Transcript
Speaker: Hi, welcome to the podcast Women Changing Finance, where you will discover amazing women from all around the world who are making finance become a force for good.
Speaker: Welcome to the podcast, Women Changing Finance. I'm Christina Tora, and I'm welcoming today Triton Palangian, the CEO and co-founder of Social Finance, a US-based nonprofit implementing new funding models to tackle systemic challenges.
Speaker: Since 2011, Social Finance has mobilized over 500 million toward improving outcomes in workforce development, health, housing, and economic mobility. I have known Tracy for some time and she's a great inspiration.
Speaker: She's a really important trailblazer and a powerhouse who has done so much to shift how capital can be used to create significant impact and improvements in the lives of thousands of people across the US. So welcome, Tracy. Thank you for being here.
Speaker: Great to be with you, Christina. Thank you. So as we begin, i would like to start with the basics. So listeners might not be familiar with your work.
Speaker: And I would love for you to explain the basic concepts of outcome-based finance and impact social impact bonds, just so that they can get familiar with the work. And then we'll go into hearing more about specifically social finance and what you do there.
Speaker: Absolutely. Well, it's great to be with you, Christina, and you know the mission of social finance well, not least the kind of global movement that our dear friend Sir Ronald Cohen has spawned for now 20 years.
Speaker: So social finance in the United States was formed in 2011.
Speaker: Sir Ronald, David Blood and I kind of got it going now over 15 years ago with the mission of mobilizing more capital to drive measurable outcomes for our communities.
Speaker: as our name suggests, social finance, how do you use the mechanisms of finance? How do you use the mechanisms of markets to drive social change? The United States entity of social finance actually is also a registered investment advisor.
Speaker: And this dual corporate form is actually quite unique. So the five o one c three nonprofit is actually the parent company. And underneath it is a wholly owned subsidiary, which is an ah RIA, a registered investment advisor, regulated by the SEC in the United States.
Speaker: And that corporate form actually really speaks to how we approach impact investing, because it's now gotten to be a very large tent, Everything that we do at social finance is mission first, impact first, not least reflected by that corporate form.
Speaker: You talked about outcomes-based financing. You even talked about social impact bonds briefly. Christina, Our work has evolved vastly beyond outcomes-based financing and social impact bonds.
Speaker: While the first, I would say, five to 10 years of our work in the U.S. was very much building the pay-for-success ecosystem from the ground up, Our work now has really moved beyond outcomes-based financing.
Speaker: Our work is really about responding to the context of each of our individual markets and and social finance U.S. works on U.S. issues, works within the U.S. ecosystem.
Speaker: And we find ourselves really leaning into ah new cross-sector partnerships, thinking about what we called ah the third wallet in reimagining philanthropy, really leaning um kind of our toolkit into expanding economic opportunity writ large in the United States. And hopefully we'll get into some of these examples.
Speaker: No, that's super helpful. Thank you, but Tracy. So perhaps let's look at the evolution. But I also want to ask you so many questions about some of the most recent work that you've done about workforce development, because that's a topic that is so much on everybody's mind right now.
Speaker: What is the future of work? How do we prepare for that? So perhaps you can reflect a little bit on the evolution and how you got to be here and also the very important work that you're doing on those issues. And I know you have some very exciting partnership that you just announced.
Speaker: Yes, it is very exciting. So taking a step back, What do the 125 people in social finance US do across the country, right?
Speaker: A lot of what we do is focused on thinking about how do you expand economic opportunity? But economic opportunity isn't just about workforce development, right? Like we really see it across three pillars.
Speaker: First, you got to stabilize people's lives. You got to address issues around food security, around housing, around even making sure that people have their basic needs fulfilled.
Speaker: Now we do this in a way that's very much focused about aligning the right actors, not least government philanthropy and the private sector in new ways to address those basic needs to stabilize people's lives.
Speaker: Then we move into the second pillar, which is really about income generation. How do we equip people with the skills to thrive in today's economy? to land better jobs, to go into the middle class.
Speaker: So that pillar is what you mentioned about our workforce development portfolio. And we should really double click into that portfolio. And then the third pillar, which is now that you've stabilized your life, now that you have acquired the skills to land better paying jobs, quality jobs?
Speaker: How do you begin to build wealth? So some of the strategies around home ownership, around employee ownership is also where we are very active in. You asked about workforce development. So it's really the second pillar.
Speaker: We now have a pretty significant portfolio, currently around $325 million. across 12 different funds, really focusing on equipping low-income people, get the skills, go on those career pathways to land better jobs.
