ImpactAlpha Open

Fixed-income impact investing + optimizing adaptation finance

Dennis Price ¡ July 1, 2025

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

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🔌 Get Plugged In: Climate, equity and the next wave of impact investing. Broadening ownership and economic participation is good for communities – and returns. In July’s PluggedIn conversation, ImpactAlpha’s Sherrell Dorsey talks with Melissa Pegus at SecondMuse Capital about capital as a lever for both climate resilience and economic inclusion. Get Plugged In, Tuesday July 8 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP now.

In this week’s Open:

  • Scaling impact through fixed income investing
  • New tool for optimizing adaptation funding
  • Agents of Impact: Elizabeth Killough and Laura Kind McKenna
  • The Call: Policies for shared prosperity 

Let’s dig in. â€“ Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • Fixed income investments can deliver steady returns – and impact at scale. Asset managers are making fixed income their primary vehicle for impact investing. “Fixed income is too big and too influential to remain a passive observer as we build a more resilient future together,” Builders Vision’s Noelle Laing writes in the introduction of a new report from Tideline, BlueMark and Builders Vision. Keep reading.
  • New tool for adaptation finance directs concessional capital where it’s needed most. An index developed by Columbia University aims to help concessional finance providers, including development finance institutions, climate philanthropies and impact-first investors, identify what kind of adaptation finance is most impactful and where. Learn more.
  • Capital market shaping: The next frontier for impact investors. “There’s growing excitement about the role investors can play not just in deploying capital, but in redesigning the systems that determine where capital flows in the first place,” writes Antony Bugg-Levine, an impact investing consultant and former CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund. Hear him out.

Bundle ImpactAlpha + SOCAP

ImpactAlpha and SOCAP connect the leaders and stories shaping impact investing. Now, you can tap into both, in one exclusive package. Lock in a one-year subscription to ImpactAlpha access plus a full access pass to SOCAP25 (October 27–29 in San Francisco) – all for one low price. Bundle and save $600, but act fast â€“ only a limited number of bundles remain. This is your chance to deepen your connections, sharpen your insights, and stay ahead in a fast-changing impact landscape.

  • NEW Capital Connections Day at SOCAP25 where attendees will get a chance to engage in candid, peer-to-peer discussions that surface shared challenges, identify investment opportunities, and explore innovative approaches to deploying capital.
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Agents of Impact

Elizabeth Killough and Laura Kind McKenna: Catalysts for mission-aligned investing. After shifting their foundations’ assets to align with their missions, and catalyzing more than a dozen private foundations in Philadelphia to do the same, Laura Kind McKenna and Elizabeth Killough are taking their message to a broader – and bigger – set of foundations.

🏃 On the move

  • Caoimhe MacRunnels was promoted from senior associate to principal at Reach Capital.
  • The Indigenous Prosperity Foundation welcomed Alejandra Metallic-Janvier, a former program lead at Indigenous Clean Energy, as a program officer.
  • Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, previously with Balderton Capital, joined Owl Ventures as general partner to lead the firm’s edtech expansion in emerging markets. 

The Week’s Call

Agents of Impact Call No. 72: Policies for shared prosperity (video). Community investing. Opportunity Zones. Affordable housing tax credits. Amid the political headwinds and pushback, impact investors see opportunities for bipartisan action on common sense solutions that support broad-based prosperity. “Quick wins are not small wins – they’re essential building blocks,” said John Cochrane of the US Impact Investing Alliance, which co-hosted ImpactAlpha’s Call No. 72 “Opportunities for policy action and investing in shared prosperity.”

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact: Catalytic climate capital in the Amazonian bio-economy. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor Jessica Pothering. Up this week: Teeing up November’s Global Climate Summit COP30 in Brazil with inclusive nature-based, Indigenous-led and catalytic climate capital. A new tool that helps direct scarce concessional capital for adaptation finance to where it’s most needed. And why more investors are using an aging-lens for their impact investments.

🦸 Agents of Impact: Hopelab’s upstream investments in youth mental health. A flood of state and federal funding to address the rising rates of anxiety, depression and more serious mental illness among young people has spurred many youth mental health startups. The next challenge for Hopelab, a nonprofit research and investment organization, is to mobilize financing for “upstream” interventions that could improve the mental health of today’s young people. Hopelab’s Margaret Laws and Amy Green join David Bank on the latest episode of the Agents of Impact podcast. Tune in.

📯 The Criterion Institute Podcast: Watching The Rehearsal with power in mind. In this episode, host Joy Anderson discusses HBO’s “The Rehearsal” and the parallel power dynamics in finance and aviation. She explores themes of communication, vulnerability, authority, and the importance of diversity in decision-making environments. Check it out.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Crystal Creek Renewables is searching for an investment analytics associate in Santa Monica.
  • Geronimo Power is hiring a project finance associate for a hybrid role.
  • Impact Investment Group is looking for an India lead investment associate in Surrey, UK.

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

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