The Brief

The Brief: Tsao Family Office’s theory of change (podcast)

ImpactAlpha · March 11, 2026

Greetings, Agents of Impact! 

Welcome to this week’s ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing and the dynamic relationships between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.

In this week’s newsletter:

  • Podcast: Tsao Family Office’s theory of change
  • Live on Edge: 60 family offices
  • Apis & Heritage exceeds $250 million target
  • Bridges ‘spins in’ HSBC’s climate team

🎉 Introducing ImpactAlpha Edge (early access). We’ve been building a data-driven intelligence platform for Agents of Impact moving capital. We are excited to give ImpactAlpha subscribers an early look at the new ImpactAlpha Edge. Dozens of early users already are moving seamlessly between the news shaping the market and the relationships and capital flows behind it. ImpactAlpha Edge is designed to help: 

  • LPs and allocators identify co-investors and opportunities;
  • GPs and fund managers raise capital more effectively;
  • Advisors understand where capital is flowing; and
  • Ecosystem builders discover aligned partners.

Think of ImpactAlpha Edge as a specialized PitchBook, purpose-built for the impact investing ecosystem. We’ve taken ImpactAlpha’s trusted market intelligence, built out structured data on 950+ LPs, 950+ GPs and more than 2,000 capital allocations, and added the power of relationship mapping. As an ImpactAlpha subscriber, you and your firm can take advantage of our low introductory offer (and expense it accordingly!). Upgrade to ImpactAlpha Edge and get an all-access pass, including all of ImpactAlpha’s editorial products, for your entire team. LP profiles, GP strategies, capital flows, market signals – ImpactAlpha Edge is designed to save you time, make you money and maximize your impact. Check it out! – Dennis Price

Tsao Family Office builds a theory to go with its practice of impact investing (podcast). Who would be funding this, if not us? That’s the question Bryan Goh, the CEO and chief investment officer of the Tsao Family Office in Singapore, says his team asks all the time. “We’re very careful where we fund that we don’t distort things,” Goh says on the latest episode of ImpactAlpha’s Agents of Impact podcast. “We’re always thinking, are we displacing purely financial capital? Are we replacing capital that would invest in any case?” Goh says the family office intentionally looks where the market “is a little bit shy, where it’s our capital that’s additional, it’s not just the project or the business that’s additional.” Tsao Family Office and Tsao Family Foundation are founding partners of Impact LP, ImpactAlpha’s platform for asset owners for whom LP stands for “leadership potential.”

  • Well-being economy. The Tsao Family Office (view profile on Edge) was established more than a decade ago by the family behind maritime company Tsao Pao Chee Group. The company, TPC, traces its roots to China’s Qing dynasty in the late 1800s. It relocated to Hong Kong after World War II and then to Singapore in 1991. The company says it is guided by a “well-being mandate” and “an awakening journey from I to We.” Tsao Family Office doesn’t disclose the size of its holdings, but Goh says a majority of assets are aligned with impact or ESG, with just under 20% in what would be considered “contributing to solutions,” or deep impact. 
  • Private markets. The family office serves effectively as the family’s charitable trust, investing a corpus to finance the family’s foundations supporting health and the Sustainable Development Goals. Tsao’s impact portfolio includes private credit providers BlueOrchard Microfinance Fund and Wellington Global Impact Bond Fund, and agriculture tech fund manager Omnivore and health care investor Somerset Indus on the private equity side. Tsao Family Office stood out among the European quasi-public development finance institutions and multilaterals as a backer of TLG Capital’s second Africa Growth Impact Fund, which provides dollar-denominated loans to African businesses that can’t get them from their local banks.
  • Theory of change. Goh says he is returning to “first principles” to revamp Tsao’s impact framework “and trying to meld that to an economic theory so that what we do is rationally sound and we don’t end up crowding out capital or having unintended consequences.” Tsao’s capital deployments may slow. “We’re demanding a coherent, consistent theory of change for everything that we invest in, and we require ourselves to have an internal theory of change that we can benchmark on that GP’s theory of change,” he says. “It’s going to be a lot more rigorous.”
  • Keep reading and listen to “Tsao Family Office builds a theory to go with its practice of impact investing (podcast),” by David Bank. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. 

