Better Money Better World
Host Daniel Pianko of Achieve Partners talks with top impact investors who are driving market-leading returns while bending the arc of human history toward sustainability and justice. The podcast is a project of Impact Capital Managers.
Episodes
#69 |Profit with Purpose: How LeapFrog Investments Is Redefining Capitalism at Scale
In the latest episode of BMBW, Daniel Pianko sits down with Andy Kuper, founder and CEO of LeapFrog Investments, one of the pioneering firms in impact investing since the start, with more than $3 billion of AUM. Over the past two decades, Andy and his team have helped prove that investing in underserved populations across growth markets can generate both transformative social impact and market-lea
#68 | How AgTech Innovation and Regenerative Investment Are Reshaping Food, Health, and Climate Outcomes
Tune in to the most recent episode of Better Money Better World with Daniel Pianko in a fascinating conversation about the future of agriculture and impact investing with Mark Lewis, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Trailhead Capital.Regenerative agriculture isn’t just a buzzword. It’s emerging as a real poly solution to the so-called “polycrisis” impacting climate, water resources, biodiversit
#67 | Launching a Purpose-Driven Career: Insights from Mosaic Fellowship Alumni and The Next Generation of Impact Investment
In the latest episode of Better Money Better World, Daniel Pianko sits down with four remarkable alumni from the Impact Capital Managers Mosaic Fellowship — Mary Chen, Staphany Hou, Iliana Griva, and Rob Rush — to explore how the next generation is shaping the future of impact investing.Each of these bright minds took a unique path into the field, but they share one powerful common thread: a passi
#66 | Empowering Americans Through Fintech: How ResilienceVC Drives Financial Resilience for Low to Moderate-Income Americans
In the most recent episode of Better Money Better World, Daniel speaks with Vikas Raj, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of ResilienceVC. ResilienceVC is a seed-stage fintech fund relentlessly focused on building financial resilience for underserved and low-to-moderate-income Americans.ResilienceVC doesn’t just aim for financial inclusion. They meticulously track “resilience dollars” created by their
#65 | Hands-On and DPI Driven Investing: Canada’s Largest Climate Tech Seed Fund, Active Impact Investments
In the most recent episode of Better Money Better World podcast, Daniel speaks with Mike Winterfield, Founder and Managing Partner of Active Impact. Active Impact Investments is Canada’s largest climate tech seed fund. They provide money and talent to accelerate the growth of early-stage climate tech companies that are capable of achieving massive scale while solving the most urgent environmental
#64 | ESG Leadership and Innovation: How Capital Dynamics Pioneers Responsible Investing With Martin Hahn and Verena Rossolatos
In the latest episode of BMBW, Daniel speaks with Martin Hahn, CEO of Capital Dynamics, and Verena Rossolatos, Chair of the Responsible Investment Committee at Capital Dynamics.Capital Dynamics is a leader in clean energy and the lower middle market investing. Capital Dynamics manages over $14 billion by targeting strong returns while leading on impact – including becoming one of the first signat
#63 | Missing Middle of Climate Investment with CurvePoint Capital
In the latest Better Money Better World podcast episode, Daniel is joined by Brian Wayne, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of CurvePoint Capital. CurvePoint Capital is a private investment firm dedicated to advancing climate-focused innovation. Founded in 2024, it is committed to generating attractive returns for investors while fostering a sustainable and prosperous economic future. Brian shines
#62 | Driving Impact Outcomes Achieving Sustainable Returns with Apax Global Impact
In the latest BMBW podcast episode, Daniel is joined by David Su, a Managing Partner and co-head of the Apax Global Impact team based in New York. Apax Global Impact invests in visionary businesses that deliver tangible impact. It partners with management teams to drive transformational outcomes for people and the planet.David was drawn to Apax’s authentic approach to impact investing and a large
#61 | Reskilling for the Future with JFFVentures: Bridging Education Gaps, Navigating Displaced Roles & New Career Pathways
In the latest from the BMBW podcast, Daniel joins Sabari Raja and Yigal Kerszenbaum, co-managing partners of JFFVentures. The conversation delves deep into the future of work, the growing need for upskilling, and how innovative solutions are shaping emerging job markets. JFFVentures is operationally independent but strategically aligned to Jobs for the Future (JFF), a forty-year-old national nonpr
#60 | Blue Earth Capital: Pioneering Impact Secondaries
