ImpactAlpha

TGIF, Agents of Impact! In today’s Brief: Roundup: Bonds of affection Podcasts: Todd Khozein, Joanna Levitt Cea and This Week in Impact Pop Impact: Can finance reclaim the narrative? đź—Ł Bonds of affection. The yearning for a better future for the country of his birth is clear in Todd Khozein’s voice in our podcast conversation about the (eventual) reconstruction of Iran. The destruction of civic trust has sapped Iran’s vitality, he explained.

Impact jobs that came across our desk this week: Apis & Heritage Capital Partners seeks a controller in the Washington, DC area… Black Farmer Fund is searching for an impact lending and relationship associate and a community engagement intern. Beanstalk AgTech is hiring a head of studio, a partnerships lead and a venture lead for Monsoon Ventures, its new agtech venture building studio in Singapore. Boann has an opening for an investment analyst or senior analyst in Toronto.

What stories shape what we believe is possible in finance? In this episode, host Joy Anderson sits down with Valiente Capital Design’s Joanna Levitt Cea to explore the role of narratives in creating economic and systems change. They explore why narrative change is not simply about finding the right message, but about collective action, organizing and reshaping the stories that define what people believe is possible.

Agents of Impact are all too familiar with the growing catalog of films and TV shows about the financial sector – both from inside the trading floor and into the lives of characters who work in finance. Almost without exception, these characters are depicted within a narrow band of tropes. White. Male. Greedy. Corrupt. Nihilist. Cynical.

A colleague recently asked Joy where she’d changed her mind—the kind of question you ask to find out whether someone is actually learning, or just defending old positions with better language. Joy’s surprising answer probably won’t be the one you’re expecting.

Roughly one in four American workers is now age 55 or older. That single statistic should be enough to put aging on every investment committee agenda. Instead, when aging surfaces in investor conversations, it tends to get filed under “healthcare,” a narrow slice of pharma, devices and senior living, and then set aside. That framing has real portfolio consequences. As sustainable investing practitioners at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, we see aging show up in places most investors are not yet looking.

Greetings Agents of Impact! In today’s Brief: Beanstalk AgTech’s venture studio for agricultural innovation in Asia Strong by Form raises Series A for sustainable wood products WovenEarth closes cleantech fund of funds Balad’s strategic backer for remittance payments in Egypt Beanstalk AgTech launches Monsoon Ventures to build Southeast Asia’s agtech pipeline. India and Australia have become successful tech hubs for food and agriculture. Can the strategy be replicated across Southeast Asia?

India and Australia have become successful tech hubs in food and agriculture. Can the strategy be replicated across Southeast Asia? Melbourne-based Beanstalk AgTech is counting on it. Beanstalk’s new agtech venture building studio, Monsoon Ventures, is building on the trials, errors and, crucially, wins of its Australia-focused counterpart Drought Venture Studio to develop deep tech and science-based innovations aimed at improving the climate resilience of Southeast Asia’s smallholder farmers.

Chile-based Strong by Form got its start eight years ago to improve the sustainability and environmental footprint of building materials, which account for 11% of carbon emissions worldwide. Its high-tech process turns low-value and cast-off wood of any species into lightweight, ultra-durable materials for construction and transportation. Strong by Form’s ambition is to prove that wood can be designed and manufactured with the same specificity and versatility as, say, fiberglass.

WovenEarth Ventures is betting that early-stage cleantech, from geothermal energy to battery storage to critical minerals, will be central to reshaping the global economy. “We believe we are in the midst of a massive innovation wave: We call it Cleantech 2.0,” said WovenEarth’s Jane Woodward.