Topic: Philanthropy and capital

Impact Next: An interview with Salesforce Foundation’s Becky Ferguson

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of growing inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster our most vulnerable communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2024, Impact Next — a new editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Becky Ferguson — Senior Vice President of Philanthropy at Salesforce and CEO of Salesforce Foundation.

Greg Behrman, CEO and Founder, NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about your journey into leadership in this field. Were there any defining moments, experiences, or mentors that helped you to get here? 

Becky Ferguson, Salesforce: For me, a really foundational experience was my first job out of college back at a small, community-based nonprofit in the community where I grew up. 

When I look back, I appreciate it for a number of reasons. First, the support services we provided across the entire county made me appreciate just how interconnected so many social issues are — I learned to look at things holistically and try to get beneath the surface and understand the root causes. 

It also gave me an appreciation for every single dollar. When I look back, I realize how much we made happen as a small organization with a limited budget. And through my career, as I’ve worked with larger organizations, partnerships, and budgets, I still try to think about the power of every dollar. 

And then the other thing I really took from that experience was that when you work at a startup or a small nonprofit, you wear a lot of hats. One of the hats I wore in that period of time was running the hotline — making sure that any day of the week, any hour, if someone called, there was someone on the other end to pick up that phone. I learned that oftentimes what people really needed in that moment was someone on the other end to listen. There is so much power and importance that comes with presence and listening. 

Behrman, NationSwell: What makes your approach to your work differentiated or sets it apart in the field?

Ferguson, Salesforce: At Salesforce, we’re celebrating our 25th year anniversary as a company this year, and one thing that has grown with us over the years is what we like to call the 1-1-1 model. Early on, we made a pledge to look at how we could give back our financial contributions, our time, and our product, and the ways in which we have been able to watch and see those contributions grow over time is really remarkable. As we look back over the years and see things like over nine million volunteer hours from our employees, thousands of nonprofits that now use Salesforce technology to help power their missions out in the world, and much more. The layering of that impact over time is really powerful. We’ve also always really believed in the power of partnerships and it has been so inspiring to see other companies adopt the 1-1-1 model and make it their own with now over 18,000 companies joining the Pledge 1% global movement. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Salesforce has really built a reputation for being out in front and on the vanguard. Is there anything you can point to that has helped you to stay in alignment with those expectations over time?

Ferguson, Salesforce: To start, it is very much a part of the origin story of the company — it’s the fabric of who we are and our values. 

I think another element of it is that at Salesforce, we’ve really embraced a more distributed or integrated model of impact in the company — meaning it lives in different parts of the business; it’s not just one person or one team’s responsibility alone. At times that can be a little bit messy, but we’ve always felt that that is actually the most powerful way to make lasting change happen.

Behrman, NationSwell: There’s a lot of energy around employee engagement, volunteering, folks wanting to see how to push to the next level of impact, engagement, design. Is there anything you are particularly proud of that you might speak to?

Ferguson, Salesforce: A couple of years ago, we decided to shift away from just celebrating the number of hours people have volunteered — which is really impressive, and which we still have ambitious goals around — in favor of thinking about how we can also inspire and celebrate a deeper kind of giving back journey for employees. 

We dug in with our in-house design team and got a lot of feedback from employees to create a new impact journey. We now have a set of impact milestones people can earn that encourage them to not only volunteer, but to volunteer more than once with an organization, to volunteer and donate, to perhaps join a board — the ultimate goal is to build deeper and deeper engagement. And then as we reward, recognize, and celebrate those milestones over time, we’re able to connect employees with different opportunities that they can then use to continue to further their impact journeys. 

We’re hoping to reach over a million employee volunteer hours this year. The way in which Salesforce employees engage and give back, whether it’s individually or collectively with their teams, is really inspiring.

Behrman, NationSwell: I have this impression that you guys have a differentiated way of communicating, and using narrative, to further ingrain this work and inspire employees. Can you bring us into that a little bit more?

Ferguson, Salesforce: We are a company and a culture of storytellers, and we bring our work across the company to life through stories — be it stories about customers that we work with, stories about our employees, stories about our community partners. We often refer to the individuals in those stories as trailblazers — people who are forging a new path forward — and the idea is that any of us can be a trailblazer in all sorts of ways, from how you’re using new technology to how you’re inspiring teams. 

We’re also definitely intentional about the ways we create moments and avenues to share those stories. We were just at the company kickoff, and we ended the time together by recognizing three employee trailblazers who were rewarded with golden hoodies and recognition from the entire company. They were three really different employees, working in very different roles and parts of the company — making a unique impact not only in their day jobs, but also in their communities. 

At the end of the day, we are community builders: We think a lot about our ecosystem of partners and trailblazers and the ways we all come together in community. And people really feel that sense of community.

Behrman, NationSwell: What has helped you to be an effective leader in the space? Are there attributes or proclivities or parts of your philosophy of leadership that are central to your leadership

Ferguson, Salesforce: I’ve worked in a lot of different organizations, sectors, and settings. I’ve done work in the UN, research, corporate venture capital, private philanthropy, corporate philanthropy, and I think across all of those roles, I have gained an appreciation that there are many different ways and styles of leadership. I think there are two things that really resonate with me: first, trying to reorient my mindset around failure — this idea that to do hard things, you’ve got to take chances, you’ve got to make bets, and it’s not always going to work or go exactly as planned, and that’s okay. 

Behrman, NationSwell: I’d love to hear about a few things you might recommend that have been influential to you in your leadership journey or current state of mind.

Ferguson, Salesforce: There are a couple things that are on my book stand right now, and one of them is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teaching of plants. What I love about it is it’s a blend of stories and science. Another is a book by Bob Sutton called Scaling Up Excellence that was recommended to me by another leader here at Salesforce. One thing about Bob Sutton’s work that has been sticking with me lately is he talks about this idea that in organizations and companies, things layer up over time and you need to step back and look at what is no longer adding value and strip those things away.

He refers to them as barnacles, and that is something I’ve been thinking about lately — what are the barnacles in the work, in the field I’m in, that have layered up over time and are no longer serving us? What do we need to chip away at or strip so that our ships can sail much faster to where we’re trying to go? 

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are some of the peer leaders you really admire — folks more or less in your role at other companies or organizations who you think are really great leaders doing great work?

