The Week in impact investing: Activation

TGIF, Agents of Impact! 

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In today’s Brief:

• Roundup: Learn by doing
• Podcasts: Smitha Das, Zuleyma Bebell and David Bank
• Spotlight: Global South climate action for Europe’s retail investors
• The Call: Building the back office for emerging fund managers
• Remembering Greg Krupa

🗣 Learn by doing. Brand marketers and neuroscientists know that taking action is far more powerful than passive consumption in carving new mental pathways. During this spring’s proxy season, voting on a company’s board of directors, or casting a ballot in the shrinking number of shareholder resolutions, can provide a broad swath of investors with small but tangible experiences of stewardship and engagement (as always, there’s an app for that). Leaning into hands-on democracy, as As You Sow’s Andy Behar suggested in his letter to shareholders, could smooth what he acknowledges is a bumpy transition “from a Milton Friedman model of extraction to a Joseph Stiglitz vision of a regenerative, inclusive system.”

Also ripe for activation are LPs and other asset allocators with a stake in the evolution of artificial intelligence – which is to say, all of them. Dennis Price and I rounded up some of the early impact investors asserting human agency over the future of AI. Tech titans like to say it’s too early, or too complicated, to assert democratic authority over the language models, the data centers, or the uses to which AI is put. “I’m here to say that’s bullshit and you should not be flummoxed by it,” declared Mike Kubzansky, outgoing head of Omidyar Network. WES’s Smitha Das shared with me how the social enterprise is stepping up to deploy its $300 million balance sheet for solutions aligned with immigrants’ success. More broadly, LPs can activate “circularity” as a financial superpower, NYU Stern’s Tensie Whelan wrote, by pressing their fund managers to report on reduced input and waste management costs, and increased revenues. 

Lincoln Land Institute’s RJ McGrail showcased how communities from DC to Denver are activating a new playbook for place-based shared prosperity. And Arctaris Impact Investors’ Jonathan Tower proposed his own activation of the home ownership and wealth-building potential of the renewed Opportunity Zones legislation, through modest policy tweaks. Not every strategy succeeds, as Jessica Pothering reports in her chronicle of the challenges that have slowed the adoption of clean cooking solutions. And for some organizations the path to scale and greater impact lies in joining with other organizations, as demonstrated by the enthusiastic response to the $1 million Collaboration Fund. In the midst of uncertainty and disruption, investors have both the capacity and the responsibility to act. How will they activate it? – David Bank

💔 A special note. Since this week’s news of the death of Greg Krupa, an impact entrepreneur and advisor based in Quito, Ecuador, nearly 250 people in more than 50 cities around the world have connected through WhatsApp to share stories of his impact and how he helped them grow, strive, fail and get back up. ImpactAlpha’s Erik Stein shares a remembrance of his friend, below.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Why shareholders are fighting for their right to vote their proxies; how impact investors are seeking to assert human agency over the future of AI; and can nonprofit mergers help scale the impact of impact investing field-builders?

🦸 Agents of Impact: World Education Services aligns its assets with immigrants’ success. World Education Services has spent half a century helping immigrants and international students get their educational and professional credentials recognized in their new countries. That social enterprise became a successful business, amassing a nine figure balance sheet. Now WES is investing its assets in a diverse portfolio of investments intended to extend its mission of supporting immigrants.“Given our financial independence, given our set of resources, WES, if anything, is really looking to double down on our commitments and stay in solidarity with our communities,” WES’s Smitha Das says on the latest Agents of Impact podcast.

👩‍🏫Women Changing Finance: How a media company is shaping the future of finance. ImpactAlpha’s Zuleyma Bebell joins host Krisztina Tora to explore how stories, data and community are shaping the future of finance. Zuleyma and Krisztina look back on ImpactAlpha’s decade-long journey from scrappy media startup to one of the field’s leading voices in spotting trends, identifying leaders and connecting Agents of Impact. 

The Week’s Call

Emerging fund managers’ back office may be the unsung hero of impact investing (video). A new generation of impact funds are being designed with governance, capital structures and operational systems in service of their values. As unglamorous as it sounds, the back-end infrastructure of their funds is key to translating their vision into a driver of impact. Back office tasks like fund administration, compliance and investor reporting may sound like the “boring” side of the work, said Steve Petsos of Broadstreet Impact Services, which co-hosted this week’s Agents of Impact Call, “but that operational side is just as important, in many ways, if you want to thrive.”

The Week’s Spotlight

Expanding opportunities for retail investors in Europe to finance climate action in the Global South. In the UK, France, Germany and Spain, signs of Europe’s ties to the Global South are everywhere, from modern trade interdependencies to colonial legacies. Less evident are the intersections between Europe’s climate challenges and those facing the Global South and how investors can play a role in both. “While investing directly in climate equities in the Global South is nearly impossible for interested European retail investors, there’s a small list of exchange traded funds and mutual funds in Europe that have exposure to climate-related stocks in the Global South,” writes ImpactAlpha contributing editor Marilyn Waite. Following up on her post on Global South climate opportunities for US retail investors, Waite highlights a dozen listed funds for investors in Europe.