Blue Earth Capital, a specialist global impact investor, is making waves in the world of impact investing by pioneering impact secondaries among other strategies. As Managing Director and Head of Private Equity Partnerships at BlueEarth, Nicolas Muller is focused on delivering social and environmental impact combined with market-rate returns.In this episode, Nicolas shares how BlueEarth isn’t just
#59 | Unlocking Impact and Alpha Through Credit Investing By Shundrawn Thomas & The Copia Group
Shundrawn Thomas, Founder and Managing Partner of The Copia Group, built Copia to provide bespoke capital solutions to privately held, U.S.-based companies that are committed to economic Inclusion. Copia is one of the only impact-driven private debt funds.Shundrawn shifted his focus to private investing after serving as President of Northern Trust Asset Management -- where he was responsible for a
#58 | GEF Capital Partners Brings A Traditional Lower Mid-Market Buyout Approach to Climate Change and Pollution Remediation Investment Themes in the United States
In this episode, Daniel is joined by Dan Prawda, Founding Partner of GEF Capital Partners and co-head of the U.S. investment practice. GEF makes lower middle-market buyout investments in environmentally focused companies addressing climate change and/or pollution remediation.Join us for this insightful conversation delving deep into the world of climate-focused lower mid-market buyout investments
#57 | Navigating the Landscape of Employee Ownership: Todd Leverette co-Founder of APIS & Heritage
In today's episode, Daniel is joined by Todd Leverette, an indisputable authority on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Todd’s insights into the intricate dynamics of ESOPs leave no doubt about their transformative potential.Todd is a founding partner of APIS & Heritage Capital Partners. APIS & Heritage invest in companies going through ownership transitions to implement Employee Stock Owners
#56 | Unveiling Blackhorn Ventures: Transforming Industries Through Digitization and Technology
In this episode, Daniel delves into the thesis and track record of Blackhorn Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in founders transforming how we build, power, and move our world. Melissa Cheong, Managing Director at Blackhorn, sheds light on the company's transformative role in reshaping legacy industries.Melissa has a long career in impact investing and in addition to her role
#55 | Money Matters: H/L Ventures Holistic Approach to Impactful Company Building
H/L Ventures integrates venture studio and investment fund strategies for purpose-driven businesses and was founded 16 years ago. Now, H/L Ventures stands out as a trailblazer in holistic company building, home to entities like H/L Studios and City Rock Ventures. Diverging from conventional venture firms, H/L Ventures is most differentiated for pioneering a deeply hands-on approach, actively parti
#54 | Profit with Purpose: Nuveen's Approach to Global Impact Investing
Nuveen, the wholly-owned asset manager of TIAA, a renowned financial services company specializing in retirement savings, manages over a trillion dollars of AUM, with TIAA's capital exceeding $350 billion. Rekha Unnithan leads Nuveen Private Equity Impact in the alternative asset class, managing over $1 billion. Focusing on climate and inclusion within the growth equity space, Nuveen Private Equit
#53 | GCM Grosvenor: Driving Returns While Making an Impact
GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset manager with over 50 years of experience investing across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit, and absolute return strategies. They are a pioneer in customized solutions and a leader in providing innovative turn-key multi-client products. They provide clients with flexible access to alternative investments through a range of implementatio
#52 | Ford Foundation Impact Investing Initiative Generating 28% Compound Annual Return (As of Dec 2021)
In 2017, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker embarked on an ambitious proposal to invest 8% of its then $12.5bn endowment – or roughly $1 billion – into impact investing and hired Roy Swan to run the effort. What could one of the most well-known foundations in the world do with the “other 95%” of their assets? The Foundation recently released a report on their efforts – highlighting a 28% co
#51 | Tiedeman Advisors: Jed Emerson Becomes Global Impact Lead of Tiedeman Advisors
Jed Emerson co-authored the first book on impact investing and led a “portfolio lifestyle” with academic appointments at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford business schools while helping to start leading organizations like ImpactAssets and Pacific Community Ventures. He currently serves as Global Lead, Impact Investing for Tiedeman Advisors, a wealth manager with over $25bn of assets under management.
