As we prepare to savor the salty-sweet joys of Labor Day Weekend and the traditional end of summer, I have Karen Peris’ voice from The Innocence Mission in my head:
Aren’t you bursting with butterflies on the fourth of September?
Like you’ll have to get on the bus in your tartan dress, with your lunch box
I confess I don’t miss getting on the school bus, but it is still exciting to enter the autumn season with the prospect of lots to learn. And since so many of you responded enthusiastically to our Book Club post leading into last summer, it seems fitting to celebrate this summer’s end by sharing some of the ideas that we are eager to explore further over the season ahead.
I’m partial to reading actual physical books, so let’s start there.
Books
As you know from previous posts, I preferentially gravitate to fiction. But lately the nonfiction representation in my reading stack has been especially rich. So here are just a few choice picks from both categories:
| Nonfiction
How to Be An Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi We Speak for Ourselves, D. Watkins Creating True Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh Type R, Ama Marson and Stephanie Marston Revive Us Again, Rev. Drs. Barber, Theoharis, and Lowery |
Fiction
The Broken Earth, N.K. Jemisin Binti, Nnedi Okorafor Imperial Radch (Ancillary) trilogy, Ann Leckie Bloodchild, and everything else ever written by Octavia Butler Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart, Steven Erikson |
The common thread through all of these titles is a commitment to finding a path forward through seemingly intractable, hopeless, and/or repugnant conditions. All find that those barriers are ultimately — albeit not easily — pregnable. Most expressly or indirectly map that path forward by way of dignity, courage, and rejecting the false construct of “otherness.”
Web-based resources
We haven’t only been reading books. Over the summer we’ve accumulated a prodigious list of bookmarks to thoughtful and thought-provoking content. Here’s a quick baker’s dozen that bring those big ideas down to ground level:
Race influences professional investors’ financial judgments. Sarah Lyons-Padilla, Hazel Rose Markus, Ashby Monk, Sid Radhakrishna, Radhika Shah, Norris A. “Daryn” Dodson IV, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt / PNAS
Don’t believe the Business Roundtable has changed until its CEOs’ actions match their words. Jay Coen Gilbert, Andrew Kassoy, and Bart Houlahan / Fast Company
Net income: Serena Williams’ path from tennis star to VC tycoon. Kevin Dowd / Pitchbook
Is Entrepreneurship Becoming The Purview Of Upper-Class Men? Elizabeth MacBride / Forbes
Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World? Brian Kenny, Rebecca Henderson, and George Serafeim / HBR Presents (listen or read)
Social Innovation Alone Can’t Solve Racial Inequity. Shawn Ginwright & Sai Seigel / SSIR
From Black Panther to Tade Thompson: why Afrofuturism is taking over sci-fi. Adam Roberts / The Guardian
The Purpose of Money. Georges Van Hoegaerden
The Problems With Risk Assessment Tools. Chelsea Barabas, Karthik Dinakar and Colin Doyle / The New York Times
‘Bias deep inside the code’: the problem with AI ‘ethics’ in Silicon Valley. Sam Levin / The Guardian
Resisting Reduction. Joi Ito / MIT Press [see also his apology regarding Jeffrey Epstein]
Common Hurdles to Adopting Impact Investing. Bonnie Foley-Wong
Impact Investing Needs To Rise To The Urgent Challenge Of Reducing Racial Inequalities. Bonnie Chiu / Forbes
Join the conversation!
Reading and learning are pleasurable as ends unto themselves, but both are that much more rewarding when they lead us into expiorations that further expand our perspectives and catalyze informed action.
As you read the above publications, try to observe your own reactions as you go: do you feel surprised, uncomfortable, curious, impatient, affirmed, angry, energized, alarmed… ? What do those emotional reactions illuminate for you?
What questions, observations, or insights do these and other publications (and your emotional reactions to them) inspire you to offer in response? Where do they quicken your curiosity to learn more? Where do you feel impelled to push back? Whom do they stir you to engage in conversation? How might they stimulate new ways of thinking and acting in your organization, community, or family?
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou
For our part, Reinventure Capital is working to put our learnings into action by investing in companies with demonstrated potential to create significant new wealth and opportunity among those the venture boom has largely ignored.
Specifically, we are focused on US-based expansion stage (breakeven or so) companies led by people of color and/or women, poised to become the economic engines that will transform sectors, societies, markets, and lives — and generate non-concessionary returns to investors.*
We have extensive experience to draw on, pantheons of thought leaders and practitioners to learn from, huge and robust deal flow, and best of all a growing community of allies and collaborators. Together with many others who are also investing for both social impact and financial return, we are cultivating a vibrant social impact investing ecosystem comprising an ever-expanding set of strategies and approaches to investing for good.
In this brilliantly heterogeneous community there’s always more to learn and discuss and do, and new LPs and new participants are always welcome. That includes you — come join in! If you are contemplating your first social impact investment, or maybe even your first ever investment in a first fund, there are colleagues here to give you encouragement or a leg up. The key realization we all share is that best practices are only “best” so long as they are ever evolving: the more we learn, the more we should expect from ourselves and each other, and the better our practices should become.
If you’re looking for ways to raise your social impact expectations and level up your investing practices, please contact us!
And if you are already investing with a social impact strategy, please share, so others can learn from you, too!
Happy new school year!
Photo credit: Jyn Meyer / FreeImages
*While there’s no such thing as a guarantee in investing and no one can reliably predict the future, Ed’s prior track record provides direct evidence that it is indeed possible to consistently invest for both financial returns and social value creation. If you are an accredited investor and would like to learn more about investments that can advance social, racial, and gender equity by supporting high-value companies led by women and/or people of color, please contact us to start that conversation.
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