In Brazil, women and young people are catalyzing their families’ impact investments. Brazil’s next generation of family wealth holders is a promising force for catalytic impact investing. Younger members of wealthy families are using their family offices’ philanthropic strategies as a gateway to impact investing, observes Fernanda Camargo of Wright Capital, a São Paulo-based multi-family office. “The families we work with already have [an impact] mindset,” because of their philanthropic work, she tells ImpactAlpha. A recent survey from philanthropic advisor Juliana de Paula and consultant Cássio Aoqui found that 44% of Brazilian family offices are already engaged in impact investing. They’re using guarantees, funding technical assistance and taking higher-risk positions in funds to support early-stage impact businesses. They come, says Aoqui, “with this risk-philanthropy approach and think very much from an investment perspective.”

🟢 Live on Edge: Family Offices 

60 family offices actively investing in impact funds. Singapore-based Tsao Family Office is one of more than 60 family offices actively backing impact funds, all profiled on ImpactAlpha Edge (see above). Our curated collection offers a rare window into one of the market’s most influential yet opaque segments of LPs (for background see, “Emerging market family offices emerge on the impact investment scene”). ImpactAlpha Edge lets users view LP fund commitments, and filter by geography, investment theme and other criteria, including recent allocations, to see where family office capital is flowing for impact. 


Dealflow: Ownership Economy

Impact-first LPs power Apis & Heritage employee ownership fund past $250 million target. Apis & Heritage Capital Partners has exceeded its $250 million target for its second employee-led buyout fund. The private-credit Apis & Heritage Legacy Fund, aimed at putting business equity in workers’ hands, has been backed largely by impact investors, including high-net-worth individuals, foundations and family offices. “We’re super excited about the close, which I think speaks to the demand around employee ownership from investors,” said Tobi Adewodu of Apis & Heritage, which is coaxing hesitant limited partners to help push the fund to its $350 million hard cap. “We want to see pension funds. We want to see university endowments get behind this.” Apis & Heritage’s pitch to LPs is that workers, not private equity investors, should own the tens of millions of small and mid-sized businesses that are expected to change hands in coming decades. (see, “Employee ownership funds seek to give private equity investors a run for their money as businesses change hands”). 

  • Easy yes. “The folk that have built these businesses want the opportunity to see their workers benefit in what they’ve built. That’s what Apis & Heritage is tapping into,” said Stephen Vicinelli of Social Finance, which committed $3 million through its Impact First Fund of funds. Gary Community Ventures, a hybrid family office and private foundation in Denver, is among early Apis & Heritage investors that reupped in the new fund. “Instead of concentrating wealth and power for private equity firms overseeing increased efficiency and returns from companies, they’re pointing those returns back to the employees themselves and creating a mechanism for them to share in that value,” said Gary Community’s Catherine Toner. “Fund Two was an easy yes.”
  • Keep reading.

Persistent snags $52 million to invest in Africa’s climate entrepreneurs. Mauritius-headquartered climatetech investor Persistent Energy has secured $52 million of its $70 million target, in the first close of its closed-ended Persistent Africa climate venture builder fund. The fund launched with anchor funding from the Nordic Development Fund, the African Development Bank’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa and Financial Sector Deepening Africa Investments which invested $3 million in 2022 as part of Persistent’s $10 million Series C. The anchors, providing the catalytic portion of the fund, reupped their investment in this round. New investors include the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Soros Economic Development Fund, Impact Fund Denmark, the Schmidt Family Foundation, the Cottier Donzé Foundation and an undisclosed family office. “In due diligence with our investors, we focused a lot on how we mitigate and demystify the risks,” Persistent’s Wairimu Karanja told ImpactAlpha. “If you look at elements of country risk and look at the west right now, there’s a lot of political risk associated with geopolitics. But that’s, perhaps in the investment perspective, not seen as risky as much as Africa is seen as risky. And that’s something to demystify.” 

  • Blended finance. Persistent spun out of the nonprofit clean energy impact investor E+Co, way back in 2012 with around $5 million in assets (see, “E+Co Avoids Liquidation — Barely — and Emerges Persistent”). Persistent fully deployed the $10 million raised from its Series C into a dozen startups, with $3 million allocated for deal warehousing for the newly launched climate fund. The firm says the blended finance structure was critical in securing private investors. “Part of building on climate impact ambitions is making sure that everyone is able to contribute to impactful investments that are scalable and will also earn a profit,” Karanja said. The new fund will cut checks of between $250,000 to $1 million for pre-seed to Series A startups. It will focus on productive use assets in energy, e-mobility and other emission-reduction technologies within the transport value chain, commercial and industrial solar, AI, data and predictive analytics for weather forecasting, among others.
  • Go deeper.