#50 | Autism Impact Fund: Funding Venture Returning Innovation for Neurodiverse Challenges
Autism Impact Fund (“AIF”) Founder Chris Male aims to become the investment and innovation arm of the autism community. AIF's mission is to revolutionize diagnosing, treating and living with autism through a venture capital model. With 1 in 44 children in the US diagnosed on the autism spectrum, over $350 billion in direct spend (over $60,000 per child with autism) and an 85% unemployment rate fo
#49 | Equilibrium Capital: The Most Successful Impact Investor Without the Label
Equilibrium Capital has gathered over $4.5 billion across its platform of sustainability driven investment strategies. Equilibrium became one of the largest impact native investment firms by not referring to itself as an impact investor, but instead by developing strategies for institutional investors wherein sustainability drove the financial returns. Equilibrium created a series of thematic fi
#48 | JP Morgan Private Bank: Sustainable Investment Platform Enabling Client Sustainable Investing
JPMorgan Chase is America’s largest bank and its Private Banking business, the firm’s wealth management arm for high and ultra-high net worth clients, is committed to building a sustainable investment platform that enables clients to direct dollars towards sustainable investing. Global Head of Sustainable Investing at J.P. Morgan Private Bank drills down on how to then measure that impact in both
#47 | INNovateHers: Overcoming Adversity to Build Network of Female Entrepreneurship
Less than 3% of venture capital funding goes to women founders. Yet studies show that women
founders drive two times as much revenue as male founders and have better IRRs. Bobbi Kurshan and Kathy Hurley wrote InnovateHERs to highlight female business leaders and discover how women can leverage their entrepreneurial mindset to advance their careers. The book features the stories 29 entrepreneurial
#46 | Apollo Global: Bringing Scale to Impact
As there will never be enough philanthropy dollars to solve major problems and opportunities driven by global crises like climate change, Apollo Global Management is looking to invest in large, scaled companies where growing profits is directly tied to impact. Apollo named Lisa Hall Impact Chairperson in 2020. Hall has been a leader in impact investing since the 1990s when she joined Calvert Imp
#45 | Builders Fund: Purpose as a Competitive Advantage
Purpose is a competitive advantage for the Builders Fund, which leads growth equity and buyouts of lower middle market companies driven by impact. Builders has invested in companies like PosiGen Solar, bringing solar power to low income homeowners; Traditional Medicinals, the leading wellness tea brand in North America; and Mixt, a plant-based restaurant chain. Mike Dutton and Tripp Baird founde
#44 | Wireframe Ventures: Backing Early-stage Founders Focused on the Health of People and the Planet
Wireframe Ventures backs early-stage founders focused on the health of people and the planet. Co-founders Harsh Patel and Paul Straub make initial investments of $500K to $2m at the seed or pre-seed stage, and then work closely with founders to turn their world changing ideas into scaled companies. For example, Wireframe led the seed round in Span.io, to reinvent the hundred year old electric pan
#43 | Lumos Capital: Technology Enabled Growth Companies in EdTech
Lumos Capital Group invests $10-30M into growing companies defining the future of learning and work. Founded by Victor Hu and James Tieng, Lumos looks to partner deeply with companies that are growing impactful tech-enabled products and services in the global education sector. With the digital transformation of education, traditional products and distribution channels are being disrupted by a new
#42 | UBS: World’s Largest Truly Global Wealth Manager Goes Long Sustainability and Impact
UBS, the world’s largest truly global wealth manager, has a long history in sustainability and is taking a lead in providing sustainable and impact investing advice and solutions to its clients. The firm has a view that wealth managers and advisors play a critical role in helping clients to deploy their philanthropic and investment capital for a better world. Andrew Lee, Managing Director and Glob
#41 | Align Impact: Finding Impact for Clients from Master Limited Partnerships to Art Funds
