Eric Horvath: Hi everyone. Hi, welcome. so sorry for the delay. so I think we're actually, I think people are starting to trickle in. I think people will continue to trickle in and we're just gonna kind of get started. So I just want to say first, welcome. So my name is Eric Horvath. I am the co-founder and co-founder and co-host of the podcast Impacted. so for those that are not familiar with Impacted, this is our third season. historically we have really focused on interviewing and having conversations with finance practitioners of color who are focused on moving capital for good. And this year we've continued in that spirit and added even more kind of far-reaching and far-ranging topics like our our first episode this this season was about Blackstone and your retirement. And how alternative asset classes are moving more into more traditional 401ks. Our second episode was around is there, are there too many venture capital firms? And then more recent conversations have been around the pros and cons of private equity. And I think our most recent dropped episode was around the state of community development finance, given the current political administration. So if you haven't heard of the podcast before, we are part of the Impact Alpha Podcast Network, and then we're streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. But today's event is a bit of a it's very much in the spirit of the podcast. I got my co-host Rodney and Lucas's blessing to kind of share some of the research that my research partner, Shubam Rizal, who if you were here for the first session, was one of our lead presenters, and I have been working on really around hidden talent and demand for Impact investing jobs amongst quote unquote non-traditional talent. So today's event is really the second session of that, just based on a conversation that we started earlier in the year. So for now, right now I'm joined by for now, right now I'm joined in by Stacy Fiella, who will introduce herself in a second, who's a former colleague of mine, and we're hoping that our friend and colleague Himalaya will be able to join us shortly. But the reason why we asked Stacey and Himalaya to join us is both of them have spent a lot of time thinking about and working on questions around who gets access to capital allocation roles, how people are prepared for them, and what better pathways into this work could look like. Okay. Here is Himalaya. And hi Himalaya, how you doing? And I'm just doing a bit of a intro and great time for you to come in. so in our previous conversation, the first part of these two sessions, we shared research looking at people who want to either enter impact investing but haven't necessarily come through the traditional MBA or finance pipeline. We heard from more than 250 people and found that more than 90 percent expressed strong interest in entering the field. But the bigger finding was was this, the demand exists while the pathway to careers in this field remain unclear. People describe problems around access, networks, unclear entry routes, and translating experience they already have into something employers recognize. So today we want to take the next step and if and we kind of asked ourselves if we know the talent exists outside the conventional pipeline, what would it actually take to build a pathway for it? So before we get into kind of the conversation that we're gonna have, actually Would love to just invite Stacy. Maybe we'll go with Stacy first and then Himalaya. Just honestly, you know, Stacy, I've known you for so like over a decade now. We've worked on a lot of things together, know you as a as a leader in the space. why don't you just peel back for a couple of minutes and just tell us about, you know, how are you personally and professionally entering this conversation? Like what was your path into the role that you have? Feel free to mention where you are now, but give us some of the texture of like, Back in the day I started here and then I kind of found my way here 'cause it's very much in the spirit of the research. And I'm sure the audience really wants to know where you both started from.
Stacey: Sure, Eric. Happy to do that and thanks for having me here. I'm excited to join the conversation. I am the executive director of the Woodcock Foundation, which is based in New York. it's a family foundation. We fund and invest in work across democracy, inclusive economic development, and the environment. I came into the foundation at a very entry-level role on the program side and learned about the whole existence of the endowment while I was there. And so for me, the idea of impact investing was really about figuring out how to move more of the capital already within the Woodcock Foundation into alignment with our mission. And in 2020, my board committed to 100% mission alignment of our endowment. Six years in, we're at about 93% aligned. And I have, you know, stewarded that commitment and I also built an oversee our impact first capital allocation. But my journey really has been one of, you know, being on the program side, having 15 years of, you know, sitting in investment committee conversations and finding ways to get self-educated and learning by doing to understand the impact investing landscape and how you actually deploy capital for impact. And a lot of my experience has really been in seeing mission driven capital sitting on the sidelines. And this conversation is about mission driven talent sitting on the sidelines. I think those two are very much connected to each other. And so I'm excited to dig into that a bit more in this conversation today.
Eric Horvath: And Himalaya, before we go to you with the same question, Stacy, I just wanna ask, because I always talk about I'm always so interested in what people study in school and in college. and I also find so many of the so many of the best investors or the best folks that I know in impact investing had social work backgrounds, anthropology backgrounds. Can can you share just very quickly like what did you study or or what are some of the kind of academic pursuits that you've had?
Stacey: Sure. I I'm kind of in that camp. I I double majored undergrad in psychology and communication. And, you know, I started college actually pre-med bio with a psychology focus, thinking that I wanted to become a clinical psychologist. In the course of that, developed a really strong interest in social work and did some work that brought me closer to the nonprofit sector, working with people who had combined mental illness and substance abuse challenges. and so I almost actually signed on to get a master's degree in social work from Columbia, but pivoted from some experience I had really around the amount of agency that people do or don't have in different roles and kind of wanting to look at a more systemic level of how problems were actually taking place. I ended up getting a master's in public administration at NYU. And so my background has really my educational background ended up being more on the programmatic side of the issue as well. but then in the course of you know, trying to build my own expertise on this subject, I you know, I got a certificate in finance and accounting, but pretty limited, not formal education in the financial industry.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, and I just want to say psychology, social work, like these are also things that when I look around for talent and I talk to people, I'm like, this probably means you're a a good listener, you want to understand like the human condition. And I find these kind of attributes are just so valuable when we're trying to deploy capital, especially for impact. But Himalaya, toss over to you, same question.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, I will thank you, Stacy. That was actually really helpful. I felt like every time we talk, it's it's good to get to know the background a little more. So I appreciate the question, Eric. I actually did get my master's in social work, Stacy, and very much to your perspective, I went into direct practice and realized that the lack of agency and autonomy and the ability to affect like long-term change in my perspective. in my role. though I do feel like I often tell people this, I use my social work degree, it feels like to the exact same extent as my finance degree. and so I'm I'm really, really glad that I got it. It it really informs the work that I do. but then I went on to get my MBA and so then have the the finance and the the social work background. and in my work really combine both of those two things together, as it sounds like Stacy, you do as well. so my journey started off as a social worker. I think that's really important and really critical to this conversation. in addition to that, I have a unique lived experience. I socioeconomically don't represent the the average investor or the average person who works in finance. and then I also, you know, As you can see, I'm a woman of color and a first generation immigrant. I think that all of those actually intersecting identities really shaped my experience in finance and my experience in both social work and then transitioning into the business side. And what I strive to do, and this is kind of central to the work that I do now, is to provide a linear pathway for people like the everyday average American to be represented in financial leadership because finance Financial incentives, financial programs, policies, they affect us all, and they disproportionately always affect low and middle income individuals. And yet we see a total lack of representation of that in in the financial leadership positions of people who are deploying capital, making decisions around where capital goes, how capital policies are made. And so that's like the work that I do. prior to, you know, doing this as part of the nonprofit, I started off. After getting my MBA, I actually did traditional finance, right? Like that's what I learned. And so I learned about venture capital. And that to me felt like the best merge of my prior background of social work and finance. And so I really delved into that. I started working with angel groups, then eventually venture capital funds, worked across six funds, launched two economic development funds in partnership with the state of Oregon and a few other, you know, great folks. And then eventually launched my own VC fund. And it was a national fund, deployed, felt really, really great about that. And in the course of that, felt like there's something missing here. We're shifting money to different types of people, but are we shifting power? And are we shifting power more broadly? You know, like when our fund is successful, who it benefits from that? Is it just the founders and the investors, or is it also like the underlying staff and that like brought all you know like just iteratively like you know I think for me I'm like a practitioner that has learned things and then just continued to iterate. So for me, as I delved into traditional finance, I kept trying to soften the edges and figure out how to like push the boundaries. And so that brought me to integrated capital, which brought me to like cooperative models that brought me to employee ownership models. And so little by little, I think through my own investing practice you know, now I have over a decade of doing that work, has brought me further and further into different spaces. And so I come to this actually with a clinical social work background and a traditional finance background, and then delved into what does restorative finance look like? What is solidarity economy look like, which is why I'm so passionate now in the in the nonprofit about teaching people about that from the beginning so that they don't have to go through traditional finance and then unlearn so many of the other underlying assumptions, but actually go right from the beginning and understand the totality of what finance can look like.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, thanks, Emily. appreciate that. And it reminds me of I'm gonna put a a pin in it for us to come back to later. we said in our prep call just that you know, some people might disagree, but that's that's okay. It's what discussion is for is that we're not I don't think in our prep call we were saying that like having financial skills and training is is the bad thing. It's the it's and we're gonna get into this later, is like that is a skill set, just like being a caseworker is a skill set. And It's more about like how w we're gonna talk about like legibility and transferable skills. it's not about throwing all of that out, like the training that you did receive. It's about, you know, how do you right size or fit that to well the aims of what the industry says it's it is trying to do. So this actually is a great segue into like our first section is before we even begin, so I know people are probably really excited to talk about like what do you both see as employers look what are employers looking for? how do we kind of make this non-traditional, quote unquote non-traditional talent more legible. We're gonna get to that in a moment, but I really want to kind of start the conversation with kind of what labor market, you know, Shubam and I use this this term just, you know, kind of think of it more from the the research angle of just what labor market or what part of kind of the impact investing industry are we actually talking about and and you both may have different answers, which is great because there's a lot that needs to be done in the space that needs to be changed. But I I want to just kind of ground us in what we're actually talking about or when the two of you are referring to the kind of ways that you engage with hidden or quote unquote non-traditional talent, like what does that mean for you? So before we start designing these solutions, I just think we need to be intellectually honest about the market we're talking about. I I also teach and Emily, I think you you do or used to, and I talk to other faculty members that teach impact investing too, and we talk about how few roles there are and how there are roles that receive hundreds, maybe thousands of applications, and there are experienced and sometimes overqualified candidates struggling to get traction. and just also a lot of impact organizations themselves are relatively small and lean. So there's just a clear like staffing, like overhead, just kind of personnel cost to to consider as well. So simply just training more people without thinking about where they go afterward clearly isn't gonna solve anything for the people that are interested on this call. So before we get into, you know, what are employees employers looking for, how do we actually transfer those skills and make them more legible for for each of you, and either of you can go, you know, first, what kind of labor market are you actually talking about when we say impact investing or or finding hidden talent and giving them pathways? Just just Carve out kind of where you exist in the space.