Ferguson, Salesforce: I’ve met a lot of incredible people through the NationSwell community actually. Being around a table, sharing meals with folks. For instance, Alicia Vermaele, executive director of the Starbucks Foundation, is someone I love to run across town and have a cup of coffee with and hear what’s on her mind, what she’s working on and thinking about. And then Shamina Singh and the team at MasterCard, that’s another group I have come to know through the NationSwell community that I think are doing great things in the world. 

ESG Next: An Interview With Pivotal Ventures’ Renee Wittemyer

Posted on by Anthony Smith

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Renee Wittemyer, Senior Director of Program Strategy at Pivotal Ventures, about the power of thinking big, the unique outcomes of a targeted universalist approach to impact, and why the internal work that leaders do on themselves matters as much as the external.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Can you tell us how your professional and personal journey led you to the work you’re leading today?

Renee Wittemyer, Senior Director of Program Strategy, Pivotal Ventures: My journey to this work wasn’t the result of one big, defining moment; it was a series of moments that led me to where I am today. My parents are immigrants from India. I spent my childhood going to India every two years, so even from a young age, I was able to see stark economic disparities with my own two eyes. It was a formative backdrop for my experience of the world. After college, I spent several years in East Africa. I lived in northern Kenya and I worked with a group of women in Samburu, and I became very immersed in the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis: lack of power, an inability to negotiate with the men of their village, the way gender roles within their cultural norms dictated how they show up and what they’re able to achieve. I was there on 9/11, and I remember so vividly that they came up to me and asked me what had just happened in my country, because the men in their village were withholding that knowledge from them.

It was such a stark moment: I realized they were relying on me, an outsider, as their entire access to important knowledge, as a link to the outside world. I began to think about how I can create opportunities for women to access power and information, and how technology can help enable equity and agency. My time with them gave me the passion and the lens I have for international development, for women’s groups, small business, entrepreneurship, and technology — and the intersections between those passions. I found my way to Pivotal Ventures, building a strategy inspired by Melinda French Gates, focused on supporting women’s leadership in tech and innovation, and I’ve been here ever since.  Currently, I lead the philanthropic efforts of Pivotal, weaving in my knowledge of what it takes to advance social progress in the U.S. across all our areas of focus.

Behrman: How would you define this moment for philanthropy and social impact work? Where are we, how did we get here, and where are we going?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: One of the biggest ways that philanthropy has changed in recent years is that we now do a better job of using the inputs of communities most impacted and having leaders with diverse lived experiences at the table to inform decision making.  The field has also become more diverse, with new leaders coming into philanthropy with different backgrounds that shape their points of view.  These changes have happened because leaders have been intentional about inclusion – in making funding decisions and building their teams.  We have made a big step in the right direction.

Looking to the future, I think it will be important for leaders in philanthropy to learn from the different promising approaches to philanthropy and embrace the fully diversity of strategies that are out there and reflect the needs of different communities, rather than holding onto one relatively narrow approach as the future of our field.

Behrman: What’s unique about the strategies, initiatives, and approaches you and your team are leading at Pivotal?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: When I had my interview at Pivotal, one of the questions a hiring director asked me was, “Can you think big enough?”

Thinking big is core to us at Pivotal Ventures. We’re focused on expanding opportunity and equality in the United States, and we advance that work through high-impact investments, partnerships, and advocacy. When I started, artificial intelligence (AI) was one of the fastest growing fields with potential for disruption . Women are underrepresented in tech more broadly, but when we looked at the emerging field of AI, the disparity was even more stark. So we thought big: we looked at what was coming, and we started laying out the building blocks  of a strategy so that women are represented in AI and have seats at the decision making tables. 

Thinking big here also means finding great partners who are looking at the root causes and pulling strategic levers in innovative ways. I’m thinking about Pivotal’s partnership with Judy Spitz, the head of Breakthrough Tech AI, an incredible program focused on supporting young women in undergraduate degrees. Her research showed that women who graduated from school with the relevant skills for AI often got slotted into generic roles in the tech industry — getting a job in AI is hard when you’ve just graduated, and even harder if you’re a woman. This program helps women gain practical experience in AI through internships and portfolio-building projects with companies , so they have the skills and experience needed to get AI jobs.

Another area we’re thinking big is around expanding access to mental health supports for young people. Since 2018, Pivotal has worked to address really urgent issues of mental wellbeing among young Americans. That work has taken a lot of forms: we’ve partnered with Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving. This center aims to provide mental health resources for use in schools, homes, and clinical settings. With the increase in mental health needs and the shortage of professionals and therapists, providing educators and parents with effective tools is critical. As a parent of teenagers myself, I understand the importance of guiding our youth to thrive in our technology-saturated world.

I’d also hold up our partnership with Surgo Health and MTV on a youth mental health tracker that will combine surveys, contextual data, social media insights, and personal narratives to enhance our understanding of the mental health landscape for young people and drive equitable changes.

These approaches emphasize timely and accessible mental health support, with a focus on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youths. It’s part of our belief in what we call a targeted universalist approach: meaning that if you help the subsets of a population that are the most disproportionately affected by a problem, then you’ve actually created a solution that helps everyone.

Behrman, NationSwell: Which leadership qualities do you actively practice, and how do they contribute to your efficacy?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: I want to say to other leaders that the internal work you do matters. It helps you understand how you show up, and why you show up at all. For me, I am a social scientist, which means I am always asking questions and reflecting on my leadership and role in the world. I’ve spent many years listening to people’s stories. I’ve lived with entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, I’ve ridden on buses in Tanzania, all just to get a sense of the little nuances that make up people’s lives, the small things that come together to build a culture. My hope is that these moments give me insight into how people from these communities are feeling, even if they’re not articulating it.

I take this passion for listening to people seriously: it’s core to who I am. It’s as important to the communities in which you operate as it is to the teams you manage: how are your people feeling, what does team culture look like, and how can you encourage other leaders to be more curious about it?

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are the leaders that inspire your leadership?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: One of the leaders who inspires me is Ai-jen Poo, the co-founder and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Caring Across Generations, is an unwavering advocate for both paid and unpaid caregivers. At Pivotal, where we view caregiving as an impediment to women’s advancement in the U.S., Ai-jen has significantly raised awareness of America’s flawed caregiving system. Her push for solutions like paid leave, a core priority of ours, is truly inspiring. 