Jennifer Kenning tells her inspiring story of founding Align Impact after struggling with severe depression which led her to volunteer with the homeless. These experiences led her to found Align Impact – a $2.3 Billion under advisement impact investing firm. Named 40 under 40 by Investment News and amongst the 50 most influential women in private wealth by Private Asset Management, Kenning belie
#40 | Achieve Partners: High Growth and High Impact Education Technology Investing
Note: Better Money Better World host Daniel Pianko is co-Founder and Managing Director of Achieve Partners. Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment
#39 | Mosaic Fellow: Transformative Summer Internships for Diverse Impact Investors
The Mosiac Fellowship brings a skilled and diverse pool of talented young professionals into the world of impact investing through a summer internship program – to help create the impact investing leaders of tomorrow. Meet four Mosaic fellows from top graduate programs who spent 10 week summers embedded with ICM members and are now bringing their diverse experiences to impact investing and entrepr
#38 | Ballentine Partners: Multi-Generational Wealth Value Aligned Advisors
Ballentine Partners is a multi-family office with $20 billion under advisement across 270 client families. Ballentine was one of the early pioneers in private impact investing given their long-term view on wealth management and their goal of helping clients to align their values and their practices through allocation of capital. While clients often start seeking alpha creation, Ballentine’s clie
#37 | Caprock: Backing Impact Managers at Scale
Caprock has invested in over 100 private impact investments with 40 fund managers, including 20 Impact Capital Managers. Mark Berryman, leads Caprock’s Impact Investing and previously served as co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Global Social Investment Funds Group. Berryman is a recovering camel rider, which he learned as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali at the start of his career 25 years ago. Caprock
#36 | Blue Highway: Investing in the Rural Economy
Rural America is underserved by traditional investors. Blue Highway Capital is investing in cash flow positive business with strong management teams in niche markets where there is little (or frequently no) competition for deals. Karin Gregory has been investing in the rural economy for over 20 years. Gregory and her colleagues have backed companies like Aryv, the Uber for non-emergency medical
#35 | Capricorn: Backing Impact Native Investment Firms
Capricorn, originally formed to manage the assets of Jeff Skoll and his foundation, created the Sustainable Investment Fund to investing in impact native general partners to accelerate the growth of missioned aligned capital. By growing investment firms, Capricorn is catalyzing private sector capital to close the gap between the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals’ unmet needs. Bill Orum and Mich
#34 | Third Sphere: Pre-customer Climate Tech VC Delivering Top Quartile Returns
Third Sphere funds are top quartile or decile on a net TVPI basis backing pre-customer companies that are transforming global energy systems. Ranked by Techcrunch as one of the top 10 VCs founders love the most, co-founder Shaun Abrahamson describes how he backs Climatetech Superheroes and then leverages his vast network of advisors and angel investors to build a full stack early-stage climate in
#33 | Citi Impact Fund: For-profit, For-purpose Venture Scaleable Businesses
Jeff Meyers is a lifelong Citi banker and founding member of Citi’s $200 million Citi Impact Fund, investing in for profit, for purpose venture scaleable businesses driving impact. Jeff’s volunteer role with StreetWise Partners, a NYC-based nonprofit – bringing job skills to the unemployed – served as the impetus to bring impact into his role at Citi. The Fund invests in four areas: Environment/S
#32 | ECMC Group: Philanthropy, Operating Companies and Impact Investing Under One Organization
ECMC Group (“ECMC”) is a non-profit that grew out of a Student Loan guarantor focused on empowering underserved communities to thrive through education with a mission to help students succeed. ECMC recently doubled its commitment to its Education Impact Fund to $250M, including a growing direct investment portfolio and commitments to a number of Impact Capital Managers, including Achieve Partners
#31 | Laird Norton Wealth Management: Counseling High Net Worth Individuals to Optimize the Financial and Social Returns From Capital