Speaker: I can double-click on a couple of those funds. One is a partnership that we embarked with Google. Now, four years ago, like right when we were emerging from the pandemic,
Speaker: Thinking about how do you, in a very large scale, equip low-income students with the skills to thrive in the 21st century economy? And we were very focused on how do you leverage the Google Career Certificates Fund to do that?
Speaker: Now, Google Career Certificates are almost free, right? Like you can sign up on Coursera and get on, you know, the UX Design course or the IT t Support course.
Speaker: But we know well, Christina, that low-income students face different barriers beyond just the ability to access a quality training program.
Speaker: So we're really thinking about the root causes that prevent people from success. And so we partnered with a range of nonprofit service providers to really think about the range of supports that low-income students need, everything from addressing basic life, ah living expenses, if you will,
Speaker: all the way to making sure that barriers are broken so that they can actually enter these journeys and persist in those journeys. So we're very pleased to report that now after several years, we're on our way to achieving over a billion dollars in wage gains across 20,000 low-income individuals across all 50 states in the in the United States.
Speaker: Some of the other funds are more focused on so sectoral skills, if you will. We have a national nursing fund focused on, ah one, addressing the big nursing shortage in the country, but also equipping people with the opportunity to actually launch on these extraordinary careers in healthcare. care These are excellent jobs. A starting salary for someone with a bachelor's degree in nursing is well over $90,000 in the United States, and you almost will never be out of a job, if you will, if you become a registered nurse.
Speaker: So we have a national partnership with an extraordinary non-profit higher ed institution called Western Governors University, where we'll be providing a zero interest outcomes based loan, the same mechanism in the Google Career Certificates Fund, but in this case, applied to the registered nursing degree, where we'll be ah supporting thousands of low-income individuals to get their BSN, their bachelor's degree in nursing science, to help them land jobs around the country. We have a massive nursing shortage in the United States.
Speaker: Our demographics have created this nursing shortage. On the supply side, you know our immigration policy, ah fewer people wanting to go into nursing have really created this shortage. Meanwhile, the aging of America has really increase the demand for these roles.
Speaker: So we're really excited about that one as well. Another fund is focused on climate careers. How do we use these outcomes-based financing mechanisms? Again, a zero interest outcomes-based loan to help people become EV technicians, electricians, HVAC technicians, again, really well-paying jobs, quality jobs that in this case do not even require a four-year bachelor's degree.
Speaker: As you can pick up, a lot of these funds leverage this zero-interest outcomes-based loan, and ah we find it to be very powerful. So how does it work? um Students enter into a zero-interest rate arrangement, meaning that they enter into this loan, no interest, no fees.
Speaker: If they're successful and only if they're successful, that's the outcome space part. They would only need to repay the principal. So we don't want to saddle people with debt if they're not successful and only the successful students defined as minimum income threshold, then they repay just the principal.
Speaker: And because of the way we have aggregated different kinds of capital, typically from philanthropy co-mingled with taxpayer funds, so government money mixed with philanthropy, the money simply recycles.
Speaker: So if you look at our website, you'll hear that these are called pay it forward programs. And when a student repays the principal, they're simply enabling another student to go on this journey.
Speaker: So it's a revolving loan fund, if you will, to enable people to participate paid in these programs over and over again. So in a way, it's really stretching the impact of each public dollar and each philanthropic dollar.
Speaker: I love those examples. Tracy, can you explain the how for if other countries or other people in other countries wanted to do the same? Because obviously the issues that you're addressing are very talk to other economies.
Speaker: Japan has a very aging population as well. For example, many countries have issues about kind of creating the right kind of skills that the markets need.
Speaker: So, Just a little bit about the technicalities of how you went about creating those funds. Yeah. So in the United States, and and every country is going to have a different funding context, but in the United States, our context is that if you go on a workforce program, you can access some federal dollars, but often what people do is that they typically go into private loans to go on their upscaling journey. And if it's within a degree ah mechanism, so a traditional kind of bachelor's degree, typically after people max out kind of what we call Pell Grants, which are just straight up scholarship dollars for low-income students,
Speaker: People go into the federal student loan market to borrow the gap in order to finish that journey. So whether you are in a federal student loan or in a private loan, which is now in the workforce context, not a higher ed context, you're typically taking on a traditional loan.
Speaker: Now, I don't know about other countries, but if you just look at the student loan numbers, it's an extraordinary kind of burden on a lot of people is well north of $1.5 trillion dollars that applied to millions and millions of Americans.
