Impact for Breakfast (IFB) was founded in London, UK, ten years ago by Audrey Selian, Co-Founder of Rianta Capital, a family office based in Zurich that invests in businesses in India. IFB is an informal networking group bringing together professionals working on or interested in impact investing. Attendees work at venture capital funds, foundations, family offices, financial advisor businesses, not-for-profits, and policy organizations. The events showcase a featured speaker who introduces a specific theme or topic and shares their expertise on the issue, then opens the floor to attendees to unpack issues through audience participation. The meetings rely on networking and information-sharing through the power of conversation. These informal meetings are free to attend in order to encourage broad networking.
Confluence Philanthropy CEO and Co-Founder Dana Lanza spoke at the first-ever meeting for the San Francisco chapter of Impact for Breakfast on Tuesday, October 22. The law firm Hanson Bridgett provided the space, coffee, and pastries.
IFB's first SF chapter meeting gathered together many people from the Bay Area and those who were in town for the annual SOCAP Conference. Many attendees were new to IFB and its interactive, short format. This first convening was a generalist meeting titled Impact Investing: A Playbook to Get to Started. Audrey helped to introduce the new chapter and invited other attendees to continue to grow the network and to start their own IFB chapters in their communities.
Sarah Adams, Chief Sustainability Officer of Vert Asset Management, led the initiative to start the IFB San Francisco chapter. Sarah had lived in London for a decade before relocating to the Bay Area to co-found Vert Asset Management, a dedicated sustainable investing asset management business. Sarah liked the informal and informative workshop approach of IFB events and found them to be great networking opportunities. She wanted to replicate that meeting format in the Bay Area to encourage dialogue between newcomers and established practitioners in the impact investing field.
Dana Lanza graciously accepted the invitation to be IFB SF chapter's first speaker. It was a great opportunity to showcase Dana's well-known leadership in the field and to have a frank dialogue with participants about the purpose, opportunities, and limitations of impact investing. Dana spoke to a room of 25 professionals with various levels of knowledge of impact investing. A handful were financial advisors who were wrestling with how to position impact investing to clients, or how to ascertain whether impact investments were appropriate for their clients at all. A few others worked to fundraise for venture capital funds who were interested in the perceived risks of investing or providing debt to new businesses. Others worked with foundations to deploy money to projects. Dana fielded the audience’s questions and provided stories from experience to frame the conversation. Perhaps most importantly, she emphasized approaching those new to the impact industry with patience and compassion while encouraging veterans to consider greater risk-taking. She talked about impact investing in the context of a larger global economic paradigm shift that re-calibrates how we steward capital, taking into consideration issues of environmental stewardship, equity, and diverse leadership.
Jonathan Storper, the meeting host and a corporate lawyer with Hanson Bridgett, who specializes in structuring benefit corporations, offered insight into how professionals such as lawyers and financial advisors must be better educated on risks and financial trade-offs when clients are interested in impact investing projects.
Overall, the first meeting was a good start to a new informal networking group! IFB SF chapter is working on topics for its next meetings in February 2020 and May 2020. IFB SF welcomes suggestions for topics and speakers; please contact Sarah Adams with ideas. Join IFB SF and invite others.
-Sarah Adams, Chief Sustainability Officer of Vert Asset Management
Sarah leads the organization on engagement: as a business, in financial services advocacy, and dialogue with the companies in our investment products.