I am also inspired by Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble, the founder and president of the AAKOMA Project. Since the inception of our adolescent mental health strategy, she has been an invaluable partner, bringing critical awareness to the mental health challenges faced by young people of color. Her team’s groundbreaking report on the mental health state of these youths—highlighting the impact of racial trauma and cultural stigma—has been a catalyst for change.

Promise Phelon, founder and managing partner of Growth Warrior Capital also inspires me. Her firm’s commitment to changing our work dynamics and wealth-building opportunities aligns with our values, making them a key partner. Promise is revolutionizing the venture capital (VC) world with her AI-powered platform, which streamlines the creation of essential materials for founders seeking VC funding. Her work is paving the way for a diverse range of entrepreneurs.

These three women are linked by their relentless drive and the common challenges they face as leaders in their fields. As they gain power and influence, they not only excel in their roles but also pave the way for others, embodying the very essence of leadership.

Behrman, NationSwell: What are you reading that inspires your leadership?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: I’m also inspired by an upcoming book by Dr. Fei-Fei Li. As a computer science professor at Stanford with a tenure at Google, Fei-Fei brings a wealth of knowledge from both academia and the tech industry. Her book, “The Worlds I See,” promises to offer profound insights. Also, she is the founder and chairperson of the nonprofit AI for All, an organization we’ve been partnering with since my arrival at Pivotal.

Fei-Fei was one of the first people I connected with here. Her vision for diversifying the AI field is something I deeply resonate with, especially the necessity for greater female representation. This is crucial not just for reducing bias in technology but also for fostering innovation and economic growth. The absence of women in these conversations has significant drawbacks.

Her book is especially poignant as it delves into her personal journey as an immigrant, detailing how she rose to become a preeminent AI leader. It’s a narrative that’s both emotionally charged and intimately tied to her professional achievements.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. To learn more about NationSwell’s community of our country’s leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.

Place-Based Impact in Practice: 36 hours in Tulsa with NationSwell and George Kaiser Family Foundation

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

On the evening of October 18th, black clouds of starlings wheeled overhead as the NationSwell team made its way to meet a group of partners and leaders in downtown Tulsa. The group had gathered as part of our Place-Based Impact Collaborative for an immersive, 1.5-day experience designed to explore how community-centered investment and strategic partnerships are working in concert to give new strength to Tulsa. 

The insights and best practices we gathered from GKFF’s approach — and from the experts in attendance — were many, and can better enable communities nationwide to thrive. Although it’s impossible to accurately capture and convey the profound experience of being on the ground in Tulsa, our hope is that this piece can shed some light on what it was like to come together and learn with an incredible group of leaders and inspire you as you strengthen your own community-centered, place-based work.

Day One

The day began with a tour at Greenwood Rising to hear the vital stories at the core of Tulsa’s history and identity: the impact the Trail of Tears, the systems of anti-Blackness that fomented the Race Massacre of 1921, and the cultural reverberations of both eras that are still being felt throughout the city. Despite the violence dotting its past, Tulsa and its residents have persisted — deepening their sense of community and establishing a rich sense of place and culture that makes the city vibrant and unique.

That night, we joined our hosts from George Kaiser Family Foundation for a welcome reception at a speakeasy in the city’s Deco District. After an evening of warm conversation, introductions, and getting to know one another better as we prepared for the next day, Aaron Miller — head of partnerships at inTulsa — announced that he would lead a group by bus to celebrate the city’s popular Oktoberfest, currently in its 44th year. Jonathan Pride, executive director at NPower, announced that he planned to lead a competing group to the same location via the city’s widely-available Lime scooters.

Day Two

East Tulsa


After a quick pit stop for breakfast on Thursday morning, our group set out by bus for East Tulsa, where white flight and the attendant infrastructural divestment have created unlikely opportunities for the city’s growing immigrant population. 

Cynthia Jasso — a program officer on the Vibrant and Inclusive Tulsa team — explained that East Tulsa has become a community hub, learning center, and worker community for newly-arrived immigrants, more than 1,100 of whom arrive at the Plaza Santa Cecilia from Mexico by bus each week. While organizations like Growing Together have done grassroots outreach to meet residents where they are — helping to expand access to vaccines and make PPP loan applications easier for local businesses owners — they ultimately found that there was an overwhelming need for a centralized community hub where people could get the help that they needed. Plaza Santa Cecilia has become that epicenter — a place for the community to gather, relax, take classes, shop, or even acquire permits.


The plaza features beautiful murals, restaurants, and a nightclub, and has become a major source of community pride and belonging — a critical metric of success for place-based investment. 

North Tulsa


Our next stop was in North Tulsa, where attendees heard from Pastor Philip Abode of Crossover Community Impact and Crossover Bible Church. A former University of Tulsa football player and current high school football coach, Abode’s passion for coaching youth eventually catalyzed an even deeper relationship to mentorship in the city: he now serves as executive director of Crossover Preparatory Academy, which oversees several private middle schools throughout the city.

A majority-Black neighborhood, Tulsa’s north corridor is currently the site of major community development efforts, including a planned 500-unit, mixed-income housing project and new contracts with high-quality, high-paying manufacturing jobs at companies that agree to recruit from within the neighborhood (and nearby Tulsa Technology Center). 

Kendall Whittier


As the bright sun continued to warm up the day, we visited Kendall Whittier Park — located in Tulsa’s historic Kendall Whittier neighborhood — where we learned more about how a mixed-income neighborhood trust has helped  provide stable, affordable housing, and how partners like Growing Together and Tulsa Educare have created educational opportunities and green spaces where children and families can grow and thrive. 

We also had the opportunity to tour The Gathering Place, which words alone don’t really do justice. A sprawling 66.5-acre green space nestled against the Arkansas River, The Gathering Place’s pathways were dotted with pumpkins and its playgrounds had names like “Land of the River Giants,” “Fairyland Forest,” and “Volcanoville.” All park activities are free, and guests can help themselves to kayaks and paddle boats, attend concerts on the lawn, and engage with the park’s many educational programs. 


After lunch, we reconvened at Greenwood Cultural Center for a series of panel discussions — first on how to leverage the power of storytelling, and then on how new models of collaboration across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors can help to foster opportunity from the ground up.

During the first panel, Jasmine Dellafosse — Director of Organizing and Community Engagement at EPIC — spoke about the value of telling the stories that run counter to our assumptions. 