Stacey: Yeah, I'm happy to kind of share where I sit in the space, but also offer offer some thoughts on the broader industry. And it's been, this has been a really interesting question for me to think about because, you know, I sit within philanthropy, and within that role, impact investing jobs can actually look really different. So in foundations, you have, you know, certain foundations that are carving out capital for impact first deployment, where they're trying to be catalytic, where there's a really strong emphasis on the integrity and quality of the impact you're getting, which we hope that that's there across all impact investing, but where that's really prioritized. And you have other roles that are in impact investing that are really more about endowment management and thinking about a lens for impact across asset classes, you know, where financial returns are on equal playing field or sometimes even more important than the actual impact is and the Type of profile of someone you might hire into those roles is very different. But even that, in that, you know, the the the diversification of potential jobs within philanthropy and impact investing is just one piece of the market. There's also the, you know, the fund side where people are actually building and managing funds and a whole set of qualifications that could match you to different kinds of roles in that context. And then the nonprofit impact investing ecosystem, even looking at the landscape of Community development finance institutions that are nonprofits looking to deploy capital for impact across different communities with different kinds of themes. And so the we talk about it as it as if it's one industry, but it really is a pretty kind of fragmented set of potential roles in different kinds of institutions.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, for sure. Amelia.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, I would agree that it is really fragmented. I mean, even in like when we say impact investing, even just and as we talked about in our prep call, what that means from a capital deployment perspective ranges across the board. And so I think the talent and the structures and the underlying institutions also vary. For us, we are training folks in the the gamut of the capital stack. And so we train people on debt grant and equity underwriting. And so We've trained about over 200 people now, 80% of them are placed. and so they work across that stack and then in institutions like foundations, family offices, as Stacey mentioned, capital deploying organizations, as well as nonprofits investing as well. and then in terms of the profile, we actually take so we take a broad range of folks. What we found is over the course of our time. Those who are most successful in placement, because as you mentioned, Eric, it's not just about training. We can train all we want, but then we're just creating more overqualified, you know, under per under resourced folks. And so really focus on the the placement aspect of it. And those who are most successful, at least through our perspective, are folks in their like 30 to 50 range. That means that they've had some work experience that really helps. From like the acclimation of you know just going into any work environment. The other thing is that a lot of our folks are coming in with excellent work experience that isn't in finance, but actually supplements it. So a lot of what you were talking about, Eric, of like what are the the adjacent kind of categories? So thinking about social workers and thinking about psychologists, but then also thinking about municipality workers, urban planners. also thinking about policy advocates. And so you actually in your research kind of mirrored that of like the eclectic group of people that kind of responded. Those are the specific types of people that also we train and are successful in our program.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, I'll say it's funny, Himalaya. I I forgot how we got connected. I think a friend like of a friend s an and anyway, like they forwarded your note or something got forwarded somewhere in the Just Economy Institute fellows kind of, you know, so shout out to J E I, thank you for making this connection. And I I remember like the first conversation we had, you're like, This is what we do. And I was like, it's great because Shuvam
Himalaya Rao: Yeah.
Eric Horvath: and I were kinda like, man, this is a big problem. There's so many talented people, and you're just like, This is what we do. I'm like, Great. All right, well problem problem partly solved. So
Himalaya Rao: Yeah. And when we talked about the results of your study, I was like, Yes, we are literally seeing that in i in real time and we are solving for those issues.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, I I I appreciate all of like the context and then just the I'm just gonna put one other thing actually Himalay, what I wanna ask you is I'm a big believer in, you know, trying to break down terms or jargon. and just people me different things mean different things, different people. I think you mentioned restorative investing and I think Stacy you mentioned catalytic capital. I don't know if both of you would just mind as you define them. what does that mean to you? Just so people can help situate. And if there are organizations that people can go home and Google, that may help with their further learning. But yeah, definition setting for for the audience.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah. At least for us when we think about reparative finance and we think about solidarity economy, so one as like an umbrella term when we think about solidarity economy, a lot of different initiatives, including impact investing, fall under the bucket of solidarity economy. But that's not the totality of the solidarity economy. There's like many, many more components and parts to it. So that's kind of our like larger frame. and then when we think about restorative finance, when we're thinking about the two-loops model of change, we're thinking about the first, which is like sustaining and doing like more reparative work, stabilization work, being able to think about things that will like sunset extraction work. So there are folks that are doing work in that. Then there's also the generation of new structures that actually shift the way in which we interact with capital, the way we interact. transactionally as well, with or without capital. And so we do when we think about restorative finance frameworks, we're actually thinking about both of those larger buckets, the ones that are doing sustaining, reparative work and the ones that are generating new ways of being able to interact as a society and community.
Eric Horvath: Than thank you. Stacy?
Stacey: Yeah, I love that, Himalaya. Thanks for sharing your definition. catalytic capital for us is often it's it's essentially capital that's de-risking a potential solution and you know, potentially proving out a new concept for how you can create impact through an investable strategy that's meant to crowd in more capital after ours or meet the need of a particular market or population that just isn't being met by. conventional finance. and that's often, you know, just people who we see deserving capital that might actually be being filled by grant needs if some sort of higher risk or lower return investment capital isn't made available.
Eric Horvath: Great. Thank you both. I'm gonna move us on to our next section. So it's it's really about employers. So like fully understanding that, you know, you both do not represent all the employers out in the world. I think is important. I think a lot of people probably join the call. And I see there's some QA in the chat trying to manage that with the many other tabs I have open. Sorry. and my colleague Sridlam is is on it too. So we will try to get to it. I just wanna so your your questions will be read and we'll be heard. we'll do our best. so what are employers looking for? So from your perspectives. So one thing our research surfaced was a perception that employers still rely heavily on familiar signals. And I think this might be to one of the questions in the chat. So traditional finance experience, consulting, MBA, having an MBA, certain institutions and networks. So some of these signals may reflect skills that genuinely matter. But a more interesting question is whether we've gotten precise enough about which skills actually matter for which jobs. So when employers say they want a traditional finance background, what are they actually trying to de-risk or identify? And does the credential always match the work? So I will just comment quickly on my own experience. So I also went and got an MBA about however many years ago, I forget, I forget now. so similar path to Himalaya in in in some ways. And it was because, you know, maybe three or four years before that I had realized maybe some puts in the chat that a lot of the jobs I was looking at or hoping to apply for or felt that I would do a good job at or I could do a good job or learn about, they all required either an MBA, MBA investment banking, private equity, venture capital, or management consulting. one to three or three to five years. So I tried to go the MBA route. I did. It's it's been fortunate for me. I it's it's worked out from having a very circuitous path. But I have I have felt the struggle of of looking at the the J Ds and and the requirements and having to navigate through that. But for both of you, let's talk about what employers are looking for and kind of the skill sets that are really necessary.
Stacey: Sure. I'm happy to jump in here. you know, I I agree with several things you've said here, Eric, and just want to also underscore that I don't in anything I say, I agree that finance and investing skills are important to be at the table. We're talking about a form of investing, so people need to understand investing. but you know, Shuvam quoted me saying, Impact is the first word in impact investing. And I definitely, in my experience and in looking at job descriptions for these kinds of roles as well, feel that impact is not valued as a skill set alongside investing the way that it should be. I I actually was just looking at a job description yesterday that was for what was supposed to be an impact first investing role, and the entire list of qualifications had to do with investing in finance and analysis and Literally, there was not a single credential that they were asking for that had anything to do with impact. And I think what gets missed here is that, you know, impact and the impact success and the business success are not things that happen independently from each other. And so you need to actually be able to have some expertise and orientation toward what makes what makes that impact actually successful for everything to succeed in in most scenarios. And so there's you know, the type of social work background. People who are nonprofit leaders, who have organizing experience in their own communities, people who are proximate to the types of challenges they're trying to solve have an orientation toward whether a solution is going to work and whether it's even trying to solve the right problem. That doesn't come from, you know, knowing what liquidity means or knowing how to put a term sheet together. And so I think what I'm seeing is a real gap between the type of deep finance and investment backgrounds that a lot of employers are looking for. And that paired with a sense of how this kind of work plays out in the real world, that's likely to drive real success. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that more employers will start employ you know, value valuing some of those other real world lived types of expertise in the same way that they're valuing investment expertise.
Eric Horvath: That's we're going to go r to that right after Himalaya hops in and I I'll add some comments too. But Himalaya, where is your head at?
Himalaya Rao: I I mean I totally agree, Stacey, with everything you've said related to how do we bolster up the value of impact. And actually one of the things that we do is we work with justice aligned organizations on their staffing needs. And all the time I get questions around like, should we be looking for candidates because we don't just do the recruitment, we do the training. And so folks are always asking us like, should we look for people who have finance backgrounds? Or should we look for people who have impact backgrounds? And one of the main things I kind of tell people is like it you can teach finance to anyone, right? Like none of us were born with that knowledge. But if you don't find people that have that like lived experience or professional experience with the like impact that you're
Eric Horvath: Totally.