Laird Norton Wealth Management (“LNWM”) serves as long-term partners for families wanting to achieve their greatest impact through their investments, legacy planning and philanthropy. Ron Albahary is the Chief Investment officer of LNWM. He started his career at Merrill Lynch when stockbrokers called clients around dinner time to sell a specific stock or financial product. Today, Ron and his tea
#30 | Impact Alpha: The Watercooler of the Impact Investing World
This week is unique as veteran Wall Street Journal writer David Bank starts by asking your normal Better Money Better World podcast host Daniel Pianko some questions about Achieve Partners and the founding of Impact Capital Managers. Then your host gets to turn the tables and ask some tough questions of David’s role moderating the impact conversation on the pages of ImpactAlpha, the water cooler
#29 | CIM: Technology Can Reset 1970s era Lending Rules Expanding Access to Credit
Community Investment Manager (“CIM”) provides credit facilities to help solve structural challenges that women and people from disadvantaged communities often face when accessing capital. According to co-founder Jacob Haar, CIM thinks about how small, incremental changes to the 1970s banking model of lending based on assets and inventory can be evolved for the modern age by bringing a technology
#28 |The Social Entrepreneurship Fund: Alpha Creation by Putting the Needs of Low Income Americans First
The Social Entrepreneurship Fund (“TSEF”) invests in business that that tap into previously underserved markets to generate returns while improving quality of life for everyday Americans in the process. For example, Cushion uses AI to negotiate down bank overdraft fees. Alice helps hourly workers get access to thousands of dollars of federal benefits like flexible spending accounts and Transitchec
#27 | ASA: Transitioning Billion Dollar Balance Sheets to Mission Driven Impact Investing
American Student Assistance (ASA) is a 65-year-old student loan guarantor run by CEO Jean Eddy and board Chair Larry Gennari. Jean and her team are reconstituting ASA’s billion-dollar asset base towards impact investing in support of ASA’s mission: to provide tools and resources so students can have a plan for their future as they leave high school. While historically ASA has focused on grant mak
#26 | Leeds Illuminate: Scaling Education and Workforce Companies Post-Covid
The Covid pandemic has accelerated education delivery model trends – effectively collapsing 15 years of growth into 15 months – creating a global market for the future of learning. Susan Cates and Elizabeth Chou co-founded Leeds Illuminate to partner with entrepreneurs passionate about scaling positive outcomes for learners, workers and investors. The all-female investment team is backing growth
#25 | Impact Engine: Building the Field of Impact Investing
Impact Engine backs transformative companies across the investment life cycle – from early-stage VC style investing to a PE/funds strategy. With the flexibility up and down the capital stack, Impact Engine is able to back companies like Workit Health, an online addiction resource center which has 84% of its clients in treatment 30 for over 30 days, from its earliest stages up through a growth inv
#24 | Social Impact Capital: Solving the World’s Most Challenging Problems Through Technology
Peter Bruce-Clark describes backing transformative companies that some traditional venture capital firms pass on because at first glance the startup appears to be a charity rather than an industry changing unicorn. Social Impact Capital dives deep through its network of advisors to identify contrarian breakthrough technologies that have the chance to transform the world – from covalent drug thera
#23 | Niche Businesses That Grow Fast and Drive Impact
Arborview co-founder Karl Khoury realized that investing in niche services and consumer businesses at the lower end of the middle market can often drive more impact and alpha than a cool app. Karl left a successful venture career to start an impact fund after realizing how wasteful consumer products were after the birth of his first child. There had to be a better way. Since then, Karl has been
#22 | Key Man: Unpacking the Greatest Fraud in Impact Investing History
Arif Naqvi used the language of impact investing to attract luminary limited partners like the Gates Foundation, CDC Group, and Bank of America to invest in his multi-billion dollar private equity firm Abraaj partners that turned out to be a fraud. Naqvi was stealing hundreds of millions of dollars to support his lavish personal spending. Simon Clark broke the story for the Wall Street Journal w