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Brookfield Renewable Partners secured a sustainability-linked credit facility from BNP Paribas. Brookfield’s cost of debt drops as it adds renewable power and meets pre-determined CO2 emissions avoidance levels. (BNP Paribas)
  • West Palm Beach-based infrastructure investor Siris acquired a majority stake in renewable energy services provider Takkion from Apollo Global (Siris)
  • Ocean 14 Capital led a $6 million round for AquaExchange, an Indian startup that provides technology and financing services to shrimp farmers in the country. (Economic Times)
  • LaFamilia Foundation and Insight Partners backed Pasito’s $21 million Series A round. The New York-based company uses AI to automate insurance and benefits administration, helping expand access to workplace benefits. (Founderland)

Signals: Fund Management

Why Bridges is ‘spinning in’ HSBC AM’s climate investment team. Bridges Fund Management, the London-based sustainable investment firm cofounded by Sir Ronald Cohen, faced a classic buy vs. build decision when it wanted to expand its private equity platform. Bridges imported a ready-made climate investment team from HSBC Asset Management. Led by Christophe Defert in London and Mike D’Aurizio in New York, the HSBC AM team brings with it an existing fund with 11 investments. Rechristened Bridges Climate Transition Partners, the new unit plans to raise a €200 million successor fund. “Investing in innovative climate technologies is one of the most powerful ways to achieve positive impact at scale,” said Michele Giddens of Bridges. In the scramble for talent, “spinning in” can be a faster and more effective way to scale. That’s especially true for smaller specialist funds, like Bridges, which manages about $1 billion in assets. The trend could accelerate as the fierce competition and challenging economics drive consolidation in the field. “There are a lot of firms the size of Bridges out there, and particularly when it’s difficult to fundraise, I think you’re going to see consolidation in this space,” Defert told ImpactAlpha.

  • Bring your own team. Call it BYOT. In 2024, UK-based investment manager Redwheel brought on board a trio of energy transition specialists from EM Impact Capital to kickstart its private market Emerging Markets Impact Opportunities strategy. Last year, Capricorn Investment Group hired Mark Berryman and Nick Flores from Caprock to boost its OCIO, or outsourced investment advisory, business. BlackRock in 2017 acquired First Reserve’s $3.7 billion energy infrastructure franchise and its global team of 37 investment professionals. In 2024, the asset management giant acquired infrastructure specialist Global Infrastructure Partners for $12.5 billion, giving it an immediate beachhead and expertise in lucrative alternatives markets such as renewable energy and digital infrastructure.
  • More. 

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

☎️ Answer today’s Call: Building an investment portfolio that makes aging an asset. Join Next50’s Peter Kaldes, JPMorgan Chase’s Preeti Bhattacharji, 1843’s Tracy Chadwell and other Agents of Impact to trade tips on compelling investment opportunities in companies and funds that value and support aging, today, March 11, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm London. There’s still time to RSVP.

More than 193 fund managers, including Mad Capital, Enduring Planet, Boston Impact Initiative and Enterprise Community Partners, are featured in this year’s ImpactAssets 50 showcase. “From affordable housing and community development to capital for small businesses and underrepresented entrepreneurs, these managers are directing capital where it can help build an inclusive economy while delivering competitive financial returns,” says ImpactAssets’ Margret Trilli.

Green Impact Exchange appoints Kevin Buckley, previously with Prudential Financial, as chief financial officer… Sekai Chiwandamira joins Mastercard Foundation to lead the foundation’s Innovation Labs… The Quadrature Climate Foundation hires Sonny Bardhan as chief impact and insights officer… Flourish Ventures promotes Charlee Brady to people operations manager… John Arzinos, former economic inclusion officer at IFC, joins Triple Jump as an ESG and impact officer. 

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air is searching for an analyst to lead research on China’s energy landscape… Fullerton Fund Management seeks a sustainable investment analyst in Singapore… The Canada Pension Fund has an opening for a sustainable energies associate in Toronto… Gates Foundation is looking for a senior officer to lead financing partnerships in London… The International Finance Corp., or IFC, is searching for an associate investment officer in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– March 11, 2026