Himalaya Rao: trying to create, that that's not something that I can really like instill in them in the matter of like three to six months, right? Like that's like built and baked over time. And so very much like agree with you. One thing that I do wanna say and point out is I agree that like the table stakes sometimes are that like MBA or that like underwriting experience. And in my experience of both going myself into the job market as well as helping now many, many people into the job market, it feels like actually it's less about that and more about who you know. It does feel very much like the finance space, whether it's traditional finance and even more in the impact investing space because of that lack of linear pathway to it. Like that it's actually more like the MBA is great, but it's more than the MBA is like who did you go to MBA school with and who is your network? Who did you like go and get your finance or who did you go and get your like, you know, degree, whatever that degree is, that actually like determines the pathway. Like Stacey, you were kind of talking about how you got a different degree, but at NYU, right? And it's like that network is actually like what I've found is like much more like kind of like telling of where the trajectory goes. And so that's like what we're trying to change is like when we talk with you know, prospective employers, the demand is so high. Like you were saying, Eric, you post one job, there's five hundred applications within a day. And so
Eric Horvath: Yeah.
Himalaya Rao: what people naturally do is that they have like decision fatigue and they just go like, could someone actually just recommend someone to me? And then they just do that as a referral network. And so even when they're posting job postings, they end up picking someone from a person that they already know or a person that someone they trust and know knows. So I think
Eric Horvath: Yeah.
Himalaya Rao: that's like one of the biggest barriers.
Stacey: Yeah, Himalaya, I totally agree with you
Eric Horvath: Go ahead.
Stacey: on that. I think it's such an important point. And in you know, I think it shows up everywhere and it's definitely strong in philanthropy. Eric and I have talked a bit about investment committee and board roles and even for Sometimes volunteer roles, these are highly competitive and there's a lot of opacity around it. And I a lot of that is driven by the network effect of the the default easy pathway in being to call up your friends. And and I think that is a huge barrier to getting the kind of diversity that we want to see in these roles.
Eric Horvath: I wanna say like I I also agree and I I'm also mindful of like if I was in the audience and listening to that, I wouldn't be so happy. I would be pretty disappointed. I mean I'm disappointed in industry. it it it makes so like for me, and and spoiler alert, like we'll get to the end, but to try to jump the shark, it's there need to more jobs and more roles and more apprenticeships and more rotational programs. so we'll get to that, but like I just want to kind of speak to like the industry, like that you know, for it trying to be reforming or kind of like a better version of the more kind of traditional form of investing, more inclusive, more impactful. it like hits it's like uniquely perverse or or more disappointing that if we're recreating the same kind of I guess old boys club or whatever you want to call it. and I just don't think there's a sugar coating. We shouldn't sugarcoat that. It should just be like that is disappointing. And how do we find how do we how do we name that and then how do we find p pathways forward? Before we go actually into this legibility piece, I I do want to just touch very quickly, because Himalaya, I know that you take this, your your program and your organization takes a bit of a holistic look into positions, and Stacey, I want you to come in here too. When people ask me or when former students have asked me, they're like, I want to work in impact investing, but I don't love, you know, Excel or like I don't love numbers. And I'm like, Well, you know, it is investing is the second word in the term. So that's important. But I feel like the there's just not enough shine on the various other roles that are not deal roles. And then I also think people don't and it it's again because people are just learning and it's new, especially non traditional candidates, but obviously like the temperament and the type of underwriting or diligence you do versus like an equity deal versus a loan. Like it's just different, differ I I think different incentives, different temperaments. But people are just like, I don't like numbers, so like I can't do this. I find there's so many other roles within investing in general, and then obviously impact investing is form of that as well, that skills can be leveraged, that you don't have to live in a spreadsheet. And I'm just curious from the two of you if we can just like popcorn or toss out other functions or roles that non-traditional talent would be uniquely good for that are also fundamentally crucial to impact investing structure and infrastructure.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah. I can actually jump in because I will s talk about this from like the perspective of a job seeker and someone who worked like, you know, kind of worked my way up even in the venture space, and then kind of like what that looks like on the impact investing space. So a lot of times what I tell folks is like I compare two of my experiences. So this is like in the equity world, right? But this is actually true across the capital stack is you have to look at like what the what type of capital deployment the organization is doing, but also what their portfolio structure looks like. So I worked at one of the funds that I worked at. In each of their portfolios, they had about 50 companies. And that was in a discrete closed end fund. I know that I'm throwing a lot of jargon out. Happy to you know follow up with all of that, but like in one portfolio, there was 50 companies. That's actually a lot of companies to be able to invest in. And so there was a high ratio of like diligencing, of doing like and rapid diligencing, right? And so you were doing that over and over and over again. And so you did have to have some level of numbers to be able to do some of that financial diligence. You also have to have that community and you have to, and this is where my social work background actually really helped. Because you have to do interviews all the time and you have to hear what people are saying and then the underneath of what they're not saying, right? And being able to understand
Eric Horvath: Absolutely.
Himalaya Rao: that. So that's like one kind of thing. The other though is I worked at a Series C fund and they you know, by then they were only making investments into like two companies a year. And so it's actually like far less on the like the beginning end of financial diligence and on that end. In my perspective, was actually a lot more on the Excel side because it's a lot more on the like portfolio management and like thinking about the performa and like how this like impacts the total portfolio construction. So I'll say that as like one, but the other thing is in my perspective, the deal diligence is 10% of the relationship. Once in order to like make the relationship successful, 90% is what you and that partner do post. investment, whether that's grants, debt, or equity. And so like the portfolio manager role, the community engagement role, there's so many roles. Even if you are a financial analyst and you are working on the deal side, in order to make a deal successful, you have to work in a non-financial capacity after the deal is closed.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, Stacy and
Stacey: Sure. I'd also loop back to a point you made earlier, Himalaya, which is about kind of how policy can impact the success of deals. And Eric, I think this came up in a recent post you wrote on this topic as well. When you get into the diligence and what we're actually talking about, there's a lot of issue-based expertise that comes into play. and for funds that are, you know, pretty specific in the type of impact they're having, such as in climate or housing. There are lots of other kinds of experience that are not investment related that would help you position you really well to understand what a successful deal is going to look like. And then I just want to double down on Himalaya's point on relationship. If you're on the deal side, deploying capital into a community, having relationships in those community for us on the catalytic capital deployment, where it's really impact first, a lot of the work is built on relationships. And someone's going into those communities to, you know, knock on people's doors and have conversations with them and not necessarily spending their days looking at Excel spreadsheet. And then on the, you know, on the client side for capital allocators, the investment advisory firms that we've worked with, they all have a lot of client-facing people whose job it is to is to hold relationships with clients. And then for big firms, it's similar to any other industry where you have admin roles, you have HR roles. There's a really wide variety of skill sets that come in. You have people at funds that need to really be good at relationships and fundraising. And so fundraising in other nonprofit sectors can come in. So depending on, you know, the entity, I think there are quite a lot of different skill sets that can come in that are not necessarily about numbers and spreadsheets all the time.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, this is great. And it it it goes really well into this next part where we want to talk about kind of quote unquote non-traditional talent, making it more legible. so when we're listing like a variety of other skill sets, I know Stacey, when I when you and I when I started working with you, like I didn't know any of this, any of these terms, any of these roles, any of anything nothing. and I just kind of learned it just stumbling forward through Investopedia or whatever I was using back then. And it's just so helpful to have like someone that is a practitioner kind of name like there's a variety of roles, functionality, skill sets, because when you're looking at this job description, you're probably like, I don't like, I don't know what this is, like I don't I don't know how to do this stuff. I think some of these we need the employers to also recalibrate what they're valuing as well. But let's go to the kind of legibility thing. So this gets us to something we in the original research that Chuvam and I did called the skills transferability paradox in the part one of the The series, a lot of people believe they already have relevant experience. So I'm sure they're nodding their heads at what Himalaya and Stacey are saying. But the problem is that they don't always know how to translate that experience into language employers actually value and use. And then also if the employers know how to recognize it or not. Can you I I love like specific examples I think you both have shared from your own personal experience, but I'm actually going to ask you to think about. people you've worked with or people you've trained. Can you think of other people? Maybe you can leave them anonymous or you can give them their flowers if you want. can you think of people you've encountered who clearly had relevant experience or capabilities, but whose background wasn't immediately legible as an impact investor. And maybe what do you think was getting lost in translation?
Stacey: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, a lot of the people I really admire in the impact investing space do not come from traditional finance and MBA backgrounds. even just in my own ecosystem of board members, I have some did go on to get their MBAs, but I have, you know, one who started in anthropology actually to the same point around social work and the human-centered skills and interests. Another who started on the MPA side like me, one who started in journalism. And I think there's a lot of these roots of the types of jobs that signal a real interest in people and care for people, understanding people that tend to translate to a type of skill set. I would also say that a lot of the the skills gap to me is more of a language gap than an actual skills gap. And so if if You know, if this is coming from the employer side of not recognizing skills for what they are, how on your resume can you actually talk about the things you've already done in kind of finance language to make it feel more legible to the employers that you're trying to reach? but yeah, I mean, I the people that I see really committed to the impact first versions of impact investing tend to come from an impact background. And I appreciate Himalaya's comment on you know, finance skills being learnable. The founder of an investment firm that I had a conversation with last year made a comment to me that she preferred to hire people who came from the impact side because she could teach them finance and it didn't always work the other way around.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, I I mean, I 100% have been like throughout this conversation, like plus one to everything you're saying, Stacey. I think that some concrete examples, like again, like when you think about a lot of actually the vast majority of people that come through our program, I look at their resume and we have to tailor it, right? And we have to like resh shift everything that they're saying in order to make it something that like would be finance appropriate, but it actually like is it's radically easy because a lot of these adjacent fields are doing things that are community oriented. And so when you think about like the skills of like articulating like storytelling and narrative building, like a lot of fields do that. When you think like,
Eric Horvath: Overly.
