If you missed any of our look-aheads to 2026, you can find them all here.
In a year of economic uncertainty and shifting priorities, the people pushing ahead to build a more equitable and resilient economy mattered more than ever. Through Agents of Impact profiles, video interviews and podcast conversations, ImpactAlpha spotlighted the leaders translating values into action, often in places and markets long overlooked.
These Agents are building durable institutions, unlocking capital for working families and underserved communities, advancing climate solutions, and expanding opportunity across health, workforce development and emerging markets.
Below is a sampling of the Agents of Impact we profiled this year:
Martin Eakes, Self Help
Helping working families survive and thrive (video)
The way Martin Eakes tells it, the first $77 came from a bake sale in New Bern, NC. Churches and other groups soon rushed to make deposits. Eakes and his wife started Self Help to expand civil rights into economic gains for working families. The original credit union now has more than $2 billion in assets; a second unit in California and other states, Self Help Federal Credit Union, has another $2 billion or so. Together, they’ve delivered more than $11 billion in financing to more than 168,000 families. “If anyone had ever told me we would become a finance organization, I would have laughed at them,” Eakes tells ImpactAlpha. “We were a civil rights group. That was our calling.”
- Read David Bank’s Agent of Impact profile of Martin Eakes.
Brett Isaac, Navajo Power
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 said on an 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.
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Brett Isaac and Michael Cox.
Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen
Blending capital to bring electricity to the hardest to reach
The nearly two dozen investors in Acumen’s $250 million Hardest-to-Reach Fund for the world’s 700 million people without electricity range from philanthropic to concessionary to commercial. “At the end of the day, there’s a blueprint for what the private sector can do with the right incentives,” Acumen’s Jacqueline Novogratz explains on this Agents of Impact podcast.
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Jacqueline Novogratz.
Bernard Olayo, Hewatele
Building a local solution to East Africa’s medical oxygen shortage
When Bernard Olayo finished his medical schooling, he volunteered to practice in a region of Kenya most doctors-in-training would avoid: the southeastern Suba district, a remote, hard-to-reach area near the border with Tanzania. Olayo stayed for three years, managing Suba’s district health system. One issue stuck with him: The unavailability of medical staples – specifically oxygen – was costing lives. “Many times patients would die because there was no oxygen,” he tells ImpactAlpha. Olayo started Hewatele to address the shortage of medical oxygen in Kenya.
- Read Lucy Ngige’s profile of Bernard Olayo.
Corinne Lebrun, Impacta VC
Building Ecuador’s impact ecosystem and a first-time fund
Corinne Lebrun had no finance experience, no VC connections, and little encouragement when she began thinking about leaving her corporate job to start a venture capital fund in Ecuador. She quit anyway. Her role at a French cement company had put her in contact with Indigenous communities bearing the environmental costs of cement production but receiving little benefit. After a crash course through Stanford’s VC Unlocked program, Lebrun launched CREAS to support startups tackling social and environmental challenges in Ecuador. CREAS has backed nearly a dozen companies and made two exits. “Everyone told me it was impossible,” she says. “But my reflection was: if I don’t do it, no one is going to do it.”
- Read Erik Stein’s profile of Corinne Lebrun.
Eva Yazhari, Beyond Capital Ventures
Knocking down singles and doubles as an emerging markets debt investor
As a former hedge fund investor, Eva Yazhari is comfortable making the contrarian bet. While other VC investors are swinging for grand slams with AI startups, Yazhari’s Beyond Capital Ventures is knocking down singles and doubles around the west Indian Ocean, one of the world’s fastest-growing regions. Yazhari sees the “gap” in financing available in those regions as an opportunity for investors who are able to go “beyond capital.” Beyond Capital has raised two equity funds to invest in companies in healthtech, fintech, agtech and mobility, from seed rounds and Series A, along with a small private-credit fund. “The gap is where the alpha lives,” Yazhari tells ImpactAlpha.
