Jacqueline Novogratz: Patient capital, impact businesses and finding your purpose

Good Future

Jacqueline Novogratz is leading a moral revolution. She left a successful career in banking in New York when she was 25 to head to Rwanda with hopes of launching a microfinance fund. It didn’t go quite as planned, but she persevered. Along the way she worked for the World Bank and for Unicef, she founded leadership programs at the Rockefeller Foundation, and then in 2001 she founded Acumen. A not for profit that invests patient capital in businesses that provide critical goods and services to people living in poverty. Acumen has invested $128 million of patient capital to build more than 130 social enterprises across Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States. These companies have leveraged an additional $611 million of invested funds, and brought basic services like affordable education, health care, clean water, energy and sanitation to more than 308 million people. Now that’s impact. Jacqueline really is a force of nature, she has a heart of gold, but she also has a steely focus on how to get a deal across the line. And I feel I’ve found a kindred spirit in Jacqueline, we’re both translators, straddling the worlds of finance and social development, trying our best to tell the stories of hope in a world that’s looking more chaotic by the day. I really hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. There’s so many really valuable insights here, especially towards the end when Jacqueline offers advice on how we can all shift our careers to have more purpose. All the show notes are at www.johntreadgold.com Enjoy!