Himalaya Rao: you know, like Stacy had mentioned like policy advocacy, right? Like you have to be able to like canvas neighborhoods. You have to think about like Aggregating responses. You have to be able to think about being able to bring that out into like how policy will be able to be shaped, like who needs to be talked to, like stakeholder engagement. All of that actually is part of impact investing. It just needs to be retooled in a way that like can exist in the context of capital deployment and deals. So there are actually like so many transferable skills because we are working with people. And as I mentioned, The diligencing is 10% of the totality of the work that we're doing with, you know, prospective founders or prospective organizations.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, I mean I the tr translation's har it's hard, it's another step. And I I'm just gonna name 'cause we say this in the podcast, on a lot of episodes in the podcast too, around imposter syndrome. So we've really focused on working with sorry, and a lot of our friend friends of the pod and guests of the pod have been people of color from more working class, middle class backgrounds. And like we say, how did you become like such and such fancy position. They're like, I don't know, I like pretty nervous about it like for a long time and didn't think I belonged and, you know, they have this great title and and a lot of respect. And they're yes, still not sure if I belong. So it's it it's hard to say and assert that you have those skills and then also to tran be like, I'm gonna translate and say like I did this for like my auntie, so therefore I can lead, you know, like a fundraising round for like this really high growth startup. Like even if there are overlaps, like I think it's just important to name like kind of the the backgrounds that people come from. I come from that as well. and then you just realize that like, you know, you're you're pretty good and you can like, you know, not be so hard on yourself. but I appreciate that. And I don't know if this is useful to people, but like for me, I I just talk about a lot of my work as being mobilizing resources, mobilizing and and allocating resources, which I don't always say investment. I don't say grant. I also don't always say money or capital because I think a lot of times community organizing is about mobilizing resources. It's human power, human like community connection. It's like how do you bring those together and use them to influence and move forward a more socially just aim that you're pushing for. But it's been a long time of of trying to translate. Himalaya.
Himalaya Rao: I I will also say though, like I agree with everything you're saying. And I think that when we think about there's always a tension between the the responsibility on the individual and the responsibility structurally, right? And
Eric Horvath: For sure, for sure.
Himalaya Rao: so like I do also think part of what we're doing now is like organizational ready training, right? Because organizations need to be ready for people that Look not just like visually look different, but also come from totally different lived experiences. And therefore, how they think about things is going to be different. As we talked about in the beginning, impact investing is trying to be this reformative version of finance. And yet we bring over so many of the like hierarchical like training practices, hiring practices. thinking practices of you know our predecessors in traditional finance and a lot of times there's this like mentality around even like groupthink that happens so frequently within impact investing that like you know people come from like the same backgrounds, the same educational backgrounds, the same socioeconomic backgrounds. So the way that they're thinking about you know tackling a problem is all the same. And then an what we've seen is that the people that we're training are primarily working class people. who are then going into these organizations and then they're having to like get buy-in from all these other people in order to get their voice heard. And so that's why we started to think about like how do we like also train the organization on how to think differently and how to brainstorm differently and how to communicate and accept that different people are not gonna always come to it with this like very like white centered way of speaking and thinking.
Eric Horvath: Hundred percent. And this is good great, a great tee up to us landing the plane for the conversation. so Himalay, I'm gonna go to you, and then I'll I'll I'll I'll ask for Stacy's remarks around training people in place, people that are in roles and places already. But for now, Himalaya, during our prep call you talked about this kind of three part framework of training. Placing and building, train, place and build. so we'd love to hear, you know, you reference it a lot, but like your organization, the program that you run. you've given us a lot of the texture already, but can you just like kind of break it down what train, place, and build means to you? And then one of the last mo comments to Stacy will will be around like this thought around the people that are in roles already that could be being more impactful with the how their investments at their institutions are made. But train, place and build, Himalayan.
Himalaya Rao: Yes, yes. So we've been doing this now for a little while and as Eric you mentioned, we really try to take a holistic approach. I think that because of my own background of like constantly being a practitioner and iterating, this has really come out of something that we started in 2021 and has every single year iterated and we figured out how to be more supportive of the ecosystem we're building. So when we think about train, it has two pieces. One is training the individual. And we're really lucky to be able to have a partnership with Impact Charitable. I'm gonna shout out some partnerships because we could not do this alone and we don't want to be doing this alone. And so we are fortunate to be able to have lots of organizations kind of leaning in. And so Impact Charitable is actually working with us to develop our current fellowship structure into a one-year full rotational training program to rival that of like a JP Morgan and a Citibank and a private equity firm. in restorative finance and solidarity economy and impact investing. The other part of that is organizational readiness training, where we train board, existing staff, volunteers, so that when people are coming in, it's not just the one or two people that are thinking in this way, but the totality of the organization can understand not just solidarity economy, macroeconomic theory, restorative finance, but also how do different people communicate? How do you move through conflict in a way that's going to be generative rather than isolating? So that's like on the train part. The place part, we have a partnership with Boston Impact Initiative, and they are great. They accelerate justice-aligned and justice-focused funds. And so we work with their alumni on their staffing. And so what we do is, and we work broadly as well, is we work with organizations that are aligned with Solidarity Economy, and we become their train their recruitment and training agency. So a lot of times people will say, like, we want to recruit, there's a talent gap. the the field of impact investing and solidarity economy and justice aligned mission aligned investing is so niche still. And so what we do is we find p candidates that they want to hire. And then we also train them before they go in. We also, of course, pull pull from our alumni for that. And then the last part is the build. So as I talked about this two loops model. The first is like sustaining and removing things from the extractive economy. The second is the generation of new ideas that radically shift how we interact with one another and how we transact with capital. And so we're I'm actually working with another JEI alumni, Jessica McLeese from SK2 Fund, on the development, as well as Susanna Penfield from Chosen Family Office. And so a great shout out to them as well and Cindy Willard because we are creating the residency. And so that's a two-year program for people from different communities who have the like community buy-in. And have some financial skill. So it's mostly for the alumni that we've trained, as well as some others that, you know, like demonstrate that they have community buy-in and some financial skill to be able to develop initiatives and practices that they want to put into place into their community. The things we're looking for in that is not just do you build a structure that changes capital, but are you decentralizing power back into communities? And so that's the The build part is that we are helping to facilitate new engines and new infrastructure that then support decentralized flows of money and power.
Eric Horvath: Himalaya, before Stacy, before you go in, I just want to say, Himalaya, we have like forty people online. I'm I'm happy that we've had very little drop off, which is great. S as the person moderating this, it's you're always looking at that drop off number. Himalaya, you know, I don't know who's on the call right now, but like who are some people or or archetypes or profiles that you'd be really excited for them to reach out to you and and get in touch? who you're looking to connect with?
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, so we are looking for number one, first and foremost, the community that we are serving. If you are looking to get into finance, especially impact investing, we'd love to hear from you. Also, if you are a community activist, if you're a community builder and you already have some level of finance experience and know what your community needs. If you don't have the finance experience, but you still know what your community needs, we'd love to hear from you because that's what we're building for the residency for. the second thing is we are always looking for people who want to partner with us, both from an expertise perspective and a funding perspective, because this is what JP Morgan and Citibank have. That's why they get to do these types of things, is because they have a lot of capital. What we do is we use capital to not just perpetuate cycles of oppression and like reinforce this like huge nonprofit industrial complex, but actually shift it. back into communities that need it. And so we offer fully funded programs to the folks that we accept and accelerate. And so always looking for people to do that with. And as you know, Eric, we are building advisory councils for all of our initiatives. And so if you feel like you have lived experience, being able to build out a rotational program or residency program, we'd love to hear from you. You don't need to have finance experience. We would love to have adjacent experience. We are so fortunate that 11 organizations of the JEI community have already kind of leaned in to be our core anchor partners around this, but we are always looking for people with unique lived experience. So we'd love to hear from you.
Eric Horvath: Thanks, Emilea. And Stacy, I know we or come up close to the top of the hour, but I do know you and I have talked a lot about talent and different ways to look at the quote unquote talent pipeline.
Stacey: Yes. Well, first I just have to say, Himalaya, it's so much fun to listen to you talk about your work. And we are investors in the Boston Impact Initiative and huge fans of them as well. And the first time I ever heard about the two loops theory that you've described a bit is from was from a video that Deborah Freeze put out on the two loops theory, who was also a leader at BII. so a lot of connectivity there. the other thing I've been thinking about in in coordination with Eric a bit is, you know. In order to grow the t the amount of jobs in this industry, we really need the industry itself to grow. And one of the ways to do that is to move large pools of capital at foundations into impact investing. We're already mission-driven institutions. And from my perspective, there's just a huge opportunity to move this from a niche market to a really large market across philanthropy and then beyond. And And so part of that is finding people that are already in positions of influence and supporting them with the kinds of tools and resources that they need to become agents of change at their institutions. And that includes, you know, people like me, EDs, CEOs of philanthropies, also program officers, as well as trustees and investment committee members. And I think on the program side, you know, you have this pool of people who already understand impact really deeply, who have a lot of the types of qualifications. We've been talking about my own experience coming up through the program side has also been one of severe imposter syndrome, especially in rooms where people are using a lot of investment jargon. So I'm really interested in opportunities to give people kind of training and community to understand the language of investment so that they can actually see they do have a lot of those skills and it comes down to how you talk about it, and so that they can be fluent when they're sitting in an investment committee meeting. With an advisor and really be the champion of impact investing that they might want to be. And then the same goes for boards of investment commit and investment committees for people who really understand the impact side of the equation and need some strengthening of their own financial skills or even just need confidence and talking points and a better understanding of what the impact investing ecosystem looks like and what the data says about the outcomes of impact investing. to arm them with information, to arm them with community, to give them examples, and to just upskill people in a way that allows them to use the influence that they already have to mobilize more capital for impact.
Eric Horvath: Thank you both. And we are coming up to the top of the hour. I know a lot of questions that come into the chat. So my colleague Shuvom is monitoring the chat and we will we will capture them and make sure we get to them. You you can find us on LinkedIn as well. But I do want to end actually with with a question and then we'll get everyone out on their way. So I just want to step back from the mechanics piece for a second. I'm glad we're able to go into a lot of depth and hopefully people give us grace that we did not solve this in an hour. but we did what we could to offer something of value. doesn't mean it's still not tough out there, but we're trying to push the ball forward. the last question that I wanna leave you both with is if we were having this conversation five or ten years from now and the field had genuinely made progress on this problem of kind of talent legibility, what would actually be different?