Speaker: And often people find that they'll take on this loan and either finish the degree, but not really get the bang for the buck, if you will. But even worse, some of these people take on the loan and never even get the degree because they never finish.
Speaker: So what our orientation as a nonprofit showing up in the education and workforce space is to think about the different actors and realign the incentives so that the burden is not falling on the individual who, by the way, is least equipped to take on that burden in the first place.
Speaker: So if you think about the different actors in the ecosystem, you have the government, which is in the business of funding people, typically based on outputs and not on outcomes.
Speaker: You have the educational and workforce training providers, and they are simply providing a service, but they are getting compensated either by government or by the individuals through collecting tuition payments, regardless of whether they achieve outcomes for individuals.
Speaker: And unfortunately, the individual here is actually bearing all the risk because they are going into the loan market to make up the difference. And they have to repay that loan regardless of the outcome of the educational journey.
Speaker: So by putting in a zero interest outcome space loan, reconfiguring the risks of the different parties, right? Like, so we're completely interrogating the following questions.
Speaker: Who benefits, who takes on the risks, and who repays so that we can more fairly ah reapportion the risks so that the individual can be at the center of a lot of these arrangements.
Speaker: Yes, thank you. And you're also working with kind of a i mean Google and then now very major AI provider. Can you tell us about that partnership and how you've thought with them about what the future looks like and what is needed for the future?
Speaker: How can we address the needs in terms of skills and the gap of skills for a future that is led by ai I don't think anyone knows what the future is going to look like.
Speaker: You can hear the pundits and the economists debate, the future shape of the labor market, the future shape of work. But I don't think um any of us really know. Christina, you're mentioning...
Speaker: ah This new partnership, and I know we're sitting in June of 2026, and we just had launched a very exciting partnership with Anthropic and CodePath, an initiative called CLOTCORE, C-O-R-P-S, which is a very exciting a fellowship program that enables early career professionals acquire AI skills, but then apply those AI skills across the country in nonprofit institutions.
Speaker: What is the impact thesis? The impact thesis is that every time there is a technological innovation, the nonprofit sector and arguably the public sector, they lag in the adoption of frontier technology and apply it in their organizations to achieve their missions, right? To do their work more effectively to serve more people, to serve more people better.
Speaker: So the thesis behind Claude Core is to have a thousand fellows in this first year gain AI skills trained by our partner CodePath, which is a nonprofit, and then embedding these 1,000 fellows across several hundred nonprofit organizations around the country paid for by Anthropics. So as a host organization,
Speaker: If you are lucky enough to be one of the host organizations as a nonprofit, you receive this Claude Fellow for free. And this fellow will be trained on the job with support from Anthropics, support from CodePath to apply ai skills to help that host organization deliver on their mission more effectively.
Speaker: That is so brilliant. So many nonprofit organizations would love to have those cloud core people, and the fellows. How will you select the organizations and how will you select the the fellows?
Speaker: We're getting a lot of positive response. The deadline is July 17th. I know by this time that you air this podcast, we'll know how many people actually got selected in the first cohort and how many are embarking on this journey, these host organizations. So We are going to be selecting people who are passionate.
Speaker: There are some eligibility requirements, which you'll see in where the web links, but we're very encouraged by the early momentum and the massive interest.
Speaker: That's fantastic. I now perhaps want to move on to your other pillars, which are also so fundamental, and perhaps really kind of zoom into as well, the one about building wealth.
Speaker: So this is also an increasingly important topic in a world where inequality is rising. How do you do that effectively? with your work, your programs, who are your partners?
Speaker: You mentioned home ownership and you mentioned employee ownership. I think both are really important but have different mechanisms. So if you can explain for the audience how how you work on both of those. Absolutely.
Speaker: As you heard from the workforce and education portfolio, we're really about what social finance does. We're really about taking in different forms of capital, private capital, taxpayer money, you know, public capital and philanthropic capital and structuring this capital in new ways to drive measurable change.
Speaker: And in the wealth building pillar, we're really thinking about accessing philanthropic capital and structuring it in a way, what we call impact first investment capital.
Speaker: Christina, you know well how the impact investing industry has really evolved in the last almost 20 years since the Rockefeller Foundation coined the term impact investing around 2007, 2008 in Bellagio.
Speaker: And what social finance has been doing and for the last 15 years is really focusing on ah what we call the impact first sleeve of the impact investing spectrum of capital.
Speaker: Our thesis is that the current philanthropic pool is really thinking about just two wallets. The first wallet is the wallet that you invest from.
