TGIF, Agents of Impact! We’ll be taking a Brief break for the Memorial Day holiday in the US. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, May 26.
- Roundup: Practicing into existence
- Podcasts: Eric Ries, Elizabeth Boggs Davidson and Joy Anderson
- Agent of Impact: Daniel Yu, Africa Jobs Fund
🗣 Practicing into existence. In his 2011 bestseller “The Lean Startup,” Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization “creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” That could describe pretty much all Agents of Impact these days. Geopolitical volatility, artificial intelligence and global climate change has us all on our toes. That’s especially true for the wave of emerging and diverse managers seeded in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. With corporate and institutional support receding, many of these high-impact managers are struggling to raise second and third funds just as they are starting to prove out their theses. Leading LPs such as California Wellness Foundation are providing operating capital and anchor investments, and even making multi-fund commitments, to help promising managers cross the chasm, as I reported this week with Roodgally Senatus.
In Africa, which has long endured the fickleness of outside funders, local capital networks are mobilizing to provide more sustainable and steady financing for small and growing businesses that create jobs. The traction in markets such as Kenya and Nigeria is spreading to smaller markets like Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. For the launch of our ImpactAlpha Africa newsletter this week, Lucy Ngige explored how GSG Impact, which partnered with us on the debut, is working with local fund managers and field builders to weave together work that has often been done in siloes. Contributing editor Marilyn Waite delved into emerging opportunities for climate investing in Senegal and Zimbabwe.
New ideas are taking root in even the most jaded quarters. Ries, who popularized terms such as “minimum viable product” and “failing fast,” is champions what he calls “spiritual holding companies” – a catchall phrase for corporate structures that embed values and good governance – in his new book, “Incorruptible,” he shared on our podcast this week. ImpactAlpha readers are familiar with perpetual purpose and employee ownership trusts. Ries’ message may reach a new audience in Silicon Valley, where AI giant Anthropic is already demonstrating that there is alpha in responsible AI and good governance.
In these unsettled times, the annual ImpactPHL conference in Philadelphia provided welcome grounding. The ImpactAlpha crew was out in force. Dennis Price, Roody and I rounded up some of the highlights this week. “In this moment, the work we’re doing isn’t just trading capital or moving money faster, it’s creating defensible economies that allow for permanence,” 1803 Fund’s Rukaiyah Adams told the crowd. ImpactPHL’s Kafi Lindsay saluted the persistence of Agents of Impact trying to build new systems amid uncertain conditions. “The future never arrives by announcement,” she said. “It is practiced into existence, day by day, by people willing to act before certainty appears.” – Amy Cortese
Also on ImpactAlpha this week:
- “Calvert Impact goes deep on wealth building with investments in employee and community ownership,” by Roodgally Senatus.
- “Mind the pioneer gap: Building platform infrastructure for climate finance,” by Conduit Capital’s Robert Zulkoski.
- “Building an impact investment vehicle, in six steps: A practical guide,” by GSG Impact’s Charlotte Badenoch.
The Week’s Podcasts
🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with Lucy Ngige and Amy Cortese. Up this week: The first edition of ImpactAlpha Africa explores new ways capital is being mobilized for impact on the continent; a spotlight on two African funds investing in human capital and high productivity jobs; and, how some LPs are stepping up to help emerging managers succeed in raising their next fund.
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
🦸 Agents of Impact: The education of Eric Ries. When Eric Ries published “The Lean Startup” in 2011, he handed Silicon Valley a handbook for the twenty-teens. In his new book “Incorruptible,” out next week, Ries wrestles with how companies can keep their souls once money, scale and power arrive. “There’s a throughline in all of my work, which is really about how to build great organizations,” Ries says on this Agents of Impact podcast. “How do we create innovation that can work in any kind of environment, no matter how much uncertainty?”
💬 Impact Investing Musings: Catalyzing Asia’s finance for people and planet. Host Vikas Arora shares highlights from last fall’s AVPN Global Conference in Hong Kong. Up this month, GSG Impact’s Elizabeth Boggs Davidson explains how key policy wins can unlock impact capital at scale.
📯Criterion Institute Podcast: The power of invitation. Host Joy Anderson ponders “invitation” as a foundational practice for leadership, collaboration and systems change. Drawing on her work with the Mastercard Foundation African Growth Fund, she outlines four conditions that make for better and more balanced investment relationships: permission, boundaries, protection of vulnerability, and moments to recalibrate.
The Week’s Agent of Impact
Daniel Yu, Africa Jobs Fund: Funding new ideas to bolster African youth employment. Daniel Yu spotted the business opportunity in delivering financing and services to Africa’s millions of informal mom and pop shops long before many other tech founders. Wasoko, the Kenyan logistics and fintech company he founded in 2013, introduced credit, online ordering and stock delivery to hundreds of thousands of retailers in East and Central Africa before it was acquired by Egyptian peer MaxAB in 2023. It took years for Yu to convince investors to back his mission and vision. “Being a first mover is not necessarily a good position,” Yu tells ImpactAlpha. Yu is now bringing that experience to a more widely recognized problem: African youth unemployment. This time, he’s not building a business to address the problem, he’s funding the founders who can. His new endeavor is the Africa Jobs Fund, an evergreen, philanthropic venture fund for startups providing stable, quality jobs for Africa’s youth. The fund is sector-agnostic, and the markets or models it backs don’t have to be proven. “I want to be maximally flexible – and give [founders] a funding instrument, the right kind of support to figure out the market, and let them take the time that’s needed to see if there is a viable business model,” he says.
- Founder-turned-investor. Africa is the youngest continent; the median age of its 1.6 billion people is not even 20. A third of the continent’s young people are unemployed, at least in the formal economy, and another third are variably or underemployed. Most of the private money attempting to address youth employment at scale comes from philanthropies; the Mastercard Foundation is the most recognizable name. Yu’s Africa Jobs Fund is a new spin-out of Renaissance Philanthropy, an organization started by Schmidt Futures’ former chief innovation officer Tom Kalil to design and incubate philanthropic funds. Yu’s goal is to raise $100 million to invest over the next five years. “My hope is that my 11 years building Wasoko, operating across many markets, and working through many different challenges can be a huge value add,” he says. “I consider it a success if we back the first mover, and then we create the copycats and second movers.”
- Keep reading, and catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.
The Week’s Talent and Jobs
💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.
2X Global tapped Nasri Adam, previously with the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance, as managing director of programs… Ryan Levinson joined Ignite Capital, Innovation Works’ fund management affiliate, as part-time fund advisor… Sustainable Capital Advisors welcomed Nicole Rocque, a Harvard Kennedy School student, as a research fellow… John Ellis of Woodforest National Bank joined the board of Alleviate Impact Capital.
The Skillman Foundation tapped Kenneth Frierson, previously with the Ruth Mott Foundation, as director of ground building… LISC Bay Area appointed Sasha Werblin as deputy director… Ted Kowalsky will head CohnReznick’s new public finance and sustainability practice, focused on helping sustainability-driven clients with fundraising and sustainability goals… 2X Global appointed Nasri Adam, previously with the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance, as managing director of programs.
Asset manager Aurora Sustainable Lands has restructured its leadership team, bringing former carbon operations vice president Cakey Worthington into the new role of sustainability and natural capital senior vice president. Mike Phelps, previously vice president of portfolio management, becomes chief operating officer, while Blake Stansell stays on as the company’s president… Alena Redeker was promoted to principal at Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund… Habib El Magrissy, formerly with CrossBoundary Group, joined Hatch Africa as head of strategic finance.
That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend.
– May 22, 2026