Stacey: Sure. I mean, I think for me again, it comes down to growing the industry and not just in terms of size, but also the the depth of impact. And if we get more people with different kinds of backgrounds into these roles, my you know, my sense is that the sector is gonna have more money in it and that that money is really going to be more accountable to the inc impact it's trying to seek.
Eric Horvath: Malaya, giving the last words.
Himalaya Rao: Absolutely. Again, plus one to what Stacey said. And I want to shout out an organization. Jenna Stoney runs the T twenty five list. And I think that's an example of like five to ten years later, it's people who c come from different geographies, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different demographics who are running and creating initiatives. But that is just the first step. It's not just representation that matters. It does matter, but what you do with that representation and truly shifting. both capital and power into different types of communities so that it's not just the leaders that benefit, but the underlying communities that they serve benefit. I think that is like an example is like if we if we wouldn't just have T twenty five, that would be all the organizations in impact investing.
Eric Horvath: Well, thank you, Himalaya. Stacey, thank you so much. thank you all for joining. Please check out Imtact Impacted on Spotify, Apple, our sp our our Substack, and then you can find us all on LinkedIn and then we will do our very best to respond to your questions over email. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Stacey: Sure, Eric. Happy to do that and thanks for having me here. I'm excited to join the conversation. I am the executive director of the Woodcock Foundation, which is based in New York. it's a family foundation. We fund and invest in work across democracy, inclusive economic development, and the environment. I came into the foundation at a very entry-level role on the program side and learned about the whole existence of the endowment while I was there. And so for me, the idea of impact investing was really about figuring out how to move more of the capital already within the Woodcock Foundation into alignment with our mission. And in 2020, my board committed to 100% mission alignment of our endowment. Six years in, we're at about 93% aligned. And I have, you know, stewarded that commitment and I also built an oversee our impact first capital allocation. But my journey really has been one of, you know, being on the program side, having 15 years of, you know, sitting in investment committee conversations and finding ways to get self-educated and learning by doing to understand the impact investing landscape and how you actually deploy capital for impact. And a lot of my experience has really been in seeing mission driven capital sitting on the sidelines. And this conversation is about mission driven talent sitting on the sidelines. I think those two are very much connected to each other. And so I'm excited to dig into that a bit more in this conversation today.
Eric Horvath: And Himalaya, before we go to you with the same question, Stacy, I just wanna ask, because I always talk about I'm always so interested in what people study in school and in college. and I also find so many of the so many of the best investors or the best folks that I know in impact investing had social work backgrounds, anthropology backgrounds. Can can you share just very quickly like what did you study or or what are some of the kind of academic pursuits that you've had?
Stacey: Sure. I I'm kind of in that camp. I I double majored undergrad in psychology and communication. And, you know, I started college actually pre-med bio with a psychology focus, thinking that I wanted to become a clinical psychologist. In the course of that, developed a really strong interest in social work and did some work that brought me closer to the nonprofit sector, working with people who had combined mental illness and substance abuse challenges. and so I almost actually signed on to get a master's degree in social work from Columbia, but pivoted from some experience I had really around the amount of agency that people do or don't have in different roles and kind of wanting to look at a more systemic level of how problems were actually taking place. I ended up getting a master's in public administration at NYU. And so my background has really my educational background ended up being more on the programmatic side of the issue as well. but then in the course of you know, trying to build my own expertise on this subject, I you know, I got a certificate in finance and accounting, but pretty limited, not formal education in the financial industry.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, and I just want to say psychology, social work, like these are also things that when I look around for talent and I talk to people, I'm like, this probably means you're a a good listener, you want to understand like the human condition. And I find these kind of attributes are just so valuable when we're trying to deploy capital, especially for impact. But Himalaya, toss over to you, same question.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, I will thank you, Stacy. That was actually really helpful. I felt like every time we talk, it's it's good to get to know the background a little more. So I appreciate the question, Eric. I actually did get my master's in social work, Stacy, and very much to your perspective, I went into direct practice and realized that the lack of agency and autonomy and the ability to affect like long-term change in my perspective. in my role. though I do feel like I often tell people this, I use my social work degree, it feels like to the exact same extent as my finance degree. and so I'm I'm really, really glad that I got it. It it really informs the work that I do. but then I went on to get my MBA and so then have the the finance and the the social work background. and in my work really combine both of those two things together, as it sounds like Stacy, you do as well. so my journey started off as a social worker. I think that's really important and really critical to this conversation. in addition to that, I have a unique lived experience. I socioeconomically don't represent the the average investor or the average person who works in finance. and then I also, you know, As you can see, I'm a woman of color and a first generation immigrant. I think that all of those actually intersecting identities really shaped my experience in finance and my experience in both social work and then transitioning into the business side. And what I strive to do, and this is kind of central to the work that I do now, is to provide a linear pathway for people like the everyday average American to be represented in financial leadership because finance Financial incentives, financial programs, policies, they affect us all, and they disproportionately always affect low and middle income individuals. And yet we see a total lack of representation of that in in the financial leadership positions of people who are deploying capital, making decisions around where capital goes, how capital policies are made. And so that's like the work that I do. prior to, you know, doing this as part of the nonprofit, I started off. After getting my MBA, I actually did traditional finance, right? Like that's what I learned. And so I learned about venture capital. And that to me felt like the best merge of my prior background of social work and finance. And so I really delved into that. I started working with angel groups, then eventually venture capital funds, worked across six funds, launched two economic development funds in partnership with the state of Oregon and a few other, you know, great folks. And then eventually launched my own VC fund. And it was a national fund, deployed, felt really, really great about that. And in the course of that, felt like there's something missing here. We're shifting money to different types of people, but are we shifting power? And are we shifting power more broadly? You know, like when our fund is successful, who it benefits from that? Is it just the founders and the investors, or is it also like the underlying staff and that like brought all you know like just iteratively like you know I think for me I'm like a practitioner that has learned things and then just continued to iterate. So for me, as I delved into traditional finance, I kept trying to soften the edges and figure out how to like push the boundaries. And so that brought me to integrated capital, which brought me to like cooperative models that brought me to employee ownership models. And so little by little, I think through my own investing practice you know, now I have over a decade of doing that work, has brought me further and further into different spaces. And so I come to this actually with a clinical social work background and a traditional finance background, and then delved into what does restorative finance look like? What is solidarity economy look like, which is why I'm so passionate now in the in the nonprofit about teaching people about that from the beginning so that they don't have to go through traditional finance and then unlearn so many of the other underlying assumptions, but actually go right from the beginning and understand the totality of what finance can look like.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, thanks, Emily. appreciate that. And it reminds me of I'm gonna put a a pin in it for us to come back to later. we said in our prep call just that you know, some people might disagree, but that's that's okay. It's what discussion is for is that we're not I don't think in our prep call we were saying that like having financial skills and training is is the bad thing. It's the it's and we're gonna get into this later, is like that is a skill set, just like being a caseworker is a skill set. And It's more about like how w we're gonna talk about like legibility and transferable skills. it's not about throwing all of that out, like the training that you did receive. It's about, you know, how do you right size or fit that to well the aims of what the industry says it's it is trying to do. So this actually is a great segue into like our first section is before we even begin, so I know people are probably really excited to talk about like what do you both see as employers look what are employers looking for? how do we kind of make this non-traditional, quote unquote non-traditional talent more legible. We're gonna get to that in a moment, but I really want to kind of start the conversation with kind of what labor market, you know, Shubam and I use this this term just, you know, kind of think of it more from the the research angle of just what labor market or what part of kind of the impact investing industry are we actually talking about and and you both may have different answers, which is great because there's a lot that needs to be done in the space that needs to be changed. But I I want to just kind of ground us in what we're actually talking about or when the two of you are referring to the kind of ways that you engage with hidden or quote unquote non-traditional talent, like what does that mean for you? So before we start designing these solutions, I just think we need to be intellectually honest about the market we're talking about. I I also teach and Emily, I think you you do or used to, and I talk to other faculty members that teach impact investing too, and we talk about how few roles there are and how there are roles that receive hundreds, maybe thousands of applications, and there are experienced and sometimes overqualified candidates struggling to get traction. and just also a lot of impact organizations themselves are relatively small and lean. So there's just a clear like staffing, like overhead, just kind of personnel cost to to consider as well. So simply just training more people without thinking about where they go afterward clearly isn't gonna solve anything for the people that are interested on this call. So before we get into, you know, what are employees employers looking for, how do we actually transfer those skills and make them more legible for for each of you, and either of you can go, you know, first, what kind of labor market are you actually talking about when we say impact investing or or finding hidden talent and giving them pathways? Just just Carve out kind of where you exist in the space.
