ImpactAlpha Open

Who gets jobs in impact investing + momentum for employee ownership

Dennis Price · August 12, 2025

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In this week’s Open:

  • Impact investors from nontraditional career paths
  • Aircapture bends the direct air capture learning curve
  • Climate tech innovation in Birmingham, Ala.
  • Creative financing for Africa’s creative economy

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • Who lands the jobs in impact investing? Successful candidates take nontraditional paths. Top MBA programs are brimming with student demand for impact investing careers. New research shows a narrow funnel to success in their job searches. “Just one in 400 graduates of top US MBA programs are currently working in impact roles,” write Shawn Cole, Jonah Zahnd and Marcus Sander of Harvard Business School’s Project on Impact Investments in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. See the findings.
  • Capturing the market for carbon by removing it from the air more cheaply. Carbon removal has moved up the agenda of climate investors, as it becomes clear that the decarbonization won’t happen fast enough to significantly reduce the carbon load in Earth’s atmosphere. In Berkeley, Calif., Aircapture is aiming to become a low-cost provider of carbon removal with container-sized modular converters that can capture 500 tons of carbon per year, reports ImpactAlpha’s David Bank. Learn more.
  • Fund managers step up to finance employee ownership as proponents debate how much wealth creation is enough. The club of investment firms financing business transitions to employee ownership has grown from a small handful of funds to more than three dozen active managers. Private equity is among the entrants, and while their participation has been widely applauded, there have also been accusations of so-called “equity washing,” reports ImpactAlpha’s Roodgally Senatus. Read more.

Agents of Impact

🎨 Wakiuru Njuguna, HEVA Fund: Creative financing for the creative economy in Africa (video)

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.”

🏃 On the move

  • Ellen Brooks, who previously led innovative finance for the International Rescue Committee, is joining Village Capital as its new CEO (read her guest post on ImpactAlpha, “USAID crisis forces a reckoning – and remaking – of international development”). Brooks succeeds Allie Burns, who is stepping down after more than six years.
  • Eleni Kyrou joins Green Climate Fund as head of sustainability and inclusion.
  • Elizabeth Peterson joins Sonen Capital as a research associate.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: How Aircapture aims to capture the market for carbon by cost-effectively removing it from the air. How Bold Line Capital is meeting short-term liquidity needs for impact and emerging fund managers. And, who actually lands a job in impact investing? Researchers at Harvard Business School’s Project on Impact Investments crunch the numbers.

🏘️ Community Capital Live: Employee ownership and community wealth building. Hosts Joel Skene of The Mindful Marketplace Show and Jen Risley of AMIBAare joined by David Kenney of Project Equity’s Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund. Kenney shares how his background leading VertueLab – a nonprofit that uses philanthropic capital to fund early-stage climate tech – informs his work providing debt financing for employee ownership transitions. 

📯 The Criterion Institute Podcast: Power, performance and the politics of procedure. Host Joy Anderson explores the promise and perils of using checklists for gender lens and systems change investing. On one hand, checking boxes can limit deep understanding and meaningful action; on the other, checklists can serve as useful tools for compliance and control. Listen in.

The Week’s Call

🔌 PluggedIn: What makes Birmingham an unconventional hub for climate innovation (video)

Many people might not think of Birmingham, Ala., as a capital for climate technology. The Techstars Energy Accelerator is proving them wrong. Leveraging its unique community and strategic partnerships, the accelerator is nurturing a new generation of climate and energy startups and challenging the notion that innovation can only happen in “sexier” cities. “Our superpower is we’ve really over-indexed on community,” Techstars’ Rae’Mah Henderson told host Sherrell Dorsey on the latest episode of PluggedIn.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • City First Enterprises is hiring a director of finance in Washington, DC.
  • Climate Policy Initiative is looking for an analyst focused on climate finance for agri-food systems in Cape Town.
  • Sitka Foundation is seeking an investment analyst in Vancouver.

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

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