SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 – NEW YORK & SINGAPORE – Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), a global organization dedicated to building a more inclusive world through innovative finance and support for high-impact enterprises, has won the 2019 UN Global Climate Action Award for its Women’s Livelihood BondTM Series (WLB Series). The Award, given by the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) in the backdrop of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in New York, recognizes the most innovative, scalable and replicable solutions across the globe that are tackling climate change alongside other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
WASHINGTON – 23 SEPTEMBER— P4G, the Partnering for Green Growth and Global Goals 2030 Initiative, selected The Women’s Livelihood BondTM Series, a partnership-driven project addressing SDG 2: Zero Hunger, as the 2019 P4G State-of-the-Art Partnership of the Year. The winner was announced at the P4G Awards Luncheon, hosted by SAP, on the sidelines of the UN Climate Action Summit today.
The Free Market Must Account for Environmental and Social Impact – Stanford Social Innovation Review
“Many different organizations have pioneered the creation of new accounting metrics that undergird the IMP’s efforts. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, and B Lab’s B Impact Assessment, provide consensusbased sets of criteria that measure the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies and practices of companies big and small…
These advances, in turn, have informed the work of a broader ecosystem of actors. First, there are groups working to expand impact investing, such as the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), the Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), and Toniic. Second, there are efforts to ground social and environmental outcomes in context—whether for regional priorities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP]), for systems to facilitate corporate efforts to address these goals (World Benchmarking Alliance) …” READ MORE
We sat down with Jeffrey A. Sheehan for an interview about his new book There Are No Foreign Lands. Sheehan’s book takes the reader on a global tour to 21 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia to introduce the women and men he believes are the harbingers of a potential “Global Spring,” in which all members of the human race can find common ground to settle their differences and work together productively and peacefully.
Based on the acquaintances he made during a 30-year career as Associate Dean for International Relations at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Sheehan presents profiles of 21 people from 21 countries. Our very own CEO and Founder, Durreen Shahnaz, is one of these 21 people that the book features, with a dedicated chapter talking about the work IIX has done and achieved through the decade of impact investing since it was first coined in 2008.
As part of our 10th Year Anniversary, our Trailblazers in Impact Interview Series celebrates some of the partners we’ve worked with over the years in creating positive social and environmental impact. In this edition, we speak with Founder and CEO of BWiz Capital, Takeshi Kato, who has been an Impact Partners investor since 2016. BWiz Capital has since invested in high-impact enterprises through Impact Partners—namely Krakakoa, a woman-led bean-to-bar chocolate-maker in Indonesia and ERC Eye Care, an enterprise that delivers affordable and inclusive eye care to low-income persons in India.
In 2016, Takeshi Kato started BWiz Capital, an impact investing company based in Tokyo, which targets funding for impact enterprises that are innovating solutions to eradicate poverty and impacting underserved communities and is utilizing his experience in investment to make a case for impact investing in Japan.
Prior to BWiz Capital, Kato was Managing Director at Japan Industrial Partners, a private equity firm specializing in corporate buyouts. He was also CEO and Head of Investment Banking and Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory at Mizuho Securities India in Mumbai, along in corporate finance and asset management businesses in Tokyo and New York.