Stacey: Yeah, I'm happy to kind of share where I sit in the space, but also offer offer some thoughts on the broader industry. And it's been, this has been a really interesting question for me to think about because, you know, I sit within philanthropy, and within that role, impact investing jobs can actually look really different. So in foundations, you have, you know, certain foundations that are carving out capital for impact first deployment, where they're trying to be catalytic, where there's a really strong emphasis on the integrity and quality of the impact you're getting, which we hope that that's there across all impact investing, but where that's really prioritized. And you have other roles that are in impact investing that are really more about endowment management and thinking about a lens for impact across asset classes, you know, where financial returns are on equal playing field or sometimes even more important than the actual impact is and the Type of profile of someone you might hire into those roles is very different. But even that, in that, you know, the the the diversification of potential jobs within philanthropy and impact investing is just one piece of the market. There's also the, you know, the fund side where people are actually building and managing funds and a whole set of qualifications that could match you to different kinds of roles in that context. And then the nonprofit impact investing ecosystem, even looking at the landscape of Community development finance institutions that are nonprofits looking to deploy capital for impact across different communities with different kinds of themes. And so the we talk about it as it as if it's one industry, but it really is a pretty kind of fragmented set of potential roles in different kinds of institutions.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, for sure. Amelia.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, I would agree that it is really fragmented. I mean, even in like when we say impact investing, even just and as we talked about in our prep call, what that means from a capital deployment perspective ranges across the board. And so I think the talent and the structures and the underlying institutions also vary. For us, we are training folks in the the gamut of the capital stack. And so we train people on debt grant and equity underwriting. And so We've trained about over 200 people now, 80% of them are placed. and so they work across that stack and then in institutions like foundations, family offices, as Stacey mentioned, capital deploying organizations, as well as nonprofits investing as well. and then in terms of the profile, we actually take so we take a broad range of folks. What we found is over the course of our time. Those who are most successful in placement, because as you mentioned, Eric, it's not just about training. We can train all we want, but then we're just creating more overqualified, you know, under per under resourced folks. And so really focus on the the placement aspect of it. And those who are most successful, at least through our perspective, are folks in their like 30 to 50 range. That means that they've had some work experience that really helps. From like the acclimation of you know just going into any work environment. The other thing is that a lot of our folks are coming in with excellent work experience that isn't in finance, but actually supplements it. So a lot of what you were talking about, Eric, of like what are the the adjacent kind of categories? So thinking about social workers and thinking about psychologists, but then also thinking about municipality workers, urban planners. also thinking about policy advocates. And so you actually in your research kind of mirrored that of like the eclectic group of people that kind of responded. Those are the specific types of people that also we train and are successful in our program.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, I'll say it's funny, Himalaya. I I forgot how we got connected. I think a friend like of a friend s an and anyway, like they forwarded your note or something got forwarded somewhere in the Just Economy Institute fellows kind of, you know, so shout out to J E I, thank you for making this connection. And I I remember like the first conversation we had, you're like, This is what we do. And I was like, it's great because Shuvam
Himalaya Rao: Yeah.
Eric Horvath: and I were kinda like, man, this is a big problem. There's so many talented people, and you're just like, This is what we do. I'm like, Great. All right, well problem problem partly solved. So
Himalaya Rao: Yeah. And when we talked about the results of your study, I was like, Yes, we are literally seeing that in i in real time and we are solving for those issues.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, I I I appreciate all of like the context and then just the I'm just gonna put one other thing actually Himalay, what I wanna ask you is I'm a big believer in, you know, trying to break down terms or jargon. and just people me different things mean different things, different people. I think you mentioned restorative investing and I think Stacy you mentioned catalytic capital. I don't know if both of you would just mind as you define them. what does that mean to you? Just so people can help situate. And if there are organizations that people can go home and Google, that may help with their further learning. But yeah, definition setting for for the audience.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah. At least for us when we think about reparative finance and we think about solidarity economy, so one as like an umbrella term when we think about solidarity economy, a lot of different initiatives, including impact investing, fall under the bucket of solidarity economy. But that's not the totality of the solidarity economy. There's like many, many more components and parts to it. So that's kind of our like larger frame. and then when we think about restorative finance, when we're thinking about the two-loops model of change, we're thinking about the first, which is like sustaining and doing like more reparative work, stabilization work, being able to think about things that will like sunset extraction work. So there are folks that are doing work in that. Then there's also the generation of new structures that actually shift the way in which we interact with capital, the way we interact. transactionally as well, with or without capital. And so we do when we think about restorative finance frameworks, we're actually thinking about both of those larger buckets, the ones that are doing sustaining, reparative work and the ones that are generating new ways of being able to interact as a society and community.
Eric Horvath: Than thank you. Stacy?
Stacey: Yeah, I love that, Himalaya. Thanks for sharing your definition. catalytic capital for us is often it's it's essentially capital that's de-risking a potential solution and you know, potentially proving out a new concept for how you can create impact through an investable strategy that's meant to crowd in more capital after ours or meet the need of a particular market or population that just isn't being met by. conventional finance. and that's often, you know, just people who we see deserving capital that might actually be being filled by grant needs if some sort of higher risk or lower return investment capital isn't made available.
Eric Horvath: Great. Thank you both. I'm gonna move us on to our next section. So it's it's really about employers. So like fully understanding that, you know, you both do not represent all the employers out in the world. I think is important. I think a lot of people probably join the call. And I see there's some QA in the chat trying to manage that with the many other tabs I have open. Sorry. and my colleague Sridlam is is on it too. So we will try to get to it. I just wanna so your your questions will be read and we'll be heard. we'll do our best. so what are employers looking for? So from your perspectives. So one thing our research surfaced was a perception that employers still rely heavily on familiar signals. And I think this might be to one of the questions in the chat. So traditional finance experience, consulting, MBA, having an MBA, certain institutions and networks. So some of these signals may reflect skills that genuinely matter. But a more interesting question is whether we've gotten precise enough about which skills actually matter for which jobs. So when employers say they want a traditional finance background, what are they actually trying to de-risk or identify? And does the credential always match the work? So I will just comment quickly on my own experience. So I also went and got an MBA about however many years ago, I forget, I forget now. so similar path to Himalaya in in in some ways. And it was because, you know, maybe three or four years before that I had realized maybe some puts in the chat that a lot of the jobs I was looking at or hoping to apply for or felt that I would do a good job at or I could do a good job or learn about, they all required either an MBA, MBA investment banking, private equity, venture capital, or management consulting. one to three or three to five years. So I tried to go the MBA route. I did. It's it's been fortunate for me. I it's it's worked out from having a very circuitous path. But I have I have felt the struggle of of looking at the the J Ds and and the requirements and having to navigate through that. But for both of you, let's talk about what employers are looking for and kind of the skill sets that are really necessary.
Stacey: Sure. I'm happy to jump in here. you know, I I agree with several things you've said here, Eric, and just want to also underscore that I don't in anything I say, I agree that finance and investing skills are important to be at the table. We're talking about a form of investing, so people need to understand investing. but you know, Shuvam quoted me saying, Impact is the first word in impact investing. And I definitely, in my experience and in looking at job descriptions for these kinds of roles as well, feel that impact is not valued as a skill set alongside investing the way that it should be. I I actually was just looking at a job description yesterday that was for what was supposed to be an impact first investing role, and the entire list of qualifications had to do with investing in finance and analysis and Literally, there was not a single credential that they were asking for that had anything to do with impact. And I think what gets missed here is that, you know, impact and the impact success and the business success are not things that happen independently from each other. And so you need to actually be able to have some expertise and orientation toward what makes what makes that impact actually successful for everything to succeed in in most scenarios. And so there's you know, the type of social work background. People who are nonprofit leaders, who have organizing experience in their own communities, people who are proximate to the types of challenges they're trying to solve have an orientation toward whether a solution is going to work and whether it's even trying to solve the right problem. That doesn't come from, you know, knowing what liquidity means or knowing how to put a term sheet together. And so I think what I'm seeing is a real gap between the type of deep finance and investment backgrounds that a lot of employers are looking for. And that paired with a sense of how this kind of work plays out in the real world, that's likely to drive real success. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that more employers will start employ you know, value valuing some of those other real world lived types of expertise in the same way that they're valuing investment expertise.
Eric Horvath: That's we're going to go r to that right after Himalaya hops in and I I'll add some comments too. But Himalaya, where is your head at?
Himalaya Rao: I I mean I totally agree, Stacey, with everything you've said related to how do we bolster up the value of impact. And actually one of the things that we do is we work with justice aligned organizations on their staffing needs. And all the time I get questions around like, should we be looking for candidates because we don't just do the recruitment, we do the training. And so folks are always asking us like, should we look for people who have finance backgrounds? Or should we look for people who have impact backgrounds? And one of the main things I kind of tell people is like it you can teach finance to anyone, right? Like none of us were born with that knowledge. But if you don't find people that have that like lived experience or professional experience with the like impact that you're
Eric Horvath: Totally.
Himalaya Rao: trying to create, that that's not something that I can really like instill in them in the matter of like three to six months, right? Like that's like built and baked over time. And so very much like agree with you. One thing that I do wanna say and point out is I agree that like the table stakes sometimes are that like MBA or that like underwriting experience. And in my experience of both going myself into the job market as well as helping now many, many people into the job market, it feels like actually it's less about that and more about who you know. It does feel very much like the finance space, whether it's traditional finance and even more in the impact investing space because of that lack of linear pathway to it. Like that it's actually more like the MBA is great, but it's more than the MBA is like who did you go to MBA school with and who is your network? Who did you like go and get your finance or who did you go and get your like, you know, degree, whatever that degree is, that actually like determines the pathway. Like Stacey, you were kind of talking about how you got a different degree, but at NYU, right? And it's like that network is actually like what I've found is like much more like kind of like telling of where the trajectory goes. And so that's like what we're trying to change is like when we talk with you know, prospective employers, the demand is so high. Like you were saying, Eric, you post one job, there's five hundred applications within a day. And so
Eric Horvath: Yeah.
Himalaya Rao: what people naturally do is that they have like decision fatigue and they just go like, could someone actually just recommend someone to me? And then they just do that as a referral network. And so even when they're posting job postings, they end up picking someone from a person that they already know or a person that someone they trust and know knows. So I think
Eric Horvath: Yeah.
Himalaya Rao: that's like one of the biggest barriers.
Stacey: Yeah, Himalaya, I totally agree with you
Eric Horvath: Go ahead.
Stacey: on that. I think it's such an important point. And in you know, I think it shows up everywhere and it's definitely strong in philanthropy. Eric and I have talked a bit about investment committee and board roles and even for Sometimes volunteer roles, these are highly competitive and there's a lot of opacity around it. And I a lot of that is driven by the network effect of the the default easy pathway in being to call up your friends. And and I think that is a huge barrier to getting the kind of diversity that we want to see in these roles.
