The Brief | January 24, 2025

The Week in impact investing: Wrecking ball

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ImpactAlpha

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

  • Roundup: Dazed and determined
  • Agent: Cecilia Conrad, Lever for Change
  • Spotlight: Blending finance in Southeast Asia

🗣 Dazed and determined. The torrent of executive orders and actions from the Trump White House this week was designed to disorient. That’s surely true for federal workers put on immediate leave for seeking to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion (survivors were ordered to rat out any remaining efforts). It’s true for wind, electric vehicles, green infrastructure and cleantech developers with projects launched on the basis of policies now likely to be scrapped. And it was true for the global elites who flocked to Davos for the World Economic Forum even as their theme of “Collaboration in the Intelligent Age” looked dated or naive. 

Agents of Impact tried to stay grounded by keeping their eyes on the North Star of value-creation and positive impact. As Trump escalated the war on DEI, Costco stood up to an anti-DEI shareholder proposal filed by a conservative think tank. On Thursday, the retailer was vindicated: 98% of Costco shareholders voted down the resolution. Despite moves by Meta, McDonald’s and other companies to preemptively ditch their diversity programs, none of the anti-DEI proposals brought by conservative activists have garnered shareholder support, Morningstar Sustainalytics’ Lindsey Stewart tells ImpactAlpha.

Trump’s “common sense revolution” is full of contradictions. His “economic populism” is being shaped by billionaires. He declared an energy emergency to bring down oil prices, while crippling cheap and abundant wind power. A federal judge, meanwhile, ruled against a US corporation for allowing its retirement fund manager, BlackRock, to vote for some ESG proposals, including a 2021 campaign to shake up ExxonMobil’s board. As Andy Behar of As You Sow wrote in his Fiduciary Future column, that shareholder victory spurred financial discipline and carbon-mitigation investments; since then, the oil giant has doubled its share price. 

Amid the demolition derby, there are openings. Roodgally Senatus reported that Trump is expected to renew Opportunity Zone tax breaks for investments in low-income census tracts; community advocates may even be able to improve the rules. A dash of guaranteed liquidity can improve the risk-return profile and increase the attractiveness of impact investments, as David Bank explained. And Heading for Change’s Natalie Shriber and Sana Kapadia applauded impact investors who are building out fledgling, intersectional investment theses such as climate and gender. 

Creative strategies, community support and clear minds are needed more than ever. Or, as many parodies of Rudyard Kipling would have it, If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs
 it’s very probable you don’t understand the situation. – Amy Cortese

Next Week’s Call

đŸ‡§đŸ‡· Agents of Impact Call No. 68: Unlocking impact and climate alpha in Brazil. In May, thousands of visitors will descend on Parque Ibirapuera in SĂŁo Paulo for the Feira Preta festival, the largest Black cultural and entrepreneurship event in Latin America. Founder Adriana Barbosa has over two decades grown Feira Preta, or Black Fair, into a platform that has helped plug more than 10,000 Black and Indigenous creative entrepreneurs into the Brazilian economy. Brazil’s Black community “is an economically active population,” says Barbosa, who will lay out the case for investments in Brazil’s African descendents on next week’s Agents of Impact Call.

  • Tune in. Join Barbosa, along with Wright Capital’s Fernanda Camargo, Fama Re.Capital’s Fabio Alperowitch, Giselle Vianna of the Sustainable Social Economic Development Council, and other Agents of Impact to explore opportunities in Brazil for impact and climate alpha, Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 3pm SĂŁo Paulo. RSVP today.

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact: Back to the future. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: How Trump’s executive orders are affecting investments in climate, equity, AI and global development. Why some investors are optimistic about the extension of Opportunity Zones, the capital gains tax break for investments in low-income communities. And, an effort to bring more liquidity to private impact funds so they can attract more institutional investors.

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

The Week’s Agent of Impact

Cecilia Conrad: Pulling the levers of change (video). As CEO of Lever for Change, Cecilia Conrad has issued open calls for solutions to challenges like maternal and child health, refugee resources and early childhood education. A current challenge may be among her toughest: Restoring trust in the core institutions of American society. “It’s one space where there’s very little partisan gap,” Conrad said, announcing the $10 million challenge with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman last month (the deadline for submissions is Feb. 19). “And it’s particularly concerning, because it is most prevalent among the youngest people.” 

Conrad’s thesis, across all of the challenges, is that soliciting ideas from people and organizations that may not have access to philanthropic capital can surface solutions that could otherwise be left untried. In five years, Lever for Change says it has influenced grants of more than $2.2 billion to more than 500 organizations. Through a challenge that closed this month, Melinda French Gates’ investment vehicle Pivotal Ventures will award $250 million to organizations improving women’s mental and physical health. For the “Trust in American Institutions Challenge,” Conrad expects to see proposals to build social capital, improve the delivery of government services, increase accountability and restore trust in the news media, education, science and nonprofits. 