“What are the stories we don’t know, and in whose interest is it that we don’t know them?” she asked. 

Panelist Vanessa Garrison — Co-founder and COO of GirlTrek — further emphasized the power storytelling holds in developing a community: deconstructing myths, challenging assumptions and enabling community members to lead change. 

In the second panel, a key insight that surfaced was the recognition that change doesn’t just take a longer grant cycle but can take generations to actualize. The question that emerges, then, is how do we integrate intergenerational change as a metric when measuring impact? 

At the intersection of both of these panels is the emerging understanding that how we measure impact in place-based philanthropy needs to evolve to incorporate more qualitative data, compelling us to reimagine what a thriving community really means.


After a visit to Archer Studios to learn about the Tulsa Artist Fellowship — and a ceramics activity with fellow Raphael Corzo — participants had a few minutes to rest and recharge before coming together for a NationSwell Signature Dinner to reflect on the events and learnings of the day. 

Hosting us for the evening was the team at et al., a collective of chefs working collaboratively to “build a more delicious and equitable future for the food and beverage industry in Tulsa.” Aptly named to reflect the important but often overlooked or unknown people who help to make an ambitious vision into a reality, the symbolism behind et al.’s name and mission had a beautiful symmetry with the focus of our visit to Tulsa — and the patchwork of organizations and solutions we’d witnessed firsthand on the ground there. 


Attendees dove deep into what had inspired and moved them during the course of the meal, which was themed around the idea of breaking bread (as chef Colin Sato explained, “You have now broken bread with Tulsa, and now it’s a part of you”). There was a discussion of some of the central challenges to their own place-based work, with members laying out the approaches, tools, and new opportunities for partnership they were excited to bring back to their own communities. 

Like the chefs in et al.’s culinary collective, our time in Tulsa was distinguished by the patchwork of seemingly disparate, often undersung voices we heard from joining together to create a beautiful and undeniable chorus of solutions. While partners on the ground maintain different focuses in the work that they do and the neighborhoods they serve, everything in Tulsa has a certain harmony to it; the work comes together to hum like a well-oiled machine. As we packed up to leave on Friday, we couldn’t help but think about how this model of community impact — where every voice, program, and initiative happening on the ground is truly greater than the sum of its parts — has the potential to transform not only communities, but the world.

We’re so excited to have plans for more in-person, immersive experiences in the works for the near future. This incredible experience was part of our Place-Based Impact Collaborative. Our Collaborative model is based on the idea that the challenges we face call for collaboration and shared action to achieve the impact we seek on a variety of issue areas. Together, with cross-sector leaders, we illuminate challenges and opportunities in the space and align on action to advance each other’s work, and the field as a whole.

We encourage you to read more about our different Collaboratives and to contact us to get involved if you see one that resonates with you and your work. 

NationSwell Collaboratives are a new initiative convening cross-sector leaders to work in new ways on major issues affecting our lives, our nation, and our world. Learn more about our current offerings here.

ESG Next: An Interview With Y Analytics’ Maryanne Hancock

Posted on by Anthony Smith

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Maryanne Hancock, CEO of Y Analytics, about the importance of centering rigor in impact investing, ESG’s “Fearless Girl” moment, and the surprising lessons that impact leaders can learn from an economist and a can of beans.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Can you tell us how your professional and personal journey led you to this work?

Maryanne Hancock, CEO of Y Analytics: If I ever get asked to share a fun fact about myself, it’s that my parents were clergy before they met, married, and had me.  My father was a priest, and my mother was a nun, and they were both quite active in the social justice movement at large. My father founded programs for kids addicted to drugs during the late sixties and early seventies, a time when such programs were nonexistent. He met people at often vulnerable points in their lives, helping them build new lives. To this day, there are people alive due to the work he did.

My mother, as a nun, took to teaching in historically marginalized communities. This overall milieu of social work wasn’t just a job for them, but a way of life. Because of them, I’ve always believed you really need to stand in awe of the burdens that people carry, as opposed to in judgment. It’s a philosophy that encourages one to honor, assist, and appreciate people facing adversities, and the complexities of the adversities they face.

Originally, I aspired to become a human rights lawyer, pursuing an education in law, especially humanitarian and human rights law. But a detour through McKinsey shifted my journey. While I was there, I maintained a client roster from the private sector, and I engaged with industries I found fascinating, even if they weren’t glamorous — like waste management, logistics, and energy sectors. At the same time, I delved into social sector projects. Interestingly, the attendees at my logistics or waste management meetings hardly ever overlapped with those at my education or poverty alleviation discussions, which gave me the sense that these were inherently distinct swim lanes. But now at Y Analytics, whether it’s a company engaged in the circular economy and waste, or a fin-tech firm operating in Africa, I get to have all these different interests under a singular umbrella as part of my daily routine.

Behrman, NationSwell: How do you make sense of this moment in ESG? What’s the potential and the promise, and where are the pitfalls?

Hancock, Y Analytics: The image that comes to my mind for the moment we are in societally is the Fearless Girl statue — where you’ve got the bull and the little girl standing there, staring him down. The conventional interpretation of the scene is that the charging bull represents unfettered capitalism, or the “old boys club” of Wall Street, and the Fearless Girl symbolizes the pursuit of gender equality – a counterweight to the imposing minotaur with smoke coming out of its nostrils. 

But I think it symbolizes something bigger. To me, the bull represents this vast set of societal issues we grapple with every day – geopolitical unrest, war, climate change, a pandemic…some so big and so powerful that they feel unstoppable or immovable. 

And then, there’s this Fearless Girl, which symbolizes how we feel amidst all these challenges. But here’s the thing I’m left thinking about: while we can’t ignore the enormity of the challenges symbolized by the bull, what I’d love for everyone to do is to look around and realize that there are thousands of Fearless Girls facing them. The pitfall is to believe you are isolated , as if you’re the only Fearless Girl out there, yet what I see every day are thousands and thousands of people embodying that spirit. This includes teachers, nurses, doctors, firefighters, community members, and also Fearless Girl’s physical home in New York’s financial district underscores the role that entrepreneurs, and the millions of people who go to work every day in businesses, play in meeting the moment.

What’s been inspiring to me is witnessing real actions and conversations happening within businesses — conversations that were unimaginable just five years ago. While the collective efforts may not seem enough to combat the metaphorical bull, recognizing and affirming the existence of these millions of Fearless Girls is crucial. We’ll be a better force for good when we acknowledge how strong this collective truly is.