Eric Horvath: I wanna say like I I also agree and I I'm also mindful of like if I was in the audience and listening to that, I wouldn't be so happy. I would be pretty disappointed. I mean I'm disappointed in industry. it it it makes so like for me, and and spoiler alert, like we'll get to the end, but to try to jump the shark, it's there need to more jobs and more roles and more apprenticeships and more rotational programs. so we'll get to that, but like I just want to kind of speak to like the industry, like that you know, for it trying to be reforming or kind of like a better version of the more kind of traditional form of investing, more inclusive, more impactful. it like hits it's like uniquely perverse or or more disappointing that if we're recreating the same kind of I guess old boys club or whatever you want to call it. and I just don't think there's a sugar coating. We shouldn't sugarcoat that. It should just be like that is disappointing. And how do we find how do we how do we name that and then how do we find p pathways forward? Before we go actually into this legibility piece, I I do want to just touch very quickly, because Himalaya, I know that you take this, your your program and your organization takes a bit of a holistic look into positions, and Stacey, I want you to come in here too. When people ask me or when former students have asked me, they're like, I want to work in impact investing, but I don't love, you know, Excel or like I don't love numbers. And I'm like, Well, you know, it is investing is the second word in the term. So that's important. But I feel like the there's just not enough shine on the various other roles that are not deal roles. And then I also think people don't and it it's again because people are just learning and it's new, especially non traditional candidates, but obviously like the temperament and the type of underwriting or diligence you do versus like an equity deal versus a loan. Like it's just different, differ I I think different incentives, different temperaments. But people are just like, I don't like numbers, so like I can't do this. I find there's so many other roles within investing in general, and then obviously impact investing is form of that as well, that skills can be leveraged, that you don't have to live in a spreadsheet. And I'm just curious from the two of you if we can just like popcorn or toss out other functions or roles that non-traditional talent would be uniquely good for that are also fundamentally crucial to impact investing structure and infrastructure.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah. I can actually jump in because I will s talk about this from like the perspective of a job seeker and someone who worked like, you know, kind of worked my way up even in the venture space, and then kind of like what that looks like on the impact investing space. So a lot of times what I tell folks is like I compare two of my experiences. So this is like in the equity world, right? But this is actually true across the capital stack is you have to look at like what the what type of capital deployment the organization is doing, but also what their portfolio structure looks like. So I worked at one of the funds that I worked at. In each of their portfolios, they had about 50 companies. And that was in a discrete closed end fund. I know that I'm throwing a lot of jargon out. Happy to you know follow up with all of that, but like in one portfolio, there was 50 companies. That's actually a lot of companies to be able to invest in. And so there was a high ratio of like diligencing, of doing like and rapid diligencing, right? And so you were doing that over and over and over again. And so you did have to have some level of numbers to be able to do some of that financial diligence. You also have to have that community and you have to, and this is where my social work background actually really helped. Because you have to do interviews all the time and you have to hear what people are saying and then the underneath of what they're not saying, right? And being able to understand
Eric Horvath: Absolutely.
Himalaya Rao: that. So that's like one kind of thing. The other though is I worked at a Series C fund and they you know, by then they were only making investments into like two companies a year. And so it's actually like far less on the like the beginning end of financial diligence and on that end. In my perspective, was actually a lot more on the Excel side because it's a lot more on the like portfolio management and like thinking about the performa and like how this like impacts the total portfolio construction. So I'll say that as like one, but the other thing is in my perspective, the deal diligence is 10% of the relationship. Once in order to like make the relationship successful, 90% is what you and that partner do post. investment, whether that's grants, debt, or equity. And so like the portfolio manager role, the community engagement role, there's so many roles. Even if you are a financial analyst and you are working on the deal side, in order to make a deal successful, you have to work in a non-financial capacity after the deal is closed.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, Stacy and
Stacey: Sure. I'd also loop back to a point you made earlier, Himalaya, which is about kind of how policy can impact the success of deals. And Eric, I think this came up in a recent post you wrote on this topic as well. When you get into the diligence and what we're actually talking about, there's a lot of issue-based expertise that comes into play. and for funds that are, you know, pretty specific in the type of impact they're having, such as in climate or housing. There are lots of other kinds of experience that are not investment related that would help you position you really well to understand what a successful deal is going to look like. And then I just want to double down on Himalaya's point on relationship. If you're on the deal side, deploying capital into a community, having relationships in those community for us on the catalytic capital deployment, where it's really impact first, a lot of the work is built on relationships. And someone's going into those communities to, you know, knock on people's doors and have conversations with them and not necessarily spending their days looking at Excel spreadsheet. And then on the, you know, on the client side for capital allocators, the investment advisory firms that we've worked with, they all have a lot of client-facing people whose job it is to is to hold relationships with clients. And then for big firms, it's similar to any other industry where you have admin roles, you have HR roles. There's a really wide variety of skill sets that come in. You have people at funds that need to really be good at relationships and fundraising. And so fundraising in other nonprofit sectors can come in. So depending on, you know, the entity, I think there are quite a lot of different skill sets that can come in that are not necessarily about numbers and spreadsheets all the time.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, this is great. And it it it goes really well into this next part where we want to talk about kind of quote unquote non-traditional talent, making it more legible. so when we're listing like a variety of other skill sets, I know Stacey, when I when you and I when I started working with you, like I didn't know any of this, any of these terms, any of these roles, any of anything nothing. and I just kind of learned it just stumbling forward through Investopedia or whatever I was using back then. And it's just so helpful to have like someone that is a practitioner kind of name like there's a variety of roles, functionality, skill sets, because when you're looking at this job description, you're probably like, I don't like, I don't know what this is, like I don't I don't know how to do this stuff. I think some of these we need the employers to also recalibrate what they're valuing as well. But let's go to the kind of legibility thing. So this gets us to something we in the original research that Chuvam and I did called the skills transferability paradox in the part one of the The series, a lot of people believe they already have relevant experience. So I'm sure they're nodding their heads at what Himalaya and Stacey are saying. But the problem is that they don't always know how to translate that experience into language employers actually value and use. And then also if the employers know how to recognize it or not. Can you I I love like specific examples I think you both have shared from your own personal experience, but I'm actually going to ask you to think about. people you've worked with or people you've trained. Can you think of other people? Maybe you can leave them anonymous or you can give them their flowers if you want. can you think of people you've encountered who clearly had relevant experience or capabilities, but whose background wasn't immediately legible as an impact investor. And maybe what do you think was getting lost in translation?
Stacey: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, a lot of the people I really admire in the impact investing space do not come from traditional finance and MBA backgrounds. even just in my own ecosystem of board members, I have some did go on to get their MBAs, but I have, you know, one who started in anthropology actually to the same point around social work and the human-centered skills and interests. Another who started on the MPA side like me, one who started in journalism. And I think there's a lot of these roots of the types of jobs that signal a real interest in people and care for people, understanding people that tend to translate to a type of skill set. I would also say that a lot of the the skills gap to me is more of a language gap than an actual skills gap. And so if if You know, if this is coming from the employer side of not recognizing skills for what they are, how on your resume can you actually talk about the things you've already done in kind of finance language to make it feel more legible to the employers that you're trying to reach? but yeah, I mean, I the people that I see really committed to the impact first versions of impact investing tend to come from an impact background. And I appreciate Himalaya's comment on you know, finance skills being learnable. The founder of an investment firm that I had a conversation with last year made a comment to me that she preferred to hire people who came from the impact side because she could teach them finance and it didn't always work the other way around.
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, I I mean, I 100% have been like throughout this conversation, like plus one to everything you're saying, Stacey. I think that some concrete examples, like again, like when you think about a lot of actually the vast majority of people that come through our program, I look at their resume and we have to tailor it, right? And we have to like resh shift everything that they're saying in order to make it something that like would be finance appropriate, but it actually like is it's radically easy because a lot of these adjacent fields are doing things that are community oriented. And so when you think about like the skills of like articulating like storytelling and narrative building, like a lot of fields do that. When you think like,
Eric Horvath: Overly.
Himalaya Rao: you know, like Stacy had mentioned like policy advocacy, right? Like you have to be able to like canvas neighborhoods. You have to think about like Aggregating responses. You have to be able to think about being able to bring that out into like how policy will be able to be shaped, like who needs to be talked to, like stakeholder engagement. All of that actually is part of impact investing. It just needs to be retooled in a way that like can exist in the context of capital deployment and deals. So there are actually like so many transferable skills because we are working with people. And as I mentioned, The diligencing is 10% of the totality of the work that we're doing with, you know, prospective founders or prospective organizations.
Eric Horvath: Yeah, I mean I the tr translation's har it's hard, it's another step. And I I'm just gonna name 'cause we say this in the podcast, on a lot of episodes in the podcast too, around imposter syndrome. So we've really focused on working with sorry, and a lot of our friend friends of the pod and guests of the pod have been people of color from more working class, middle class backgrounds. And like we say, how did you become like such and such fancy position. They're like, I don't know, I like pretty nervous about it like for a long time and didn't think I belonged and, you know, they have this great title and and a lot of respect. And they're yes, still not sure if I belong. So it's it it's hard to say and assert that you have those skills and then also to tran be like, I'm gonna translate and say like I did this for like my auntie, so therefore I can lead, you know, like a fundraising round for like this really high growth startup. Like even if there are overlaps, like I think it's just important to name like kind of the the backgrounds that people come from. I come from that as well. and then you just realize that like, you know, you're you're pretty good and you can like, you know, not be so hard on yourself. but I appreciate that. And I don't know if this is useful to people, but like for me, I I just talk about a lot of my work as being mobilizing resources, mobilizing and and allocating resources, which I don't always say investment. I don't say grant. I also don't always say money or capital because I think a lot of times community organizing is about mobilizing resources. It's human power, human like community connection. It's like how do you bring those together and use them to influence and move forward a more socially just aim that you're pushing for. But it's been a long time of of trying to translate. Himalaya.