#21 | Salesforce Ventures Impact: Corporate Venture Fund Investing Goes Impact
Claudine Emeott leads Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund – a $100M vehicle targeting venture capital returns in impactful companies that partner within the Salesforce ecosystem. With over 30 companies, Salesforce Ventures Impact is part of a growing number of corporate venture arms that are embracing impact to drive their balance sheet investing. A unique investor, Salesforce employees advise and me
#20 Zeal Capital | How a Sole, Diverse GP Raised an Oversubscribed First Fund During COVID
Nasir Qadree raised an oversubscribed first fund through Covid from large institutional capital sources like PayPal, Bank of America and Truist Bank to rethink the building blocks of wealth in our society. Nasir’s pathway into venture was not a straight line. After starting his career at Goldman Sachs, Nasir found his way to the private markets after opening a coffee shop in the West Village and
#19 | Blue Haven Initiative: Impact Investing with Your Children's Children in Mind
Liesel Pritzker Simmons and Ian Simmons challenged orthodoxy when they invested 100% of their family wealth into impact investing by creating a new type of family office -- Blue Haven Initiative. Blue Haven invests through third party managers with an impact lens across asset classes, from public equities to private equity to early-stage VC to hedge funds. The only in-house invested platform is
#18 | Bain Double Impact: Rethinking the Traditional Buyout Firm
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick partnered in impact with buyout behemoth Bain Capital. Together, they created Bain Double Impact which was recently selected by PEI as the top impact fund in the world. By investing in mission-driven, scaled middle market companies operating in traditional industries with clear impact metrics, the Bain Double Impact team is bringing impact into middle market
#17 | Two Sigma Impact: Big Data, Big Impact
With over 1,000 data scientists and engineers and 70 petabytes of data, Two Sigma is uniquely positioned to seek to bring data science to impact investing. Warren Valdmanis co-founded the Two Sigma Impact team after 14 years at Bain Capital, including a role in creating Bain Double Impact. Warren is focused on solving two threats to our economy: companies and executives prioritizing short term pro
#16 | Bridges US Sustainable Growth Fund: Distilling Impact to a Single Robert Parker-like Score
Brian Trelstad has been a driving force of virtually every innovation in impact investing for the last 20 years. He helped start the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs when Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund and Brian helped lead the creation of the widely used Impact Reporting and Investing Standards (“IRIS”). Now, he’s telling the impact investing community to stop innovating and
#15 | Closed Loop Partners: Reshaping the Circular Economy From Poop To High Fashion
Closed Loop Partners invests in products and services that don’t depend on natural resource extraction or the disposal of those products in land fill to be successful. Closed Loop is a VC through buyout stage investor in the circular economy – proving that the circular economy is much more economical and higher quality than the companies of the last century. Through their investments, Closed Loop
#14 | Ecosystem Integrity Fund: The Next Industrial Revolution is Built on Sustainability
Electric vehicles are superior to internal combustion powered cars. Distributed energy is superior to centralized energy. Sustainable agriculture is more profitable than dirty agriculture. Many trillions of dollars are flowing into recreating our 100 year old industrial infrastructure. The cost of solar power has dropped ~90% since the founding of the Ecosystem Integrity Fund which creates the
#13 | SJF Ventures: High Growth, Positive Impact
SJF Ventures has pioneered venture-like growth in sustainable businesses since 1999. Co-founded by Dave Kirkpatrick, SJF was initially called the “Sustainable Jobs Fund” – founded with the belief that environmentally driven companies would create good jobs. But today, SJF has built deep expertise across verticals like healthcare, education, and the environment. Dave, and Emma Sissman, lead at SJF
#12 | TFX Capital: Can Veterans Fuel the Next Silicon Valley Boom?