It’s undeniable that social impact and sustainability practitioners are facing headwinds right now, but there are tailwinds, too. And together, these winds are steering us to a zone of quieter, yet more authentic action. The tailwinds are strong, and interestingly, they align well with good business practices. For instance, utilizing lower-cost energy sources that are renewable is smart business. So is offering products that benefit rather than harm people, and implementing employee policies that create a desirable workplace amidst a talent-driven landscape. These factors reinforce the strength of the tailwinds.

On the flip side, the reality of legal repercussions, varying state approaches, the politicization of these issues, and the potential backlash for greenwashing, might lead to a toned-down announcement of new initiatives and commitments. And this quieter approach isn’t necessarily negative. In my view, it’s probably beneficial. The quieter stance doesn’t undermine the solid tailwinds and the consequential actions they encourage.

Behrman, NationSwell: What’s unique about the work you’re leading?

Hancock, Y Analytics: When the Rise Fund began in 2016, it aimed to accomplish a few objectives. One was to usher scaled capital into the impact space, as there were endeavors to fund social entrepreneurs onto a path of growth, yet they were lacking a significant pool of capital to propel them from early growth to a further stage. That was part of the concept. At that point, the largest impact fund stood at about $500 million while the average was about $200 million, but the Rise Fund came in at $2.1 billion, aiming to attract institutional capital. To ensure this, they committed from the get-go to treat the impact aspect as rigorously as the financial aspect. So they envisioned what later became Y Analytics, an organization meant to bolster capital into impact companies by increasing the confidence in their impact. That was the fundamental premise behind our creation. 

And as they came together, it was actually a call from Jerome Vascellaro, a longtime leader at McKinsey who was then the COO at TPG, and someone well known to my mentors, that led to my involvement. That first call was followed by an engrossing weekend brainstorming at the whiteboard about what this endeavor could evolve into. The prospect of being serious and rigorous about impact, coupled with people who could take action immediately, was just so intriguing to me personally. That’s what made me make the leap.

Here’s what I love the most about what we get to do: we get to turn to the vast amount of research that’s out there about what works to help some of these social and environmental ills, and channel that into our investment decisions and actually make a difference. It’s been so fascinating to observe the evolution of evidence-based approaches in different fields, from evidence-based medicine in the 1980s to evidence-based policymaking in the 1990s and early 2000s. Our big innovation, which I just loved so much, is that we started to do evidence-based impact investing at scale. This methodology allows us to tap into the profound knowledge of individuals who are dedicated experts in specific areas of their fields, from soil’s carbon capture potential to the impacts of digital banking on small to medium enterprises in emerging markets. It’d be almost problematic to leave that expertise on the table.

But it’s also about the unique capabilities of our team. Our roster has included nuclear physicists, economists, and others with diverse expertise; we can bridge the chasm between academic insights and investment professionals, translating intricate research into investment strategies. This human capability, which is unique to have nested within a private equity firm context, can help translate academic discourse and parse through the jargon for insights to inform actionable investment decisions. This multidisciplinary approach isn’t just cool, it’s immensely invaluable in driving forward our mission.

Behrman, NationSwell: To which leadership practices do you contribute your efficacy?

Hancock, Y Analytics: It all boils down to striving for authentic action. I think that’s the key. And by the way, we might not hit that mark every day, but that’s certainly our goal. 

There’s only one joke that I’ve ever been able to remember: You’ve got three folks on a deserted island, and there’s a chemist, an engineer, and an economist, and they have one can of beans and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to open this can of beans. So the chemist says, well, if we heat it to a certain boiling point, it’s going to explode and we can get it open. And the engineer says, if we hit it against this rock just the right way, it’s going to pop open. And the economist says, assume we have a can opener. 

When I used to think about that, I would laugh and say, oh, that’s so silly. We all know someone who made a comment like that, but then as I delved into this work, I actually started to reflect on that. What if we all thought about what would happen if we had the can opener, that we had the tool we actually needed? We’d see the value of getting the can open quickly and safely, of conserving more beans because they didn’t explode, and seeing that value would actually inspire us to build the can opener, to create the tools we need. Even if it’s not perfect, or it’s just a prototype. It’s really helpful to have a working hypothesis.

Behrman, NationSwell: Who or what informs and inspires your leadership?

Hancock, Y Analytics: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s work with All We Can Save is astoundingly well-conceived, an incredible set of resources for folks, and I admire the heck out of the entire approach from there. And I know he’s a fellow ESG Next honoree, but George Serafeim’s work with impact-weighted accounts is ground-breaking. It’s one of the closest analogs to what we do at Y Analytics.

Sara Menker of Grow Intelligence is a phenomenal CEO, coming from the commodities trading world, originally from Ethiopia. She has created a data company that really has a finger on the pulse of agriculture, physical climate risks and trends around the world. For example, her data immediately identified the drivers behind the current food crisis. She could see that fertilizer prices were spiking. She could see that crops in parts of Asia were failing because it was too wet. 

And lastly, I admire my colleagues at TPG Rise who are investing for impact with so much integrity and success. 

My favorite book would be “Tattoos on the Heart” by Father Greg Boyle.  From a podcast perspective, Hank Paulson’s “Straight Talk”  is excellent. He hosts some fantastic guests and covers really diverse topics. And then, for the psychology of doing the hard work of good work, I love listening to the storytelling of Dr. Bertice Berry. She’s an author, she’s a speaker, she’s done academic work as well in psychology, and she also does daily digital storytelling.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. To learn more about NationSwell’s community of our country’s leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.

How Johnson & Johnson is Accelerating a Health Equity Mindset: the Business Match Fund

How Johnson & Johnson is Accelerating a Health Equity Mindset: the Business Match Fund

In the U.S., health disparities for people of color relative to White individuals include higher rates of illness and death and less access to quality care. In response to longstanding and systemic healthcare inequities, Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”) launched its “Our Race to Health Equity” initiative (“ORTHE”) in November 2020. The bold under-taking “aspires to help eradicate racial and social injustice as a public health threat by eliminating health inequities for people of color” with a $100 million commitment over five years.