Conrad says her father, the first African American elected citywide in Dallas, and her mother, his campaign manager, helped instill her sense of community responsibility. She was born just after Brown v. Board of Education; a settlement between AT&T and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission paid for her graduate education. “So there were educational opportunities that wouldn’t have existed for people before me,” she told me in our closing plenary conversation (video) at last fall’s SOCAP gathering in San Francisco. “That conveys a certain responsibility to keep those doors open, to keep pushing them open where they’re closed. And that keeps me energized, particularly at this moment in time where there’s an effort to close them again. I’ve got to keep going, because I’ve got to keep those doors open.”

The Week’s Deal Spotlight

Blending finance for Southeast Asia’s green transition funds. The 11 countries of Southeast Asia derive about three-quarters of their power supply from fossil fuels. The region receives the lowest share of global clean energy and infrastructure finance. A key obstacle: a lack of robust regulatory frameworks for private participation, according to the International Energy Agency, which estimates some $130 billion annually is needed for the region’s low-carbon transition. Development finance institutions, long criticized for being risk-averse and insufficiently catalytic, are “making progress in mobilizing private capital for renewable power projects,” the agency says. “International development finance and support is crucial.” This week: SUSI Partners, a Swiss energy transition investment firm, raised $139 million for its Asia Energy Transition Fund and for a co-investment vehicle with British International Investment and FMO, the Dutch development bank. SUSI had closed the fund in 2023 but reopened it for new investments last year. SUSI now has $259 million to invest in utility-scale and commercial and industrial renewable projects in Asia.

  • Catalytic climate capital. ResponsAbility, also in Switzerland, closed more than $350 million of its $500 million target for its Asia Climate Strategy, which invests in e-mobility, renewable energy and efficiency, battery storage and circular economy solutions. Its goal is to curb 16 million tons of carbon emissions. ResponsAbility launched the fund in November 2023 with anchor investments from FMO and German development bank KfW. Private investors have since come in with $200 million, including a $100 million investment from UK asset manager M&G, which acquired responsAbility in 2022. “These results underline the effectiveness of the strategy’s blended finance structure in unlocking significant private sector funding for impactful climate investments across Asia,” responsAbility said in a statement.
  • Infrastructure opportunity. After investing for 20 years in African infrastructure, fund manager Ninety One expanded the mandate of its Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund to include Asia. Now renamed EAAIF, the fund has raised nearly $300 toward a $500 million goal and inked its first two deals in Asia (see, “How EAAIF is leveraging its African expertise to drive infrastructure financing in Asia“). Last year Allianz Global Investors committed $126 million to the strategy. EAAIF invests in sustainable infrastructure projects that can’t raise sufficient commercial capital.
  • Share this post. Catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

The Week’s Talent and Jobs

đŸ’Œ 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.

Summa Equity’s Andrew Marino was named board chair at Calvert Impact, succeeding Bart Harvey
 Regina Ross, previously with Khan Academy, joined Opportunity Finance Network as executive vice president and chief people and culture officer. Damon Smith, formerly with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, joins OFN as executive vice president and general counsel
 PJ Jannuzzi, previously with Blackstone, joined Vision Ridge Partners as managing director and head of asset management
 Scott Kennedy, a co-founder and CFO at Novata, is shifting to an advisory role at the sustainability data company.

Impact Capital Managers promoted Eliya Imtiaz to senior analyst
 Social Capital Partners appointed new advisory board members, including Victor Beausoleil of Social Economy Through Social Inclusion, Jeff Cyr of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, and Tiffany Callender of the Federation of African Canadian Economics
 Lion’s Head Global Partners tapped EMFin Advisory’s Orli Arav as climate and impact senior advisor
 Rethink Education promoted Bridget Duru and Monique Malcom-Hay from senior associates to vice presidents
 Overture Ventures added Liron Gitig, previously with Environmental Defense Fund, as venture partner
 Wefunder promoted Jonny Price to president.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston added Betty Francisco, CEO of Boston Impact Initiative, to its board of directors
 Michael Ras, previously with Counsel Public Affairs, became CEO of Employee Ownership Canada
 Aaron Hay joined Intermediate Capital Group as sustainability and ESG director
 Maureen Bresil, previously head of KL3, joined Katapult Ocean Asia as a Singapore-based associate director
 James Webb, previously with Barry Callebaut Group, joined Oikocedit as its first blended finance specialist
 BNP Paribas’ Vanessa Dager succeeded Ana Demel as chair of the board directors of Pro Mujer.

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That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– Jan. 24, 2025