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Eva Yazhari.
Wakiuru Njuguna, HEVA Fund
Creative financing for the creative economy in Africa
Africa’s creative economy, from fashion to filmmaking to music to theater, generates nearly $60 billion in revenues and thousands of jobs each year. Creative businesses rarely fit the bill for traditional capital providers. That market gap represents an opportunity for Nairobi-based HEVA Fund, which invests in creative entrepreneurs to drive employment for young people who have turned to platforms like TikTok to capitalize on digital opportunities. “The ripple effect of investing in creative businesses is massive in terms of the multiplier effect from a job opportunity perspective,” HEVA’s Wakiuru Njuguna explained in a video interview in ImpactAlpha’s series, Pathways to Growth, produced with the Collaborative for Frontier Finance. “If you put in $10,000 in a film production, you get around five jobs.”
- Read Lucy Ngige’s profile Wakiuru Njuguna.
Ravit Dotan, TechBetter
Making the business case for responsible AI in the Age of Trump
In this Agents of Impact podcast, TechBetter’s Ravit Dotan, an AI governance advisor and researcher, helps investors sort out the issues. Dotan has “huge concerns” about technology as powerful as AI, which is already being used for everything from generating pornography to building weapons. “There is much less oversight, if at all, when using those open-source models,” she says. But source code that is not available for inspection puts “huge power in the hands of the only ones who can use it. How can we understand how it works? How can we build guardrails if you don’t really have access to the heart of it?”
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Ravit Dotan.
Peter Kaldes, Next50 Foundation
Going all in on valuing aging
There are nearly as many people in the US over 65 years old as there are under 18, and the country is not getting any younger. The age wave crashing into the US, and much of the rest of the world, will upend more than just government spending and healthcare. “It’s genuinely a mega trend that’s going to impact every aspect of our economy,” Next50’s Peter Kaldes in this podcast interview. The Denver-based foundation this year selected JPMorgan Chase & Co. to construct an age-friendly portfolio for the foundation’s $265 million in assets and for other investors as well.
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Peter Kaldes.
Austin Mwape, Zambia National Advisory Board for Impact Investment
Getting Zambia’s central bank behind growth capital for small businesses
Austin Mwape learned the ins and outs of banking as the deputy governor of the Bank of Zambia and chair of both Absa Bank and Stanbic Bank in the country. Now with the Zambia National Advisory Board for Impact Investment, Mwape is working with his former colleagues at the central bank to unlock financing for small businesses while building a more supportive lending ecosystem. The central bank is seeding the effort with $200 million in first-loss debt to catalyze other investors to participate.
- Read Lucy Ngige’s profile of Austin Mwape, and ImpactAlpha’s video interview of Mwape in our Pathways to Growth series.
Leslie Maasdorp, British International Investment
Making climate investing in emerging markets safe for institutional LPs
Leslie Maasdorp, who took over as CEO of British International Investment last year, is pushing the UK development finance institution to mobilize institutional LPs around climate and development finance in emerging markets. “There’s been a lot of introspection by the development finance system,” he tells David Bank on this episode of the Agents of Impact podcast. “We want to see to what extent we can be more catalytic.”
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Leslie Maasdorp.
Yigal Kerszenbaum, JFF Ventures
Backing tech solutions to expand economic mobility for workers
The spinout venture capital fund JFF Ventures is betting on a high-road vision of workforce innovation – and AI – to expand economic mobility for workers amid technological disruption and economic uncertainty. “The evolution of technology and innovation has created a ripe moment for us to invest in technology companies that help upskill, train and connect low- and middle-wage earners to better jobs,” JFF Ventures’ Yigal Kerszenbaum says on this Agents of Impact podcast. With over 140 million adults in the US earning less than $55,000 a year, JFF Ventures sees a massive market in which positive social impact can drive attractive returns.
- Read on and listen in to David Bank’s conversation with Yigal Kerszenbaum.