Brandon Shelton loved jumping out of airplanes as an airborne officer. After leaving the service and working on Wall Street, Brandon is now co-founder of TFX Capital which backs high performing veterans who are domain experts tackling nasty problems. Veterans make up 0.5% of the population but start 10% of the small businesses in America – making veterans an attractive demographic to invest behi
#11 | Mission Possible: Decarbonize the Economy
DBL Partners is renowned for leading early investments in companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. DBL Co-Founder Nancy Pfund built her career with a simple mission: to take on companies that are stifling innovation. From the Detroit Big 3 to Satellite companies that monopolized access to space, Nancy leads investments in startups that take on the incumbents and win. Listen to the story of
#10 | HCAP Partners: Revolutionary Idea, Pay Workers Well to Drive Returns
HCAP invests in service-oriented companies with large numbers of staff then pay that workforce a living wage and show them respect, trademarking the term “Gainful Jobs Approach”, which was created in conjunction with MIT’s Good Jobs Institute, to ensure that every employee has a “quality job”. Could HCAP be creating the actual “future of work” where sustainability for employees drives success on
#9 | Lime Rock New Energy: Changing How We Create and Transport Electricity
Energy is changing and our electricity grid technology is over 100 years old. Every day, new solar panels, windmills and cogeneration plants are transforming America’s electricity production – but our grid that carries electricity to those who use it is unable to keep up. Last year, there were over 700 gigawatts of power that were not hooked up to the grid. Lime Rock New Energy is on a mission
#8 | Core Innovation Capital: It’s Expensive To Be Poor
Arjan Schutte is democratizing prosperity by investing in technologies that dramatically reduce the cost of financial services. 17% of low income Americans' spending goes to things that are generally “free” for the middle class and wealthy – like having a bank account. Arjan has backed unicorns like blockchain-based international digital payments company Ripple, and out of left field concepts li
#7 | CityLight Capital: The Machine Will Select Your Impact Investments Now
Josh Cohen created CityLight Capital after 9/11 and was an early backer of transformative companies like 2U (NASD: TWOU) and Shotspotter (NASD: SSTI). Today, CityLight is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to identify investments before innovative companies hit the radar screen of other investors. Leveraging the Machine allows CityLight to make about a seed stage investment almost eve
#6 | Jonathan Rose Companies
Jonathan Rose is an early ESG focused real estate investor who uses concepts like Green Building and livable communities to drive 15+% returns over his 15+ years buying 100+ apartment complexes, primarily for the working poor. His track record is rooted in making high ROI investments that improve energy efficiency and expand community facilities and resources to ensure low turnover of residents.
#5 | Reach Capital: Educators Building Unicorns by Bridging the Gap From Edtech to Silicon Valley
Reach Capital is a venture capital firm where more than half of the team has advanced degrees in education. Reach has doubled down on its winners by making big bets on winners like Nearpod ($600+M exit), Outschool (recent $1.4Bn valuation), and Mystery Science ($140M exit). These exits and track records make Jennifer Carolan and Shauntel Garvey some of the most successful female venture capitalist
#4 | Rethink Education: Revolutionizing EdTech Investing by Destroying His Prestige University Bias
Matt Greenfield is a reformed Yale PhD in English who wrote the business plan for the first company he invested in that later sold for over $100M. Today leading Rethink education, Matt has backed 9 African American CEOs, four of whom are woman, from disparate backgrounds, two of whom were named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Has to constantly remind himself that having gone to the University of
#3 | Bronze VC: “Eastside” Investing Goes Mainstream
Learn more at www.impactcapitalmanagers.com
Stephen DeBerry has one of the top watched Ted Talks that describes how disadvantaged communities tend to follow the geographic destiny of living downwind. The poverty of Eastside communities manifests itself in ways investors don’t usually consider – like how many restaurants in a city like East Palo Alto have metal cutlery. Stephen invests in entrep
#2 | Rethink Impact: Finding Women Investors and Funding Women Leaders
Learn more at www.impactcapitalmanagers.com
Women-led startups received just 2.3% of VC funding in 2020, and fewer than 12% of decision makers at VC firms are women. Heidi Patel and Jenny Abramson, Managing Partners of Rethink Impact, discuss how data shows "gender lens investing" can drive superior returns by funding otherwise overlooked entrepreneurs who happen to be female. Rethink Impact is b
#1 | New Markets Venture Partners: Finding Impact in Rise of the Rest Cities
Learn more at www.impactcapitalmanagers.com
Jason Palmer and Mark Grovic, partners at New Markets Venture Partners, discuss with host Daniel Pianko seeking alpha by finding education and training investments in rise of the rest cities. Each of New Markets last three funds has achieved top quartile performance by driving education gains that will bridge the economic divide of the haves and have n
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