The company will invest half of ORTHE’s $100 million through external grants, programs, and initiatives by 2025. To embed a health equity mindset into J&J’s everyday business practice and strategy, J&J has also committed to driving change from within their large enterprise, allocating $50 million over five years to a Business Match Fund (“BMF”). The BMF is an incubator and catalyst for alignment at all levels of J&J by providing dollar-for-dollar co-investment alongside business units seeking to advance a health equity-oriented initiative in the United States. 

This case study details how Johnson & Johnson designed and executed the Business Match Fund to accelerate the adoption of a health equity focus across its divisions and, consequently, to seed large-scale organizational change. Their approach includes five core elements, explored further in the report:

  1. Design a funding approach that promotes innovation, long-term thinking, and engagement
  2. Use a varied toolkit to invite applications from across the enterprise
  3. Administer a layered and inclusive review process to select fund recipients
  4. Track impact centrally and regularly, leaving room for flexibility
  5. Tell the story of catalyzed impact internally and externally
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Mapping the LER Ecosystem to Drive Equity

Mapping the LER Ecosystem to Drive Equity

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Learning and employment records (LERs) are a vital solution to accelerating the uptake of skills-based hiring while empowering learners and earners to be recognized for their full set of skills from work, education, credentialing, service and life experiences. However, widespread use of LERs is often hindered by a lack of clarity and collaboration amongst the many necessary stakeholders, including employers, credential providers, learners and earners, and policy makers.

Therefore, Walmart brought NationSwell on to work with a Steering Committee of experts in the education, credentialing, equity and hiring space, to create an LER Ecosystem Map that would help people connect the dots across the ecosystem and more easily see how they can take action to drive equity through LERs.

Organizations in the LER Ecosystem Map Steering Committee:

  • AACRAO
  • Competency-Based Education Network
  • Digital Credentials Consortium
  • Digital Promise
  • JFFLabs
  • National Association of Workforce Boards
  • National Governors Association
  • SHRM Foundation
  • T3 Innovation Network
  • U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation

NationSwell worked closely with the Steering Committee to undertake thorough research to establish the goals and needs for the LER Ecosystem Map.

Through desk research, in-depth interviews, a diverse focus group, workshops, and months of cross-team collaboration, content drafting, design work and data visualization, our teams engaged 50+ individuals to help develop an interactive digital experience, accessible to stakeholders across the ecosystem, that clearly demonstrates opportunities for engagement, collaboration and action.

Through our three workstreams — establishing a hypothesis, research and development — the team discovered learnings, opportunities to drive adoption, and insights gaps that informed how the LER Ecosystem Map should come to life. The map launched at a pivotal point in LER development, providing many large and small players in the space with vital clarity on how to take action.

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Corporate engagement with HBCUs

Corporate engagement with HBCUs

The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down affirmative action in higher education may result in decreased racial diversity at public and private colleges, making the role of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) even more vital in advancing opportunities for students of color. Their impact today is essential, and applications for enrollment are increasing, yet HBCU funding is lacking in comparison with other higher education institutions. 

In response to member interest, NationSwell reviewed the available data on HBCU funding levels (historical and current), their benefits to individuals and communities, and the most common forms of partnership between companies and schools. We’re pleased to share a summary of what we learned in the hopes that it helps our member organizations better understand their opportunity to support HBCUs.

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ESG Next: An Interview With Liberty Mutual’s Melissa MacDonnell

Posted on by Greg Behrman

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Melissa MacDonnell, President, Liberty Mutual Foundation and Vice President, Community Investments, Liberty Mutual Insurance, about what this moment in corporate philanthropy means for practitioners, the power of a collaborative framework for funding, and how employee volunteerism programs can better center inclusion.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Tell us how your professional and personal journey led to this work.

Melissa MacDonnell, Liberty Mutual:  My mom worked as a social worker in Newark, NJ and instilled a strong sense of service in my nine siblings and me.  When I was in high school, she would take me every week to volunteer with adults with disabilities.  I helped them with daily tasks like making the bed, going to the local store, completing household activities, and more. Because of my mom, service became a part of my DNA, a lens through which I would see the world. 

One of the memories that will always stay with me was of one man with whom I worked. He was misdiagnosed as a child as having developmental disabilities; when in fact, he was deaf. Therefore, he spent his entire life in an institution. It was striking to know that the inability to understand his struggle resulted in a life of institutionalization. I built a strong bond with him and spent time teaching myself sign language. I wanted him to know I saw him. 

Later, I became a volunteer GED teacher and taught young people who were forced to grow up way too soon, forced to leave school to make money for their families, forced to deal with the urgency of needs today rather than building for their futures. 

I also had the chance to become a big sister; twenty-four years later, we are still sisters. Becoming a big sister for a girl living in a group home showed me how many people are struggling on their own, without the basic supports so many of us take for granted.

Behrman, NationSwell: How do you define this moment in corporate philanthropy?

MacDonnell, Liberty Mutual: It’s such an exciting moment for corporate philanthropy. When I started nearly 25 years ago, philanthropy was more of an offshoot. The company was always deeply committed to the community, but there was a desire to keep the philanthropy separate.  That desire came from a really good place; however, it left some of our potential for impact off the table.

Today, we are an integral part of Liberty Mutual — we’re central to the purpose of the company. There’s a recognition that our engagement in the community is collectively owned through our foundation and through each of our 50,000 employees who want an opportunity to give, serve, and volunteer. And with the proper construct, we have the chance to empower and engage all of Liberty to bring our expertise, our skills, our passion, and our resources to bear for our communities.

I think we’re just all collectively inspired by the opportunity to invest the strength of Liberty Mutual as a force for social good.

Behrman, NationSwell: What are some unique programs or initiatives you’re leading that other leaders may benefit from knowing?

MacDonnell, Liberty Mutual: Our work in youth homelessness is a great example of a programmatic body of work that we’re proud of. 

In youth homelessness, we found an issue that was not getting visibility or support, where there was a real and demonstrable need. We heard from our education partners that young people were showing up to school with backpacks stuffed with everything they owned. And we heard from adult shelters that they had to turn away more and more young people every day. 

The more we pulled the thread, the more we recognized that youth and young adult homelessness was something that really needed attention. So, we started to invest and joined a collaborative that included city and state officials, nonprofit leaders, Liberty Mutual, as the corporate leader, and, most importantly, young people with lived experience. Together, we helped the City of Boston successfully apply for $4.7 million in federal funding, which was critical for creating 157 housing opportunities for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. Since 2018, Liberty Mutual has committed $24 million towards the issue, largely in Boston.