Speaker: This is the wallet that you want to maximize alpha. You want to maximize your risk adjusted financial returns to get market rate returns so that you can grow the pool of philanthropic assets.
Speaker: whereby you would make change in the world through the second wallet, which is giving it away, making grants. Negative 100%, if you will, in financial terms.
Speaker: And what we're really focused on is creating that third wallet, that wallet that sits between market rate investing and grant making and powering solutions that The traditional markets will never touch because the risks are too high. The time horizon is too long. It just doesn't fit a conventional investment profile.
Speaker: Yet, if you power these solutions with the third wallet, with impact first capital, it's actually a much more sustainable and scalable way to make change because the money comes back and then you can compound your impact over and over again.
Speaker: And we've now made a range of impact first investments through our impact first fund. And I'll just give you a couple of examples what I mean by building wealth.
Speaker: The first one is focused on home ownership. We've partnered with an extraordinary entrepreneur John Green and his team at Black Star, which is a distressed debt fund, focus on attacking a really pernicious problem in the United States called contracts for deeds.
Speaker: Contracts for deeds are a massive business in the United States. It's $200 billion dollar market, whereby it's a form of financing for low-income people to purchase their homes.
Speaker: These are not traditional mortgages. A contract for deed almost have all the downsides of a mortgage and none of the upside. So you have to pay taxes on your property. You have to make monthly interest payments often at a very high rate.
Speaker: You have to keep up with your home in terms of maintenance. But this is the catch. You never hold title. You never hold the deed to your home until the very last payment after 30 years.
Speaker: And when someone misses a payment or two or three, the lender actually has the right to foreclose on the person's home, evict the person, they flip the property, which is now appreciated. And that's how the seller, the lender, if you will, makes money as a form of kind of financing that's just very unfriendly to borrowers.
Speaker: So John Green and the team at Black Star has built this approach whereby they're buying large swaths, large packages of contracts for deeds, working with these borrowers to season their loans and converting them into traditional mortgages.
Speaker: And to date, and we're a limited partner in that fund. Today, we've seen hundreds of families like actually gaining partial wealth. So every time you convert it into a traditional mortgage, on average, these families are getting $70,000 of partial home for equity transferred to their name and also seeing monthly payments come down.
Speaker: So that's one approach around home ownership that's very specific to the United States market. But if you think about the scale of this challenge, $200 billion, dollars you simply cannot grant make your way out of this problem, right? It's just too large for traditional kind of grant making strategies to tackle.
Speaker: Yet, we hope that John can really tap into traditional capital markets flow to fund this strategy. But it is risky, right? So this third wallet approach, this impact first investing approach is perfect to power a strategy like the team at Blackstar is pursuing.
Speaker: Another um strategy that we have funded is ah the team at APIS and Heritage. They're trying to tackle employee ownership in a very compelling way.
Speaker: So their impact thesis is around, they call it the silver tsunami. So a lot of small businesses in the United States are owned by what we call baby boomers, right? People who are now reaching retirement age. These are businesses with maybe EBITDA of $2 million, $3 million. dollars Think about your neighborhood construction company or your landscaping company or a string of laundromats, if you will, ah dry cleaners. And these owners of these small businesses actually want to transfer ownership to the next generation.
Speaker: These are the workers who have powered their business in the last 10 years, 20 years, but making just simply a wage. And the team at Apis and Heritage has created this mechanism. It's almost like a form of ESOP, like an employee stock ownership program, but a different kind in this case, where they can help the retiring owner of the business, transfer the business in a very methodical and sustainable way to the next generation. So imagine the person who has powered a landscaping company for the last 10 years mowing lawns, now owning fractional ownership of the landscaping business. Imagine just how empowering that is
Speaker: for the workers. So we're just really encouraged by these new ways of making change in the world. And we're seeing so many different entrepreneurial solutions being built by amazing social entrepreneurs, yet they need a different kind of capital.
Speaker: They can attract the traditional capital markets competing with private equity firms, yet the problems that they're trying to tackle are far bigger than what traditional grant makers can do.
Speaker: So we're really encouraged by this space in between this third wallet approach. That's brilliant. Thank you so much, Tracy. I want to kind of celebrate with you the social finance 15th anniversary.
Speaker: You have really shaped the market. I would love for you to reflect on what are the most important learnings that you think people should know, things that have surprised you, things that haven't worked, or kind of looking at where the world is today. What are the things that people should know and adopt from your experience?
