Tag Archives: investing

Update – International Impact Investing Challenge 2012 – Winners Announced!

UPDATE – I3C is finished now and winners have been announced, along with all the finalists’ presentations!

Congratulations to Stanford School of International Policy Studies (1st), Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management (2nd) and University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy (3rd)!

Too bad I couldn’t be in San Francisco for the  final judging rounds but very interesting to see 2 policy schools and only 1 MBA program in the final selection bracket – now how many impact investors nowadays have public policy school graduates in their teams? Would be interesting to hear for sure.

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Update – International Impact Investing Challenge 2012 – Finalists Announced!

UPDATE – Round 1 of I3C is finished now and finalists have been announced! Was a fun list I went through with neat ideas and glad to see 11 teams advancing to San Francisco for the April 13 live presentations.

Finalists below. Congratulations to folks from Columbia SIPA, Duke Fuqua, Kellogg, Stanford IPS, Berkeley Haas, UCLA Andersen, Chicago Harris School, USC Moore School, and USC Marshall School – excellent job!

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Shoutout – International Impact Investing Challenge 2012

Don’t ask me why they thought I would be good for this, but somehow I find myself this week with the honor of helping out at I3C with the evaluation of submissions for innovative ideas around financial instruments and vehicles for impact investing proposed by sharp graduate students from all over the place.

In the words of the competition:

The International Impact Investing Challenge is a pitch competition focused on designing investment vehicles that create sustainable impact and are of the size and scope that would be of interest to institutional investors. Graduates students are challenged to propose and defend a sustainable investment strategy for an institutional investor who makes sustainable investments.

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Good Profile – Joan Yao (LGT Venture Philanthropy)

Good Profiles feature members of our Good Generation who are either out there in the field doing interesting work or still in the trenches of schools and institutions waiting to make their mark on the world. Have your own story to tell? Know someone who would be great to be profiled? Please sign-up or leave a note here!

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What do you do for a living nowadays?

I work as the investment manager for Southeast Asia of LGT Venture Philanthropy, a non-profit impact investor with operations in five continents around the world. Our mission is to increase the sustainable quality of life of less-advantaged people, by finding and supporting organizations with outstanding social and environmental impact. We also inspire clients to engage in active philanthropy, and provide philanthropic advisory and implementation services.

As an investment manager for LGT Venture Philanthropy, I am primarily responsible for sourcing and screening potential deals in Southeast Asia. Based in the region, I prepare the relevant investment documents about organizations, and discuss these with my team and board. I am involved in every step of due diligence and deal execution. I am also in charge of monitoring and providing ongoing strategic support to portfolio organizations over the course of our engagement. I represent LGT VP during regional conferences, and more importantly, provide local insight and guidance to LGT VP’s top management regarding the appropriate strategy and approach for Southeast Asia.

This year, for example, we are launching the Impact Ventures Accelerator Program. The iVAP provides hands-on business consulting and customized financial support of up to US$50,000 to outstanding, early-stage social ventures in Southeast Asia with a high potential for scaling-up and positive impact. I developed and pitched this program to our board in response to a perceived need in the region for earlier-stage support of organizations, and in order to build LGT VP’s pipeline and impact in the region.

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Good & Gasp #2 – Social Impact Bonds, Enviro-investing, Prediction Markets

Good & Gasp #2

Social Impact Bonds, Enviro-investing, Microfinance Failures

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Social Impact Bonds – what’s the next step in this innovative financial instrument for social enterprises?
  • Environmental Impact Investing – how is environmental entrepreneurship different from “social” for the sake of impact investing?
  • Microfinance Failures – what can we learn from ex-SKS Microfinance’s CEO Vikram Akula’s admission of failure?
  • Social Value vs. Social Change – is it better to talk of social “change” or “value” and what is the important difference?
  • Sustainability by 2050 – 81% of companies apparently claim they already incorporated sustainability in their organizations… are we screwed, then?
  • Prediction Markets for Randomized Control Trials – how can we use prediction markets to help make better decisions on randomized control trials?

