in the future, he said. “It makes a big difference to take the money and spend it now versus later.” Among the four archetypes of impact fund managers identified by Phenix Capital’s Daniel Moreno and Mohit Saini, there are, of course, “Illusionists” who overstate their impact. “Impact champions” with robust, transparent and accountable impact practices can not only take the high road, but lead others to that path as well. – David Bank

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: The buzz at Milken. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with Jessica Pothering. Up this week: With US markets in turmoil, investors at the Milken Global Conference shift their focus to ownership, AI and the rest of the world. One health venture fund offers lessons for innovation  amid cutbacks in health and medical research. And, forget your Zodiac sign – Phenix Capital has mapped four archetypes for impact fund managers. Which one are you?

• Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.
  
• Agents of Impact. Yigal Kerszenbaum shares how JFF Ventures is upskilling low-wage workers and enabling solopreneurs.

🧑🏽‍🎓 Impact(ed): Navigating the path to purpose. In their season two opener, co-hosts Lucas Turner-Owens and Eric Horvath chart their journeys into impact investing with Worthmore’s Rodney Foxworth. They unpack Impact(ed), as well – a space for the full spectrum of stories in finance, especially those that are too often left out. Listen to the full episode.

📯 Criterion Institute Podcast: Reimagining resourcing for social transformation, part two. Host Joy Anderson speaks with Equality Fund’s Katharine Im-Jenkins about the innovative financing strategies behind Equality Fund, the power dynamics in endowments, and sustainable funding for grassroots organizations working on gender equality. Tune in.

🏘️ Community Capital Live: Financing vibrant communities in North Carolina. Host Joel Skene is joined by Matt Raker of Mountain BizWorks, an Asheville-based community development financial institution that has funded local entrepreneurship for over 30 years. Raker shares how peer-to-peer networks, flexible capital and community-rooted strategies drive long-term success. Watch the video podcast.

🗺️ Activest Podcast: Activest’s journey from concept to reality. Hosts Ellen Ward Owen and John Killeen trace their paths to fiscal justice and place-based impact investing. From the early concept of Activest to the launch of Next World Assets, they reflect on the challenges of shifting power in municipal finance. Check it out.

The Week’s Call

How Partners in Equity empowers Main Street businesses to combat displacement. Many investors overlook Main Street mom-and-pop shops in their pursuit of venture-style returns. Partners in Equity, or PIE, aims to unlock financial and social value in these community assets. The North Carolina-based commercial real estate firm helps small business owners in underserved communities acquire the properties where they operate. “We’re thinking about commercial real estate ownership as a vehicle to fight displacement and create wealth for those business owners,” says PIE’s Talib Graves-Manns. On the latest Plugged In, host Sherrell Dorsey spoke with Graves-Manns and Wilson Lester about equity downpayment assistance and how PIE is partnering to create wealth in undercapitalized communities.  

• Downpayment assistance. Local businesses such as health clinics, daycare centers, coffee shops and grocery stores anchor their communities and offer vital services. Local businesses that lease their locations are vulnerable to dislocation when rents are raised. PIE helps business owners overcome the biggest obstacle to real estate ownership: coming up with the downpayment. “That’s going to transform the trajectory of the wealth of their family for generations to come,” said Lester. “That’s part of the mission and being a partner.” 
  
• Catch the recap and share the story on Instagram.

Weekend Watching: Pop Impact

Greenhouse effect: The Avengers movie Marvel should have made. ImpactAlpha film and television critic Dmitriy Iosolevich set out to review the new Marvel movie, “Thunderbolts*,” for this week’s Pop Impact column. But he concluded there was no “there” there when it came to sustainability. “Why is every high-stakes battle about malevolent aliens or rogue technology, rather than about the real-world battles that impact investors and civil society organizations are trying to fight,” he asks. So Ioselevich put himself in the auteur seat to sketch the movie he’d like to see instead. His pitch to Marvel Studios for the climate-themed film, “Avengers: The Greenhouse Effect” is a mashup of “Ironman” and “Ministry of the Future”, with some time travel thrown in.

• Would you greenlight it?

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. 

Promotions: SJF Ventures promoted Josef Barrick to principal… Omidyar Network promoted Michele Jawando to president. Anamitra Deb will become senior vice president of programs and policy, and Gretchen Phillips will become chief operations officer and senior vice president of strategic partnerships… Lukas Walton’s Builders Vision promoted Noelle Laing to chief investment officer.

Financial Resilience Institute added Katie Sutter, formerly with ScriptString.AI, as a business development, communications and impact consultant… Swedfund International appointed Olena Smyrnova, previously with CrossBoundary Group, as director and head of Ukraine… GEF Capital Partners brought on Karina Saade, a former Goldman Sachs and BlackRock executive, as a strategic advisor and investment committee member.

Blue Earth Capital welcomed Vita Mateychuk, previously with Citi, as a private equity partnerships analyst… Zarin Kresge, previously with Certified Employee-Owned, joined Project Equity as an associate director of learning products… Regeneration.VC added Nathan Jackson of Circular Ventures as an advisor… Allison Jegla, formerly with 100 Women In Finance, became head of platform of Renown Capital Partners, an energy-focused venture capital firm. 

AlphaMundi Foundation appointed Jose Luis Ruiz de Munain, AlphaMundi Group’s managing director of Europe, as a senior advisor… Inter IKEA Group tapped Lena Julle as chief sustainability officer… Hannah Shoesmith, previously with Schroders, joined State Street Global Advisors as managing director and head of sustainability stewardship… The African Venture Philanthropy Alliance welcomed Precious Wilson Nkandu, formerly with Africa Infrastructure Development Association, as chief operating officer. 

Meredith Marshall, previously with Uncharted, became executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade… Stephanie Cohn Rupp stepped down as CEO and board chair of Veris Wealth Partners to become a board member and partner… Net Purpose welcomed Henry Brown, previously with ISS ESG, as an account manager… LearnLaunch Fund + Accelerator brought on Din Heiman as a part-time venture partner… Rebalance Capital welcomed Laura Rafferty of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business as an Impact Capital Managers mosaic fellow.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– May 9, 2025