• Clean dozen. Waite, who is based in Paris, uses screening tools from Deutsche Börse, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, to identify listed equity funds in Germany and France that contain climate companies in low- and middle-income countries. The top three: Lingohr-Emerging Markets-INVEST from Deka Vermögensmanagement, an emerging markets equities ETF from DWS Investment, and Carmignac Emergents from Carmignac Gestion. Like the US-focused opportunities, the majority of European listed funds on her are heavily stacked with companies in large markets like China, India, Brazil and South Africa. “Most Global South countries receive little or no representation.” An exception: Interactive Brokers, an online trading platform in Ireland that offers direct access to equities in 40 countries and 29 currencies.
• Investing in Africa. The “significant structural bias against driving real capital to African climate companies” is glaringly short-sighted, Waite says. In Germany, over a million people are of African descent. Four of five children in the world who learn French are in Africa, as are three in five of daily French speakers. The biggest flow of tourists to Africa are from France. The omission of African companies from equity funds in Europe is “robbing the investor of supporting real-economy climate solutions on the continent,” Waite argues. “The case is strong for enabling the ecosystem of European investors to drive meaningful climate solutions scaling in Africa.”
• Keep reading, “Expanding opportunities for retail investors in Europe to finance climate action in the Global South,” by Marilyn Waite. Catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

The Week’s Agent of Impact 

Remembering Greg Krupa, 1987-2026. Greg Krupa was larger than life. Anyone who knew him felt the energy he brought into every room – positive, radiant, impossible to miss. He spoke his mind, always. And in a space where we need people to actually move things forward, he did. He spent his life showing up for Latin America’s hardest to reach communities. 

Greg moved to Quito in 2007 with his brother to start the Range of Motion Project, or ROMP, which has delivered more than 6,000 prosthetics to clinics in Ecuador and Guatemala. He later founded Novulis, bringing affordable dental care to more than 40,000 people in underserved areas of the Amazon, the Andes, the coast and the Galápagos (see, “How impact incentives brought a dental care startup back to its roots in rural Ecuador”). Greg lived and breathed impact. He served as a fundraising advisor to a number of social enterprises and impact funds across Latin America, many of them covered in ImpactAlpha, including, DREX, Zenani Capital and Strong by Form. 

This past year, Greg and I traveled together to five countries, multiple impact conferences, Karol G’s club in Medellín, our first carnival in Rio. He introduced me to everyone he knew along the way, and somewhere in that time, became one of my closest friends. We talked about how we were going to bring more capital to Latin America and build an ecosystem that could live up to its potential. 

Let’s carry his legacy forward. Dream big. Get shit done. Bring people together. And do it for the people who actually need it. All while having a bit of fun. See you in the next life, bro. Thank you for the memories, the friendship, all of it. You changed my life, as you did for so many. – Erik Stein

The Week’s Talent and Jobs

💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.

Jory Cohen stepped down as Inspirit Foundation’s director of finance and impact investment to launch Silk Pin Capital, an impact investing consulting firm… Joe Meginnes, previously with Calvert Impact, joined The Nature Conservancy’s impact legal team as a senior attorney… Claude Grunitzky stepped down as CEO and managing partner of The Equity Alliance. Greg Parsons will take on the CEO role… Co-Impact added Rockefeller Foundation’s Elizabeth Yee as a board member… Nida Januskis, previously with INSEAD, joined LGT Venture Philanthropy as chief business development officer.

Laurie Felker Jones, former fellow at the Newton Venture Program, joined FSE Group as an investment manager… Rebecca McAtee, previously with Village Capital, joined Halcyon as development director… McDowell Housing Partners tapped Brian Villa, formerly with CREA, as chief investment officer… James Andrus, previously with Franklin Templeton, joined the New York State Insurance Fund as deputy chief investment officer… BlueHub Capital appointed Connie Max, former green lending vice president at Enterprise Community Loan Fund, as president of managed assets and chief credit officer. 

Miranda Bogen became chief technologist and head of the AI Governance Lab at the Center for Democracy and Technology… Rocket Community Fund tapped Megan Kusulas, previously with Henry Ford Health, as public relations associate… Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati appointed Chris Dawson, previously with Indianapolis’ federal home loan bank, as senior vice president and chief information officer. 

Stephanie Cineus, former grants associate at the Commonwealth Fund, joined Surdna Foundation as a grants management associate… Strada Education Foundation promoted Mike Hanagan to director of strategic investments… Jan-Willem Ruisbroek, the head of infrastructure at Dutch pension fund APG, stepped down from his role in July.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– April 17, 2026