ImpactAlpha Open

CalPERS and CalSTRS find impact alpha + opportunities in healthy aging

Dennis Price · May 27, 2025

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In this week’s Open:

  • CalPERS and CalSTRS find impact alpha
  • Next50 seeks investment opportunities in healthy aging
  • New podcasts from ImpactAlpha, Impact(ed) and Criterion Institute

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • CalPERS and CalSTRS find alpha in emerging managers that have earned ‘the right to win.’ It felt like a time capsule from another era. At the recent Catalyst event in Sacramento, Calif., officials from California’s two major public pension plans, CalPERS and CalSTRS, repeatedly made the case that emerging and diverse fund managers can and do outperform, reports ImpactAlpha’s David Bank. “Now’s not the time to be quiet,” CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost told attendees. Read more.
  • Agents of Impact Podcast: Next50 goes all in on valuing aging. The age wave crashing into the US, and much of the rest of the world, presents a huge investment opportunity, explains Next50’s Peter Kaldes on the latest Agents of Impact podcast. 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 more and listen.
    • Going deeper. ImpactAlpha and Next50 are partnering to expand coverage of investment opportunities in healthy aging, and to chronicle the foundation’s efforts to align its endowment investments with its programmatic mission.
  • Impermanence is the future: Four unsolicited ideas for sunsetting the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation announcement that it would double its giving and wind down the foundation by 2045 is a watershed moment that “represents more than just another foundation choosing impermanence,” writes Santhosh Ramdoss of Gary Community Ventures, which itself plans to sunset by 2035. Check it out.
  • Blended finance loses a big investor and some of its steam. After 2023’s record-breaking year for mixed capital stacks and catalytic commitments in emerging markets, blended finance transactions last year fell by more than 20%, or nearly $5 billion, reports ImpactAlpha’s Jessica Pothering. “It is beyond clear that we are on a precipice; how far we fall is up to us,” writes Joan Larrea of Convergence in the organization’s latest “State of blended finance” report. Keep reading.

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • Jennifer Kilpela will become interim chief investment officer of The Nature Conservancy following the departure of Bola Olusanya, who joined MacArthur Foundation as CIO.
  • Bethany Wylie, previously with Camber Collective, joined Ballmer Group as a portfolio manager on its national impact team.
  • Impact Capital Managers deployed 27 Mosaic Fellows to impact fund managers, including Claudia Chistine Ortiz to Altura Capital, Jasmine Wahelsan Ali to Impact America Fund and Xaviera Ho to Quona Capital.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: The impermanence pledge. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Unsolicited advice for the Gates Foundation for how to make the most of its decision to spend down its endowment by 2045; how California’s massive public pension funds find alpha in diverse and emerging fund managers; and, glimmers of hope for blended finance in the face of a global foreign aid pullback.

🧑🏽‍🎓 Impact(ed): Investing in Youth: Erin Sietstra on mental health, equity and venture capital. In the latest episode of Impact(ed), Hopelab’s Erin Sietstra offers an inside look at how the social innovation lab is using its unique structure – an operating foundation with a venture arm, research team, and policy experts – to address the youth mental health crisis (disclosure: Hopelab supports ImpactAlpha’s Healthy Youth coverage). Tune in.

🗺️ The Activest Podcast: The impact of credit downgrades on communities. In this episode, Homero, Ellen and John discuss the implications of recent downgrades of credit ratings for Washington D.C., Maryland, and the United States by Moody’s – and structural issues surrounding debt and social equity. Check it out.

📯 The Criterion Institute Podcast: Why gender isn’t expensive, but resistance is. Host Joy Anderson explores the perceived costs of integrating gender into investment decision making. Gender integration can be at least cost-neutral in the long run, she says; the real costs are in resistance and bias. Listen in.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Impact Ventures is searching for a managing director for lending in Dallas.
  • Open Road Alliance is hiring an analyst in Washington, DC.
  • Strada Education Foundation is seeking a strategic investments summer associate in Washington, DC.

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

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