Articles by James Militzer
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Interviews
Thursday
June 15
2017Financial Inclusion Takes the Next Step: An Interview with MetLife Foundation President Dennis White
As NextBillion launches our new Financial Health site under the sponsorship of MetLife Foundation, we touched base with its president and CEO, Dennis White. In this wide-ranging interview, White discusses the evolution of the financial inclusion movement, and the work the foundation is doing to advance it – including its grant-making and investing approach, its ongoing challenges, and what it has learned from both success and failure, among other issues.
- Categories
- Finance
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Wednesday
April 26
2017Impact Investing Contemplates the Path Ahead: A Q&A with Big Path Capital’s Co-Founders
With Big Path Capital's Impact Capitalism Summit happening this week (right now, in fact), we caught up with Big Path co-founders Michael Whelchel and Shawn Lesser to discuss the event and impact investing's evolution. They shared their insights in this email interview.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact investing
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Monday
April 24
2017Dear Diary: New Financial Diaries Research Explains Why Many Americans are So Angry
Would you rather have more money or a more stable financial life? A striking 92% of Americans in a recent survey chose stability - a sign of the deep undercurrent of financial insecurity running through the world's richest country. A new book called "The Financial Diaries, How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty" explores this insecurity in remarkable detail. Its co-author, Rachel Schneider of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, discusses the research and its far-reaching implications in NextBillion's latest podcast.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Interviews
Wednesday
April 19
2017‘Wall Street Meets Impact’: SOCAP’s Owners – New and Old – Discuss its Move Toward the Mainstream
Last month, SOCAP made headlines with a bold announcement: The network of social impact-focused investors and entrepreneurs is moving to new ownership to "begin expanding its brand reach to larger, more mainstream audiences." As its first initiative, this new-look SOCAP is launching the Good Capital Project, which aims to "drive greater collaboration and accelerate capital flows into purpose driven investments." We discussed these developments with SOCAP's co-founder, Kevin Jones, and John Morris of V2V Associates, who helped pull the new ownership deal together.
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- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Monday
April 17
2017Embrace Your Liberalism, Impact Investing: A Q&A with a ‘Biblically Responsible Investor’
Inspire Investing, a leader in the “Biblically Responsible Investing” movement, recently launched two funds targeted at conservative Christians. The funds, which screen out companies that participate in abortion, gambling, alcohol, pornography or “the LGBT lifestyle,” attracted $42 million in assets in just the first two weeks, demonstrating a clear appetite for alternatives to the “politically liberal agenda" of most SRI funds, Inspire founder Robert Netzly says in this podcast. Should traditional SRI just accept this growing politicization and embrace its liberal roots?
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing
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Friday
April 14
2017Ford Foundation Sends Message to Those Still on Impact Investing Fence: A Q&A with Darren Walker
Earlier this month, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker announced the 81-year-old organization is putting "our money where our mouth is" and investing $1 billion over the next 10 years in affordable housing and financial services for people in developing countries. In this email Q&A, Walker talks about why the foundation made the shift and the signals he hopes it sends.
- Categories
- Investing
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Interviews
Thursday
March 30
2017Why Fossil Fuel Companies Must Evolve or Die: An Interview with Carbon Tracker Founder Mark Campanale
To keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius and (hopefully) avoid the harshest consequences of climate change, up to three-quarters of known fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground. That's the thesis of the Carbon Tracker Initiative and its founder, Mark Campanale. If that sounds like a heavy lift for an oil-dependent world, he raises a compelling point: With collapsing margins and emerging competition from renewables, the fossil fuel industry has no choice but to evolve. Campanale elaborates on these views in this video interview.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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Interviews
Wednesday
March 29
2017Three Reasons Impact Investors Aren’t Sweating Trump’s Climate Policies: An Interview with Nancy Pfund
This week, President Trump signed what's been called a "sweeping demolition of Obama-era policies on coal mining, fracking, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change." So why isn't Nancy Pfund, founder and managing partner of DBL Partners, worried? We discuss politics and the environment with the impact investing pioneer in this video interview.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology