We hope your new year and decade are off to a propitious start!
Yes, we know the news channels are overflowing with grim natural and manmade events. However, we feel that makes it all the more important to celebrate the people who are making a positive difference in the world.
In that vein, we are thrilled that Conscious Company Magazine and Kate Spade have recognized our own Julianne Zimmerman as one of the 2020 World Changing Women: “needle-moving, envelope-pushing mission-driven leaders [who are] fiercely inspiring.”
Please find Julianne’s profile (number 12) and all 43 honorees here.
Beyond accolades, meaningful honors
As the announcement says, honorees were selected “based on the impact they were making on the world, their demonstrated leadership in their respective fields, and the scope of their work and ambitions. The 43 women [in the 2020 cohort] are so holistically inspiring to us that we dissolved the categories — entrepreneurs, C-Suite executives, thought leaders, intrapreneurs, and impact investors — and focused on their most important work in social enterprise and beyond.”
What really matters
As delighted as we are by this honor, we are not exactly surprised. We have always been proud of Julianne’s active leadership as a change maker:
- first and foremost, as our comrade-in-arms at Reinventure, breaking persistent counterfactual myths about overlooked founders, and raising the profile of successful founders who are people of color and/or women;
- as a volunteer mentor with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, WPI, and others;
- as a top-rated instructor, teaching Innovative Social Enterprises at Tufts, and lecturing and speaking around the world;
- and variously as a board member, advisor, and trusted ally for a multitude of founder teams and change makers across technologies, sectors, and geographies.
Of course we are thrilled to see Julianne honored because we already know and appreciate her. But even more importantly, we join in heartily applauding all 43 honorees for the work they are all doing to raise our collective standards for business, finance, and society at large.
Don’t just applaud, take action!
In announcing this year’s honors, Conscious Company and Kate Spade state, “Our aim is not only to honor these leaders and their achievements but also to connect you, dear reader, with like-minded women in conscious business … as well as our support systems and representation in business, as a whole.” We strongly urge you to accept that invitation to reach out to these honorees — and to other world changing women who are not among this year’s cohort — to forge new alliances, amplify their endeavors, launch new initiatives, and invest! These women are creating real social, environmental, economic, and financial value in the world. Join them!
You can also meet many of the honorees in person at the World-Changing Women’s Summit, January 29 – 31 at The Lodge at Sonoma. Owing to her mentoring and teaching commitments, Julianne won’t be able to be there this year, but you can always reach out to her directly to send congratulations or better yet to explore how we might join forces. [If you decide to go, feel free to use discount code WCW_2020. But note that the Summit is nearly sold out, so don’t wait!]
And now back to work!
Honors are exciting and offer deeply appreciated, heartening validation that others value our endeavors, but what we really love is the work we do, and there is plenty of it.
Reinventure Capital is building a fund focused exclusively on people of color and women, leading US-based expansion stage (breakeven or so) companies poised to become the economic engines that will positively transform sectors, societies, markets, and lives. We have identified a talent pool that is vast and vigorous, representing a deep roster of high quality investment opportunities, and we know from experience and from readily available evidence that the gating limitation is access to capital. We also have a track record that disciplined investing in our target founder population generates non-concessionary returns to investors.*
If you’re ready to invest in a new generation of companies creating distinctive value for their investors and all of their stakeholders, please contact us. We will be more than happy to welcome you aboard.
And if you are already actively investing in managers or founders who are women and/or people of color, please share, so others can join you!
Image credit: Conscious Company Media and Dawn Greene Photography.
*While there’s no such thing as a guarantee in investing and no one can reliably predict the future, Ed’s prior track record delivering 32%IRR to investors 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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The information contained in this blog does not constitute, and should not be used or construed as, an offer to sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy, securities of any issuer, fund or other investment product in any jurisdiction. No such offer or solicitation may be made prior to the delivery of definitive offering documentation. The information in this blog is not intended and should not be construed as investment, tax, legal, financial or other advice.