Himalaya Rao: I I will also say though, like I agree with everything you're saying. And I think that when we think about there's always a tension between the the responsibility on the individual and the responsibility structurally, right? And
Eric Horvath: For sure, for sure.
Himalaya Rao: so like I do also think part of what we're doing now is like organizational ready training, right? Because organizations need to be ready for people that Look not just like visually look different, but also come from totally different lived experiences. And therefore, how they think about things is going to be different. As we talked about in the beginning, impact investing is trying to be this reformative version of finance. And yet we bring over so many of the like hierarchical like training practices, hiring practices. thinking practices of you know our predecessors in traditional finance and a lot of times there's this like mentality around even like groupthink that happens so frequently within impact investing that like you know people come from like the same backgrounds, the same educational backgrounds, the same socioeconomic backgrounds. So the way that they're thinking about you know tackling a problem is all the same. And then an what we've seen is that the people that we're training are primarily working class people. who are then going into these organizations and then they're having to like get buy-in from all these other people in order to get their voice heard. And so that's why we started to think about like how do we like also train the organization on how to think differently and how to brainstorm differently and how to communicate and accept that different people are not gonna always come to it with this like very like white centered way of speaking and thinking.
Eric Horvath: Hundred percent. And this is good great, a great tee up to us landing the plane for the conversation. so Himalay, I'm gonna go to you, and then I'll I'll I'll I'll ask for Stacy's remarks around training people in place, people that are in roles and places already. But for now, Himalaya, during our prep call you talked about this kind of three part framework of training. Placing and building, train, place and build. so we'd love to hear, you know, you reference it a lot, but like your organization, the program that you run. you've given us a lot of the texture already, but can you just like kind of break it down what train, place, and build means to you? And then one of the last mo comments to Stacy will will be around like this thought around the people that are in roles already that could be being more impactful with the how their investments at their institutions are made. But train, place and build, Himalayan.
Himalaya Rao: Yes, yes. So we've been doing this now for a little while and as Eric you mentioned, we really try to take a holistic approach. I think that because of my own background of like constantly being a practitioner and iterating, this has really come out of something that we started in 2021 and has every single year iterated and we figured out how to be more supportive of the ecosystem we're building. So when we think about train, it has two pieces. One is training the individual. And we're really lucky to be able to have a partnership with Impact Charitable. I'm gonna shout out some partnerships because we could not do this alone and we don't want to be doing this alone. And so we are fortunate to be able to have lots of organizations kind of leaning in. And so Impact Charitable is actually working with us to develop our current fellowship structure into a one-year full rotational training program to rival that of like a JP Morgan and a Citibank and a private equity firm. in restorative finance and solidarity economy and impact investing. The other part of that is organizational readiness training, where we train board, existing staff, volunteers, so that when people are coming in, it's not just the one or two people that are thinking in this way, but the totality of the organization can understand not just solidarity economy, macroeconomic theory, restorative finance, but also how do different people communicate? How do you move through conflict in a way that's going to be generative rather than isolating? So that's like on the train part. The place part, we have a partnership with Boston Impact Initiative, and they are great. They accelerate justice-aligned and justice-focused funds. And so we work with their alumni on their staffing. And so what we do is, and we work broadly as well, is we work with organizations that are aligned with Solidarity Economy, and we become their train their recruitment and training agency. So a lot of times people will say, like, we want to recruit, there's a talent gap. the the field of impact investing and solidarity economy and justice aligned mission aligned investing is so niche still. And so what we do is we find p candidates that they want to hire. And then we also train them before they go in. We also, of course, pull pull from our alumni for that. And then the last part is the build. So as I talked about this two loops model. The first is like sustaining and removing things from the extractive economy. The second is the generation of new ideas that radically shift how we interact with one another and how we transact with capital. And so we're I'm actually working with another JEI alumni, Jessica McLeese from SK2 Fund, on the development, as well as Susanna Penfield from Chosen Family Office. And so a great shout out to them as well and Cindy Willard because we are creating the residency. And so that's a two-year program for people from different communities who have the like community buy-in. And have some financial skill. So it's mostly for the alumni that we've trained, as well as some others that, you know, like demonstrate that they have community buy-in and some financial skill to be able to develop initiatives and practices that they want to put into place into their community. The things we're looking for in that is not just do you build a structure that changes capital, but are you decentralizing power back into communities? And so that's the The build part is that we are helping to facilitate new engines and new infrastructure that then support decentralized flows of money and power.
Eric Horvath: Himalaya, before Stacy, before you go in, I just want to say, Himalaya, we have like forty people online. I'm I'm happy that we've had very little drop off, which is great. S as the person moderating this, it's you're always looking at that drop off number. Himalaya, you know, I don't know who's on the call right now, but like who are some people or or archetypes or profiles that you'd be really excited for them to reach out to you and and get in touch? who you're looking to connect with?
Himalaya Rao: Yeah, so we are looking for number one, first and foremost, the community that we are serving. If you are looking to get into finance, especially impact investing, we'd love to hear from you. Also, if you are a community activist, if you're a community builder and you already have some level of finance experience and know what your community needs. If you don't have the finance experience, but you still know what your community needs, we'd love to hear from you because that's what we're building for the residency for. the second thing is we are always looking for people who want to partner with us, both from an expertise perspective and a funding perspective, because this is what JP Morgan and Citibank have. That's why they get to do these types of things, is because they have a lot of capital. What we do is we use capital to not just perpetuate cycles of oppression and like reinforce this like huge nonprofit industrial complex, but actually shift it. back into communities that need it. And so we offer fully funded programs to the folks that we accept and accelerate. And so always looking for people to do that with. And as you know, Eric, we are building advisory councils for all of our initiatives. And so if you feel like you have lived experience, being able to build out a rotational program or residency program, we'd love to hear from you. You don't need to have finance experience. We would love to have adjacent experience. We are so fortunate that 11 organizations of the JEI community have already kind of leaned in to be our core anchor partners around this, but we are always looking for people with unique lived experience. So we'd love to hear from you.
Eric Horvath: Thanks, Emilea. And Stacy, I know we or come up close to the top of the hour, but I do know you and I have talked a lot about talent and different ways to look at the quote unquote talent pipeline.
Stacey: Yes. Well, first I just have to say, Himalaya, it's so much fun to listen to you talk about your work. And we are investors in the Boston Impact Initiative and huge fans of them as well. And the first time I ever heard about the two loops theory that you've described a bit is from was from a video that Deborah Freeze put out on the two loops theory, who was also a leader at BII. so a lot of connectivity there. the other thing I've been thinking about in in coordination with Eric a bit is, you know. In order to grow the t the amount of jobs in this industry, we really need the industry itself to grow. And one of the ways to do that is to move large pools of capital at foundations into impact investing. We're already mission-driven institutions. And from my perspective, there's just a huge opportunity to move this from a niche market to a really large market across philanthropy and then beyond. And And so part of that is finding people that are already in positions of influence and supporting them with the kinds of tools and resources that they need to become agents of change at their institutions. And that includes, you know, people like me, EDs, CEOs of philanthropies, also program officers, as well as trustees and investment committee members. And I think on the program side, you know, you have this pool of people who already understand impact really deeply, who have a lot of the types of qualifications. We've been talking about my own experience coming up through the program side has also been one of severe imposter syndrome, especially in rooms where people are using a lot of investment jargon. So I'm really interested in opportunities to give people kind of training and community to understand the language of investment so that they can actually see they do have a lot of those skills and it comes down to how you talk about it, and so that they can be fluent when they're sitting in an investment committee meeting. With an advisor and really be the champion of impact investing that they might want to be. And then the same goes for boards of investment commit and investment committees for people who really understand the impact side of the equation and need some strengthening of their own financial skills or even just need confidence and talking points and a better understanding of what the impact investing ecosystem looks like and what the data says about the outcomes of impact investing. to arm them with information, to arm them with community, to give them examples, and to just upskill people in a way that allows them to use the influence that they already have to mobilize more capital for impact.
Eric Horvath: Thank you both. And we are coming up to the top of the hour. I know a lot of questions that come into the chat. So my colleague Shuvom is monitoring the chat and we will we will capture them and make sure we get to them. You you can find us on LinkedIn as well. But I do want to end actually with with a question and then we'll get everyone out on their way. So I just want to step back from the mechanics piece for a second. I'm glad we're able to go into a lot of depth and hopefully people give us grace that we did not solve this in an hour. but we did what we could to offer something of value. doesn't mean it's still not tough out there, but we're trying to push the ball forward. the last question that I wanna leave you both with is if we were having this conversation five or ten years from now and the field had genuinely made progress on this problem of kind of talent legibility, what would actually be different?
Stacey: Sure. I mean, I think for me again, it comes down to growing the industry and not just in terms of size, but also the the depth of impact. And if we get more people with different kinds of backgrounds into these roles, my you know, my sense is that the sector is gonna have more money in it and that that money is really going to be more accountable to the inc impact it's trying to seek.
Eric Horvath: Malaya, giving the last words.
Himalaya Rao: Absolutely. Again, plus one to what Stacey said. And I want to shout out an organization. Jenna Stoney runs the T twenty five list. And I think that's an example of like five to ten years later, it's people who c come from different geographies, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different demographics who are running and creating initiatives. But that is just the first step. It's not just representation that matters. It does matter, but what you do with that representation and truly shifting. both capital and power into different types of communities so that it's not just the leaders that benefit, but the underlying communities that they serve benefit. I think that is like an example is like if we if we wouldn't just have T twenty five, that would be all the organizations in impact investing.
Eric Horvath: Well, thank you, Himalaya. Stacey, thank you so much. thank you all for joining. Please check out Imtact Impacted on Spotify, Apple, our sp our our Substack, and then you can find us all on LinkedIn and then we will do our very best to respond to your questions over email. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
