How Jacqueline Novogratz invests for global change
Aug 18, 2026 · 53 min · 9 segments
- Speakers
Jacqueline NovogratzGuest
Michael IgoeHost
Aug 18, 2026 · 53 min · 9 segments
Jacqueline NovogratzGuestMichael IgoeHost
You, as you've sort of laid out here, have sort of witnessed the full sweep of impact investing from something that was kind of fringe and experimental to, as you said, something that's really much more at the center of how development is conceived and even big institutional donors are sort of thinking about how to advance development goals.
A couple of months ago, you wrote in a public letter that impact investing today sits at a crossroads and needs a reckoning.
I saw the same phenomenon happen with microfinance, where You get a couple of people with good ideas, and they are at the fringe, as you said.
And then it starts to really work, and other people see it, and they take parts of what those organizations did.
And some of them move it into a mindset that is really too much about the money.
And we saw this in microfinance that started in 76, let's say, with Muhammad Yunus and Abed from Brock.
By 2008, during the financial crisis, you were seeing not only significant microfinance institutions, but I was literally being pitched by major European investment banks to sit on their advisories because they're Fund structures to invest in microfinance were the most profitable funds they had.
And I was like, could you just take a beat and realize that you were asking me to sit on the advisory for a fund that's making more money than any of your other funds based on lending to the poorest women in the world? What does that mean to you? What it meant was the focus was too much on the money and not on the people that were being served.
The system became very dysfunctional and you saw a reckoning in the form of a lot of financial brokenness in 2008 where a number of the banks saw that they were over leveraged and not protecting consumers and the house of cards fell and had to be rebuilt.
In impact investing, it's not a pure corollary, but you see similar ideas where I am seeing more and more of an insistence, one, that there are no trade-offs between impact and returns, and two, almost that you're a little bit naive in If you are investing for change first, that the only way you should have change is to focus to maximize your returns and then get change on the side.
It's an important conversation, but it deserves a reckoning because there is so much capital in the world right now.
And we have a situation where almost 800 million people, mostly in Africa, have no access to electricity.
We have the tools, we have the skills, we have everything that we need to solve that.
But the capital that is available, and there's a lot of capital, is too expensive.
And as a result, We see a lot of talk and a lot of hand-wringing when we could be structuring that capital under the rubric of impact investing and really creating impact.
You, as you've sort of laid out here, have sort of witnessed the full sweep of impact investing from something that was kind of fringe and experimental to, as you said, something that's really much more at the center of how development is conceived and even big institutional donors are sort of thinking about how to advance development goals.
A couple of months ago, you wrote in a public letter that impact investing today sits at a crossroads and needs a reckoning.
I saw the same phenomenon happen with microfinance, where You get a couple of people with good ideas, and they are at the fringe, as you said.
And then it starts to really work, and other people see it, and they take parts of what those organizations did.
And some of them move it into a mindset that is really too much about the money.
And we saw this in microfinance that started in 76, let's say, with Muhammad Yunus and Abed from Brock.
By 2008, during the financial crisis, you were seeing not only significant microfinance institutions, but I was literally being pitched by major European investment banks to sit on their advisories because they're Fund structures to invest in microfinance were the most profitable funds they had.
And I was like, could you just take a beat and realize that you were asking me to sit on the advisory for a fund that's making more money than any of your other funds based on lending to the poorest women in the world? What does that mean to you? What it meant was the focus was too much on the money and not on the people that were being served.
The system became very dysfunctional and you saw a reckoning in the form of a lot of financial brokenness in 2008 where a number of the banks saw that they were over leveraged and not protecting consumers and the house of cards fell and had to be rebuilt.
In impact investing, it's not a pure corollary, but you see similar ideas where I am seeing more and more of an insistence, one, that there are no trade-offs between impact and returns, and two, almost that you're a little bit naive in If you are investing for change first, that the only way you should have change is to focus to maximize your returns and then get change on the side.
It's an important conversation, but it deserves a reckoning because there is so much capital in the world right now.
And we have a situation where almost 800 million people, mostly in Africa, have no access to electricity.
We have the tools, we have the skills, we have everything that we need to solve that.
But the capital that is available, and there's a lot of capital, is too expensive.
And as a result, We see a lot of talk and a lot of hand-wringing when we could be structuring that capital under the rubric of impact investing and really creating impact.
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