ImpactAlpha Open

Rubicon’s plan to revive voluntary carbon markets + impact investing’s leadership moment

Dennis Price · September 23, 2025

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In this week’s Open:

  • Diversified – and rated – carbon credit portfolios 
  • The GIIN’s Amit Bouri on impact investing’s leadership moment
  • Podcast: Foundation leaders “unite in advance” of expected attacks
  • Pop Impact: The Sustainability Emmy Awards

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • Rubicon’s ‘all of the above’ plan to diversify and rate the market for carbon credits. Tom Montag, the Wall Street heavyweight who once ran Bank of America’strading operations, is bringing bond market practices to the Wild West of carbon trading. Montag leads Rubicon Carbon, which sources credits from projects around the world and bundles them into portfolios, called Rubicon Carbon Tonnes, for buyers seeking high quality offsets. Learn more.
  • GIIN’s Amit Bouri on how impact investors are meeting ‘this leadership moment.’ Private capital and private investors with the freedom to invest have a responsibility to lead. “This is a really important leadership moment for impact investing,” Amit Bouri of the Global Impact Investing Network tells ImpactAlpha, opening a conversation that will thread through this week’s UN General Assembly and Climate Week in New York, and next month’s GIIN Impact Forum in Berlin and SOCAP in San Francisco. Read more.
  • Ten slides that chart the rocky road to the sustainable future. Generation Investment Management has been charting the steady advance of energy transition investment for nearly a decade. Generation’s ninth annual “Sustainability Trends Report,” opens with a stark question amid the rollback of climate action and funding by the Trump administration: Does ambitious global climate action require the Americans? Or, can it survive without them? Check it out.

Sponsored by UNICEF Venture Fund

♀️ The rise of femtech in emerging markets

India-based CareNX’s Fetosense app is using AI and smartphones to reduce the likelihood of stillbirths by making fetal monitoring accessible to expecting mothers anywhere. A new wave of femtech startups, with innovative products and services designed specifically for women and girls, is transforming lives in emerging markets. Such solutions are an untapped engine of social and financial returns, UNICEF Venture Fund’s Sanna Bedi explains in a guest post on ImpactAlpha.

  • Open call. “When innovators design with women and girls in mind, they unlock solutions that improve health outcomes, strengthen financial agency and create safer, more inclusive communities,” she writes. And, because the sector is undervalued and under-invested, it offers “enormous potential for financial returns and transformative social impact.” The UNICEF Venture Fund’s five-year femtech initiative includes an open call for femtech innovations that has attracted more than 1,100 submissions from 85 countries.
  • Keep reading, “The rise of femtech in emerging markets,” by Sanna Bedi of UNICEF Venture Fund.

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • Giant Ventures added Zenetta Burger, previously with Anthos Capital, as partner. 
  • Congruent Ventures added Divyansh Saksena, previously with Iconiq, as an analyst, and Kate Lee, previously with Galvanize Climate Solutions, as a platform associate.
  • Joseph Rowntree Foundation welcomed Erinch Sahan, previously with Doughnut Economics Action Lab, as associate director of investments.

ImpactAlpha On the Town

Catch up with ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese and Erik Stein at New York Climate Week. 

Indigenous designers take the spotlight. New York City, the ancestral home of the Lenape people, hosted last week’s first Indigenous New York Fashion Week. The runway shows and after parties, organized by Reciprocal Arts NYC, a Native-owned community and exhibition space, were among the hardest tickets to score at Fashion Week. Read our INYFW fashion week wrap.

Overheard at Impact Week in Singapore. The rallying cry from Impact Week Singapore: less talk, more doing – together. The confab of more than 3,000 people from finance, business, science and academia was assembled was the brainchild of Singapore maritime and investment magnate Chavalit Frederick Tsao, who is determined to evolve Tsao Pao Chee Group, his family business, into a “well-being” business. Get the recap.

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Foundation leaders “unite in advance” of expected attacks in a supercharged political environment; how the carbon credit platform Rubicon Carbon is using diversification and ratings to strengthen the market for voluntary carbon credits; and the bumpy road to the sustainable future as charted by Generation Investment Management’s annual Sustainability Trends Report. Bonus: a preview of our Agents of Impact interview with Carbon Tracker’s Mark Campanale.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Washington Center for Employee Ownership is seeking a strategy and operations lead in Bellingham, WA.
  • Mad Capital is hiring a portfolio manager in Boulder, CO.
  • RF Catalytic Capital is looking for a program manager in Washington, DC.

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

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