As a result of these collective efforts, the number of young people experiencing homelessness in Boston has dropped 44%. This collaborative approach is the reason this effort has been so successful — because it included so many voices and so many experts—particularly young people with lived experience.

Internally, another example that comes to mind is our Liberty Torchbearers program, where we provide employees the opportunity to serve annually in the community during work hours, volunteer on their own time to earn nonprofit mini-grants, and give to nonprofits that mean something to them, while earning a 100% company match with no upper limit. 

What differentiates Torchbearers is that even as we use it to drive organizational cohesion around giving back, we center it on individuality and inclusivity at its core. We’re all different, and we’re all in different seasons of our lives; we all give, volunteer, and serve differently from one another. If you’re a working parent and your way of giving back is volunteering your time during the workday, you can be a Torchbearer; if you’re at a different stage in your career and don’t have as much time to volunteer, but do have the resources to donate, you can be a Torchbearer. Or if you’re a manager and you really want to infuse service in some sort of team building, you and your team can engage in a community project together as Torchbearers. 

Having a framework that is inclusive and respectful of the different places and stages of people’s lives makes Torchbearers such a positive and impactful program.

One last initiative comes to mind: We’ve pulled together a cross-functional team within the company to explore how we can bring to bear the unique strengths of Liberty Mutual on behalf of our neighbors most disproportionately impacted by climate change.  So we’ve been inventorying our expertise on the corporate side and listening and learning from our community leaders so we can accelerate, enhance, and advance climate resiliency first in Boston and then beyond.

Our hope is that this work will tap into the best of who we are, and what we do. We have expertise, we have technologies we’re constantly creating for our customers, and there’s so much that can be transferred into our community.

Behrman, NationSwell: To which leadership practices do you most attribute your effectiveness?

MacDonnell, Liberty Mutual: I live with a very deep sense of urgency on behalf of our neighbors. I feel strongly about the needs in our community, and I feel deeply about the people whose voices aren’t always heard. I also believe in the goodness of my colleagues. Together, we can meet this sense of urgency and do everything we can to advance social good. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are the peers that you admire and what are some resources – a book, podcast, article, etc. – that inspire  you?

MacDonnell, Liberty Mutual: I admire Jill Shah, the president of the Shah Family Foundation, and Ross Wilson, their executive director. I love the work they do. Not only are they generous givers, but they add tremendous value to community discussions and to the field of philanthropy.

A company I admire is UPS. I love how they’ve used their “superpowers” especially their expertise with distribution in times of crisis: the way that they responded to COVID, getting different services out to people as well as their activation during natural disasters. They’re there, they jump on it, and they do what they do so well in their business. 

In literature, there’s a book by Phil Buchanan called Giving Done Right. I really appreciate his point of view, and his warnings about the power dynamics of philanthropy. George Serafeim’s Purpose and Profit is also a terrific work I strongly recommend. It’s such an interesting book jam-packed with real-life cases. I have also learned a lot by Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.  In fact, I’m reading it for a second time right now!

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub.

ESG Next: An Interview With Tiger Global’s Ali Hartman

Posted on by Greg Behrman

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of ESG, leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Ali Hartman, Head of Responsible Investment at Tiger Global, about the power of building unlikely bridges, the importance of the “G” in ESG, and the opportunity for clarity and leadership in responsible investment — especially amid the current backlash. 

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: How did your personal and professional journey to the field of ESG begin?

Ali Hartman, Head of Responsible Investment, Tiger Global: My journey to this field began long before anyone was using the acronym ESG. In many ways, it began before I even knew my ABCs. You see, I grew up in a social justice activist household, where both of my parents risked their safety and comfort in pursuit of nuclear disarmament. They were civil disruptors in the Plowshares movement and were arrested and imprisoned multiple times for their activism. So I spent my childhood in soup kitchens and at meeting houses, in courtrooms and on protest lines. With that reality came a sense of responsibility to serve the greater good and an obligation to speak truth to power. Changemaking was — and is — a part of my DNA. Literally, my mom was in prison while pregnant with me. 

As a teenager and young adult, I pursued internships and jobs in the public sector and with activist organizations. These were known entities to me based on my upbringing and places I understood that I could make an impact. It was in graduate school, when I took a class called Business Ethics, that I was first exposed to the power of the private sector. 

About a month into the class, a light bulb went off for me. I realized that companies had so much capital, flexibility, access, and influence. I realized that if I wanted to have an impact that could be sustained and scaled, I had to understand how this part of the equation worked. 

Since that class, my career has spanned roles in corporate sustainability, ESG strategy, and responsible investment across big business, private equity, and, most recently, venture capital. These jobs connect money and meaning and prove that public interest and private resources can have a greater impact when they’re working together. 

Behrman, NationSwell: How do you make sense of this moment in ESG?

Hartman, Tiger Global: I’ve been doing this work for about 15 years and have seen real evolution in this space. There’s been tremendous momentum and meaningful scale during a relatively short period of time. But with that growth, we’re also seeing some confusion and chaos. We need to get clear and be intentional when it comes to defining and pursuing ESG management. 

I’m an ESG purist. What I mean by that is when I talk about ESG integration, I’m referring to the measurement and management of material environmental, social, and governance factors in the operations of a business. 

Importantly, what I’m not talking about is impact investing, philanthropy, CEO activism, or corporate values. These are each, of course, critically important. But they’re just not part of ESG strategy. For me, ESG management is about viability, not morality. 

That’s not to say what is good for the sustainability of a company isn’t good for people or the planet — it usually is. When companies are measuring and managing their inputs (including natural resources and human resources) more intentionally, strategically, and efficiently, everyone wins. From where I sit, thoughtful, strategic ESG management has become the baseline of doing business in a world that is more complex and constrained than it has ever been. There’s so much opportunity to build better businesses that are ready to manage the volatility that is here and is only going to grow with time. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Tell us about the work you and your team are leading at Tiger Global, and why it’s noteworthy or potentially even showing early signs of advancing the field.

Hartman, Tiger Global: We are still in the early innings of our work at Tiger. We have a lot more to understand when it comes to purpose building responsible investment into our asset classes and investment strategies. That said, I’m proud of the progress we’ve been making and am excited about what’s to come for us — and hopefully for the venture industry more broadly. 