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Good & Gasp #1 – Encore-Stagers, Toil-o-preneurs, Impact Investing Bubbles

Good & Gasp #1

Encore-Stagers, Toil-o-preneurs, Impact Investing Bubbles

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Encore Fellowships – how to use the potential of OLDER people, instead of YOUNGER people
  • Toil-o-preneurs – innovations in solving worldwide sanitation problems
  • Civic responsibility – how to get Americans to find public jobs “cool” again (if ever)
  • Impact Investing troubles and bubbles – are we on an impact investing bubble since nobody seems able to find all those financially juicy deals that we’ve been promised?
  • Good (Business) Generation Gaps – discussion on the shift in generations towards doing more social good (btw, this was a “gasp” for me)

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A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Final Part 5) – Return Expectations and Know Thyself

Key Ideas in this Post

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with identifying opportunities and becoming more aware of your actual role on the job.
  • In Part 3, I discussed the importance of  understanding what type of people and personalities manage impact investment funds to determine compatibility with your own style, but also to get a sense how your negotiation may be influenced by their background.
  • In Part 4, I suggested that sensing whether or not your impact investor knows what types of organizations she wants to invest in was very informative because it will tell you a lot about your potential life and the long term viability of the fund you are considering.
  • In this final Part 5, I will ask you to probe for the impact investor’s return expectations as an indication of how much they are in touch with reality and then ultimately how to assess yourself and your preferences before going into that interview.

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A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 4) – “Targets” or: What to Invest in?

Key Ideas in this Post:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with identifying opportunities and becoming more aware of your actual role on the job.
  • In Part 3, I discussed the importance of  understanding what type of people and personalities manage impact investment funds to determine compatibility with your own style, but also to give you a sense how the negotiation may be influenced by their background.
  • In this Part 4, I will suggest the importance of sensing whether or not your impact investors know what types of organizations they want to invest in. This will tell you something about your potential work environment and the long term viability of the fund you are considering joining.

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A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 3) – “Personalities” or: Who Runs the Show?

Key Ideas in this Post:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with understanding why people seem to care about impact investing, identifying current opportunities, becoming more aware of your actual role on the job, and remain cautious because career development is probably currently not a priority for the majority of impact investing firms but those with most money, scale, and years of experience (which is very few).
  • In this Part 3, I will discuss the third component in the checklist, which involve understanding who you are dealing with as the so-called “impact investor”. I will claim that the personalities of people running impact investment firms nowadays spans a certain spectrum and may or may not be a good fit with you depending on your own preferences and needs. Understanding this will help you probe in your interview and during your research phase to better gauge if a particular firm is the right place for you. Trust me, this is definitely not much talked about when all the media nowadays report and debate on impact investing on its theoretical and abstract features, while paying on average rather little attention to its human level. Let me ask: while impact investing managers can talk passionately about the people their investments help all day and all night, how many can articulate where they see their employees move within their organization in five years? Lastly, do not be surprised if you see a strong theme around money and attitudes towards it. I write about them at length in this post because it is somewhat of an impact investing “dirty little secret” and not discussed because we are supposed to talk about doing good here, right? Well, what I would simply like to do here is to draw the connection between personalities and the way they lead people to interview and negotiate with you sometimes in rather strange, seemingly counter intuitive ways.

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Weekly Poll #1 – Impact Investing: Why do it? Why work in it? What to expect?

Weekly Poll #1:

Impact Investing: Motivations, Expectations and Careers

Picking up right on the theme of the week, I was curious to learn more about your motivations for looking at impact investing. Do you just find it generally interesting? Do you see a career in it potentially? Why? Why not? What are your expectations about how much people should earn in return for social investments?

Please vote on all questions so we can get some reasonable numbers in the mix. You can instantly see current results. I know you are there, because the latest post series has proven very popular! As announced, if all readers combined can provide me a minimum of 100 votes (on each question), I’ll release my hostage: Part 3 of the 6-step career checklist for impact investing post series! I know it’s devious, but hey, we might as well get used to some warm up to take our Good Generation community to a higher level of interaction and discussion. In this case, the cost to you for this starts at a modest 6 clicks.

Lastly, kidding aside, please do share with me any suggestions for future polls you may find interesting to learn more about your fellow Good Generation comrades and their views on various topics. I’d be happy to pick up on some of these ideas in the future.

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