Speaker: This work is hard, as you know well, right? Making change is hard. Creating a financial repayment mechanism is hard, whether you're, quote unquote, calling it profits or not.
Speaker: And combining it together is even harder. And we're not just like creating new investment strategies. We're like really about, this work is really about changing mindsets, right? When I mentioned the third wallet, it's really,
Speaker: reimagining how the over $2 trillion dollars of philanthropic assets that are sitting in the United States, these are assets that's that's been tax privilege, right? When people set up a private foundation, when people fund a donor advised fund, they've already taken the tax deduction. They've enjoyed that tax privilege.
Speaker: And that money needs to be working harder for impact and really live up to the purpose of that capital. So we're really about changing mindsets. And the way i look at it is whether you call it failure, whether you call it lessons, every single time we try something new, we're getting so much information. And that feedback loop is informing how we refine our tools, our programs ah better.
Speaker: I hope people are not judging like whether something works or doesn't work simply by whether the financial return comes back. Because if you think about it, what is the default? The default in traditional government programs and traditional philanthropy is actually negative 100%. Here, if you can get 50 cents on the dollar back, if you can get your principal back, like we should celebrate that revolving, regenerative nature of compounding impact.
Speaker: But more important almost than the financial return is actually the information value that you can get from these financings, right? When something is only coming back at 50 cents and instead of the 80 cents that you underwrote that project, you ask yourself some important questions. What happened there?
Speaker: What assumptions did we get wrong? How did we kind of map out the journey? of the student differently. And so it's really the information feedback loop that we're always refining that makes these mechanisms incredibly powerful.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. The data collected is almost as valuable as as the rest, right? Because then you can design different vehicles, new funds based on that information.
Speaker: I would like to ask you, well, if you had a magic wand or something like that, And if there was one action or one change that the government could do today to improve how things will be done or accelerate the delivery of impact for people in the future, what would that be?
Speaker: Oh, if I had a magic wand, I would want to wave it at so many things, Christina. But one thing, the government does regulate philanthropic capital, right?
Speaker: Charitable assets. And there's a rule for private foundations that you should give away 5% of your assets. Imagine if the government really lifted the idea impact-first investing.
Speaker: In the foundation world, it's called a PRI, program-related investment, and really lifted this way of making change in the world. What if people said of your corpus, you should devote 10% to this way of making change.
Speaker: If you can intermediate more capital into the space, you'll spawn another generation of entrepreneurs, just like Blackstar, just like at Apis and Heritage, coming up with all kinds of creative, innovative solutions to solve the very gnarly challenges that we all face.
Speaker: That is my magic wand, is to lift up this way of making change that sits between investing and grant making. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that's very concrete as well.
Speaker: It's a very specific policy change that can really reallocate a lot of capital for this work. This podcast is also an opportunity to reflect on achievements. So I'd love for you to reflect on what do you consider as your biggest achievement or achievements, plural.
Speaker: What makes you proud? Well, what makes me most proud is the team that we have built. We are an organization, 125 people across five U.S. offices in the United States.
Speaker: These are people who come to work every day, excited about how capital can really be tapped and then listed to improve lives and This team is something I'm deeply, deeply proud of.
Speaker: What does this team do? Over the last 15 years, we've mobilized almost $600 million toward these improved outcomes that you mentioned, Christina, at the top of the hour.
Speaker: These are ideas and mechanisms around stabilizing people's lives, moving people into better careers, having people start businesses, owning their first home, et cetera, et cetera, building a more secure future.
Speaker: And these are all um great. But if you think about $500, $600 million, dollars it's a drop in the ocean compared to the need out there. So when you say celebrate accomplishments, while that is obviously something to be proud of, we are so in the first inning of this journey of really making transformative change for the many, many people who really need help, especially in the current environment.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe as an inspiration for perhaps people who are not yet on this journey, I'd love for you to to share a bit more about your own journey and your career.
Speaker: You started in traditional finance and investing and I would love to hear, you know, what was this kind of milestone or what kind of convinced you that finance can be used for good and can be used for solving social challenges? Was there any specific defining moment?
Speaker: And how can others get on that journey as well? Well, the defining moment was meeting Ronald Cohen. And you know what impact this amazing man can have.
Speaker: All of us, Christina, you know, Ronnie, it really has been such a gift to have been on this journey over the last 15 years. At this point in my career, I've now spent half of it in the private sector. So the first 15 years of my career was in the private sector in investing and consulting.
Speaker: And now in the last 15 years in this new world of porting that experience into social good, And at the end of the day, I guess my both my professional life and my personal life has been about bridging worlds.