In the last year and a half, we’ve established a strong foundation for what will be an evolving responsible investment strategy. Our work to date includes firm-level policies, new ESG-related diligence practices, and a suite of monitoring tools to better understand our portfolio companies and fund-level trends. 

We still have a lot to learn about how to best integrate this work into a scaled venture model — one where companies are earlier in their maturity and limited in their resources, and where investors are often passive and minority shareholders. This is a totally different proposition than the work I did in private equity. 

Nonetheless, while the challenges are real, so are the opportunities. I believe that supporting companies early in their evolution and embedding efficiency and ethics into operations from the start can have a profound impact for companies’ growth and for the world in which they operate. 

Something else I am excited about is the chance to advance this work across the venture industry. While some impact-oriented firms or emerging managers have already started to integrate responsible investment strategies into their work, there is a massive opportunity to engage the larger, more traditional firms. Without a doubt, there is both value and necessity in us working collaboratively across the industry. 

As an example, we recently signed on as a founding member of the Venture Climate Alliance alongside more than 20 of our VC peers. Over the last few years, Tiger Global has been taking steps to measure and manage our firm-level footprint, achieving net-zero status as of 2021. As we look ahead, we are excited by the challenge of building tools and resources, setting expectations, and sharing opportunity with our portfolio companies with the goal of helping them better manage the risks and opportunities posed by climate constraints. We’re also excited to help advance the net-zero conversation across the industry.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is something that you’re spending time thinking about when it comes to ESG? 

Hartman, Tiger Global: When it comes to venture, I increasingly think that there’s an opportunity to reprioritize the acronym to be GES, instead of ESG. Putting governance last in the acronym can put it last on people’s minds. While, historically, some may have seen governance as a check-the-box part of this work, it is foundational. I think governance can and should go far beyond anti-bribery or anti-corruption. 

Governance is management and management is talent. And talent is prioritized and prized by the venture capital industry. I think that if we can modernize governance and give the “G” more attention and recognition, we’ll see better outcomes in all dimensions, including companies’ abilities to engage on environmental and social issues, weather volatility, and outperform over time.

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are some peer leaders who inspire you?

Hartman, Tiger Global: I’m inspired every day by folks across the changemaking continuum. Truly. When people say they are depressed about the state of the world, I tell them they should meet some of the people I get to meet. I’ve been having some really exciting conversations with Lyel Resner, co-lead of the Startups & Society Initiative. I think his experience as a tech entrepreneur brings important perspective to the table and I have loved talking to him about the interplay between responsible investment and responsible innovation. 

Shu Dar Yao at Lucid Capitalism also comes to mind. She is a force, highly creative, and has her finger on the pulse of what’s possible for the industry. We had such a great conversation when we were together recently at the Women’s Venture Capital Summit. 

I would be remiss to not mention the inimitable Cheryl Dorsey, CEO of Echoing Green. Cheryl has been many things to me over my years of knowing her — a co-conspirator, super connector, visionary leader, and dear friend. Her work and wisdom have never been more important to the urgent problems we’re collectively facing. I would put Cheryl and the amazing EG fellows in charge of everything if I had a magic wand!

Behrman, NationSwell: What are you reading, watching, or listening to right now that is inspiring your leadership?

Hartman, Tiger Global: A piece of writing that I often find myself returning to and sharing with colleagues in similar spaces is “At the Edge of the Inside” a consideration of the works of theologian Richard Rohr. It emphasizes the importance of effecting change within an organization or system. If you’re on the outside of a system, you can’t fully understand or appreciate it. Conversely, if you’re too close to the center, you may not be able to see its shortcomings. 

That really resonates with me. During the first decade of my career, I often felt out of place. Traditional business people sometimes considered me too alternative, while the activist or nonprofit community sometimes viewed me as disingenuous. Rohr’s piece helped me understand the importance of navigating those edges and building bridges. I highly recommend it to those working within conventional systems but pursuing unconventional goals. 

On a lighter note, it’s essential to find joy, rest, and respite in our busy lives, which I often find when listening — and laughing — to the podcast SmartLess, hosted by Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman. It offers a delightful blend of entertainment and relaxation, reminding us to make time for lighthearted fun.

On a related note, I highly recommend the newsletter What Could Go Right, which offers a refreshing perspective amid today’s often negative news cycles. It’s easy to feel anxious or overwhelmed by the state of the world, but it’s essential to recognize the progress we’ve made and the potential for positive change. To address challenges as great as the climate crisis, we can’t rely solely on fear, scarcity, or reactive responses. We have to inspire and excite people by showing them what’s possible and giving them hope. 

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. Tiger Global is a NationSwell Institutional Member. To learn more about membership in NationSwell’s community of leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.

Seven critical design choices for corporate impact investors

Seven critical design choices for corporate impact investors

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING
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As the global impact investing market surpasses $1 trillion USD, a small yet growing number of companies are adopting the strategy.

Corporate impact investors are motivated by the limitations of traditional philanthropy to fundamentally alter the structural disadvantages of capital markets, the desire to diversify their social impact strategies, the proven possibility of competitive financial returns, and intensifying pressure on the private sector to help finance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Regardless of their motivation, what these enterprising companies are discovering is a world of opportunity and constraint, one that requires intentionality and conviction when designing an impact investing approach that best serves the organization and its goals.

To support the aspirations of would-be and nascent corporate impact investors, NationSwell went behind the curtain with four successful and well-established leaders in the space. We dug deep into their investment philosophies, models, and mechanics with the intent to pinpoint the most fundamental design choices that determine a program’s shape and direction.

This report summarizes our learnings from these four investors, organized around a short but load-bearing list of questions that any new corporate impact investor will need to resolve with clarity. Each question is followed by further explanation of its significance, illustrations of how the four model organizations answered it for their own purposes, and additional guidance from NationSwell on how to approach the choices at hand.

The seven fundamental design choices:

  • What is your impact investment thesis and how does it align with company priorities?
  • Where do your investments originate within the enterprise?
  • Are you investing directly in companies or indirectly through funds and intermediaries?
  • How are you reaching beyond traditional networks to source investment leads?
  • Who should be at the table when making investment decisions in order to optimize for efficacy and efficiency?
  • What will be your level of involvement with investments after cutting a check?
  • How will you measure and report the impact made through your investments?
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