ImpactAlpha Open

A holding company focused on good jobs + the case for climate investing

Dennis Price · June 10, 2025

Hi there, Agent of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, a free sample of the top news and views from ImpactAlpha.

🎉 You’re invited: Agents of Impact Call No. 71: Ramping up green lending – even without that $20 billion. Join Climate United’s Beth Bafford, Justice Climate Fund’s Amir Kirkwood, NYCEEC’s Curtis Probst, Aaron Seybert of Kresge Foundation and other community climate investors who are shaping a new market for green lending, tomorrow Wednesday, June 11 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. Subscribe to RSVP.

In this week’s Open:

  • Nine Dean’s holding company around quality jobs
  • Generation’s Colin le Duc makes the case for climate investing
  • Structuringimpact-linked carried interest

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • Nine Dean is building a holding company around quality jobs. Efforts to create “the Berkshire Hathaway of impact” have foundered on asset owners’ concerns about liquidity – most want to know when they’re going to get their money back. The Ford Foundation is taking a longer view, making its largest mission investment to date to anchor Nine Dean, a permanent holding company launched this week by Aren LeeKong, who previously headed private lending for Carlyle Group, reports ImpactAlpha’s David Bank. Get up to speed. Disclaimer: Ford Foundation is an investor in ImpactAlpha.
  • For climate fund managers with dry powder, there’s rarely been a better time to invest. Climate tech tailwinds have turned to headwinds. The worst of times? More like the best of times for climate investors with capital on hand. That’s the sentiment of some veteran climate tech investors who have been through a cycle or two, reports ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese. “The fundamentals of the sustainability transition are very much intact,” says Colin le Duc, a founding partner of Generation Investment Management, the $30 billion sustainable asset manager. Dig in.
  • How to structure impact-linked carried interest and other impact incentives. To drive outcomes, some impact investors are introducing mechanisms to reward the recipients or managers of capital for achieving impact targets in impact deals. Among them: impact-linked carried interest. “An effective impact-linked incentive structure needs to be simple enough that the transaction remains economically viable,” writes Aaron Bourke of law firm RPCK. Learn more. Follow all of ImpactAlpha’s “Impact Management” coverage.

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • Caprock tapped Vivek Jindal, previously with KORE Private Wealth, as chief investment officer.
  • JPMorgan Chase appointed Sarah Kapnick, a former investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, as global head of climate advisory.
  • Mission Driven Finance promoted Peter Metz to portfolio manager.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: ImpactAlpha’s CEO transition. In this special episode of This Week in Impact, host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s leadership transition with founder and editor David Bank and newly named CEO Dennis Price (read the announcement). “The play is to super-serve Agents of Impact,” says Price, who linked up with Bank and ImpactAlpha co-founder Zuleyma Bebell over a decade ago to build the platform. ImpactAlpha has “become a must-read editorial platform in the industry. What we’re executing is to become a must-use intelligence tool for Agents of Impact.”

  • Unabashedly impact. In a moment of great volatility and change, investors and other practitioners who are using finance as a force for progress are stepping up, said Bank, ImpactAlpha’s founder and editor-in-chief. “We’re stepping up as well.” To bring transparency and connectivity to the impact investment marketplace, ImpactAlpha is turning its deal reporting and editorial insights into datasets and tools. What’s not changing? “Our laser focus on impact” in finance, says Price. That hyperfocus on impact, he adds, “is the driver of the evolution and the transition we’re talking about.”
  • Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

🦸 Agents of Impact: Building a pipeline of utility-scale solar projects in Indian Country. “Indigenous communities have the resource potential to site projects of the size and scale that we need,” Navajo Power’s founder and CEO Brett Isaac says on ImpactAlpha’s latest Agents of Impact podcast. Isaac and Navajo Power’s COO Michael Cox joined David Bank to discuss how the company is developing clean energy projects and community benefits on Native lands. Check it out.With the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, ImpactAlpha is lifting up investment strategies that are expanding opportunity in today’s complex environment.

🧑🏽‍🎓 Impact(ed): Purpose fitting impact for community needs. Smit Naik of Sorenson Impact Institute joins Lucas and Eric to talk about his previous work at Gary Community Ventures. On tap: the importance of deploying the right capital, at the right time, for the right purpose; how philanthropies leave so much potential impact on the table; and why even investors could use a dose of human-centered design. Listen in.

📯 The Criterion Institute Podcast: Supporting African founders and the power of community. After a three-decade career in banking in Africa, Joyce-Ann Wainaina started Chui Ventures, a Nairobi-based seed fund that backs African founders. The fund’s first close came together in just 16 days, thanks to Wainaina’s personal network. “In Africa, VC is very nascent,” she tells host Joy Anderson. “But the idea of backing people is not. Especially in Kenya, there is a common understanding that it takes a village.” Tune in.

The Week’s Call

⚡ Plugged In: Investing in mobility beyond EVs with Reggaria Goddard of Crowned VC (video)

For many people, the term “mobility” conjures electric cars or public transit. For Reggaria Goddard of Detroit-based Crowned Venture Capital, the more expansive mobility opportunity encompasses deep tech, critical infrastructure and a holistic approach to urban development. “When I talk about the future of transportation and mobility, I think a lot of us get EVs as the first intersection,” Goddard told host Sherrell Dorsey on this week’s Plugged In. “There is lots of overlap from other industries, including tech, deep tech, communication, insurance tech,” Goddard says. “All these things are wrapped up into mobility.”

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Citi Impact Fund is hiring a vice president to execute and manage investment in New York.
  • Builders Vision is looking for a vice president of impact measurement and management in Chicago.
  • Omidyar Network seeks a principal of programs for technology policy in Washington DC.

Dozens of job opportunities are available to subscribers each week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

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