Unleashing Conscious Capital
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Session Description
While investors are deploying more capital than ever in socially and environmentally responsible ways, there is still an expectation that impact investments must produce a market rate return. In 2019, “doing well” is still priority #1. Is there a capital market “blind spot” where responsible companies cannot raise the cash they need to grow, even though their social impact returns are laudable? If the private sector is to be a driver in accelerating a better world, we must hasten the evolution of investing to move capital to businesses who think beyond the bottom line.
Time & Location
Time:
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM, Thursday, April 11, 2019
BST
Location:
Lecture Theatre 4
Speakers
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Speaker
Senior Investment and Strategy Executive, Terbish Partners
Sean Hinton is an impact investment and strategy advisor to major philanthropies, family offices, and corporations.
From 2015 - 2022 Sean was the CEO of the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) and Director of the Economic Justice Program at the Open Society Foundations. Prior to this, he was a strategic investment advisor focusing on China, Mongolia, and Africa and the social and economic impact of large-scale extractive investments working for Goldman Sachs (Asia) and the Rio Tinto group. He began his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and worked for many years in film, television and newspapers. He is a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute, and an Executive-in-Residence at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and serves on the boards of: Natural Resources Governance Institute, Nature Finance, and the Baha’i Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland.
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Speaker
Founder and Chairman, Kickstarter
Perry Chen is an artist and the founder of Kickstarter, a public benefit corporation whose mission is to help bring creative projects to life. Chen was Kickstarter's CEO at its launch, stepped away from its operations from 2014 to 2017 to focus on his artistic practice, and now serves as CEO and Chairman.
Since its launch in 2009, 16 million people have pledged $4.1 billion on Kickstarter, funding 158,000 creative projects. A 2016 study found that Kickstarter projects had spawned more than 8,800 new companies and nonprofits and generated more than $5.3 billion in direct economic impact. But a unique aspect of the Kickstarter system is that it allows creative work to be funded regardless of its potential economic prospects — giving creators a way to bypass traditional industry gatekeepers. Similarly, Kickstarter doesn’t measure its success in terms of market share. The company's 2015 conversion into a public benefit corporation, which Chen spearheaded, requires it to commit to its mission over the pursuit of profit maximization. Other elements of its PBC charter include commitments to never sell user data or exploit tax loopholes. Chen is now a vocal advocate for improved corporate citizenship in the tech industry and beyond.
Chen's work as an artist has been exhibited in New York, Berlin, and Mexico City. He was a TED Fellow in 2010 and a Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab in 2016, and was appointed to the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy in 2017. In 2013 he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
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Speaker
Executive Director for Strategy and Content, Social Capital Markets LLC
Michelle is an impact investor, strategist and social entrepreneur.
In her role as Executive Director for Strategy and Content at SOCAP, she leads the programatic direction and curation for the largest impact investment conference. She is also a General Partner at IMPAQTO Capital, a revenue-based financing fund for investing in the missing middle of impact finance in the Andean region.
Before her current role, Michelle was the CEO and co-founder of IMPAQTO, a B Corporation with a mission to support impact entrepreneurs reach their goals by building the ecosystem and network they need to thrive. IMPAQTO offers coworking spaces, a business accelerator, innovation consulting services and an impact investing fund to Latin American entrepreneurs building a better world.
Michelle is a recent mother of twins and lives in Quito. She holds an Mst in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and a Master's in Public Policy, UC Berkeley.
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Moderator
Bart Houlahan co-founded B Lab in 2006. B Lab is a non-profit organization with offices in 33 countries, driving economic systems change to build a more inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy. Its mission is to serve a movement of people using business as a force for good by shining a light on leaders through a corporate certification (6000+ Certified B Corporations in 70+ countries), and then providing easy pathways for others to follow. B Lab encourages all companies to manage their social and environmental impact using the B Impact Assessment (250,000+ companies engaged). The organization also advances policy initiatives to upend shareholder primacy and advance stakeholder governance (Benefit Corporation legislation passed in 43 states and 10 countries). Prior to B Lab, Bart was President of AND 1, a $250 MM basketball footwear and apparel company. Bart is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a recipient of the 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
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Speaker
Founder & CEO, Acumen
Jacqueline Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Acumen. Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies and leaders with character, competence and moral leadership. Acumen invests pioneering philanthropic capital in sustainable businesses addressing the toughest problems of poverty. Under Jacqueline’s leadership, Acumen has invested $128 million in 128 companies providing critical goods and services to more than 260 million low-income people across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States. Acumen also has launched KawiSafi, an impact fund focused on off-grid solar in East Africa and is in the process of building several other for-profit facilities.
Acumen also cultivates a new kind of leader through its Fellows Programs and +Acumen, its online school for social change. To date, the organization has built a corps of 500+ Fellows. More than 450,000 individuals from 192 countries have taken +Acumen’s online courses. Acumen is now reimagining a global university designed to integrate the transformational depth of its fellowships with the scale of +Acumen to equip thousands of young changemakers with the tools and ecosystem to lead in today’s world.
Jacqueline sits on the board of the Aspen Institute. Her best-selling memoir The Blue Sweater chronicles her quest to understand poverty and bring dignity to the poor. In 2017, Forbes listed Jacqueline as one of the World’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.