Speaker: I didn't grow up in in the States. I grew up in Hong Kong. My whole family still lives in Asia. And so if you think about that, kind of bigger professional and personal journey.
Speaker: It's really been about bridging worlds, bridging language, bridging culture, bridging sectors, bridging disciplines. And I really think that today's problems really need that multi- viewpoint, multi-sectoral, multidisciplinary approach to really address and think through a problem um fully.
Speaker: It's been a great privilege. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to walk into the office every day, maybe not every day, now that post-COVID world, if you will, but to go to work every day and feel like your work actually matters.
Speaker: Yes, such a driver, right? Thank you for this metaphor of the bridge, which is ah beautiful one to really show what we need today. We haven't talked about the Social Finance Institute.
Speaker: Was that a little bit the the initiation of why you created that institute? I'm very, very proud of the Social Finance Institute. And it goes to my earlier point. like We've worked so hard for 15 years and we've mobilized $600 million dollars into the world.
Speaker: It's not really what one organization can do is how we can mainstream these ideas so that it becomes a regular diet for everyone, whether you're in the social sector or the private sector or sitting in government.
Speaker: How do you mainstream these approaches? How do you make the idea of focusing on outcomes the kind of North Star for for folks? So the Social Finance Institute was birthed with that intention in mind, is to mainstream these ideas that we have now spent over a decade as practitioners um honing.
Speaker: So we launched the Social Finance Institute over two years ago, now in 2024. And I recruited an amazing colleague, Karen Anderson, to lead it.
Speaker: It's about applied research. It's about raising awareness on these issues. And ah one applied research collaboration that we have with universities the the new impact-first investing tool that we have developed in partnership with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Speaker: This is their Rustandy Center. And Professor Rob Gertner and we over the last year We've developed a free web-based tool where philanthropic owners, ah people who are interested in impact investing, can use this interactive tool to think about trade-offs in companies putting money to work into the third wallet, into impact-first investing.
Speaker: How do you think about total impact created? How do you think about potential trade-offs with your financial positions? And we're really, really excited about this tool.
Speaker: Definitely go into the IFI tool and and check it out and give us your feedback. That's great. I will put it into the show notes. Thanks, Tracy. So I have a question that I ask all of my guests. So bear with me.
Speaker: How do you feel being a woman doing this job? I don't approach this job as a woman, but But if you look at how social finance is led, our president is also a woman, Kirsten Hill. She is extraordinary.
Speaker: We were so lucky to convince Kirsten after 25 years in traditional finance. who She was the chief operating officer of Merrill Lynch to join social finance three years ago.
Speaker: We actually met Kirsten when we were co-developing our first social impact bond for New York State. And Merrill Lynch was our partner in underwriting that first social impact bond. And so I've known Kirsten now for almost as long as social finance has been in business. And several years ago, I convinced her to cross the fence into this world. So Kirsten, Karen Anderson, and i the three of us, all women. And if you look at our CFO, Pam Yang, she's a woman, CHRO,
Speaker: Antonia Esposito, she's a woman. Our chief philanthropy officer is a woman. Our general counsel, Leslie Cornell, is a woman. We have a lot of women working at social finance. Is that intentional?
Speaker: i don't think so. In fact, not at all. But somehow we've attracted these incredibly creative, fiery, passionate, rigorous women who all of them have really kind of cross-sector professional experiences to come together.
Speaker: And it's a lot of fun. Yes. Fun has to be part of the job, no? That's so important. So as we're approaching the end of this conversation, I have three quick questions for you.
Speaker: First, what is keeping you optimistic? My team. Yes, that's a great one. Who or what is inspiring you? There is a lot to be exasperated about.
Speaker: What inspires me is spending time with the next generation. We have three daughters who are in their mid-20s, spending time with them and their friends and making sure that we co-create a world that their generation continues to thrive is what keeps me optimistic.
Speaker: Yes, thank you. And are you reading anything that you would recommend to the audience? Yes. Oh, there's so much to read. What am I reading these days?
Speaker: Christina, I can go in so many directions. You can pick a few if you want. Okay, we can pick a few. I've been thinking a lot about behavioral economics.
Speaker: So much of what we do has been so focused on the technicalities of making change and making assumptions that if you put X, Y, Z out there, anyone with rationality would take it on.
Speaker: And i think behavioral science And the growth of that field has really made us all think twice about what kind of assumptions, especially around rational decision making that we should take on when we build new projects, new vehicles, new structures.
Speaker: I can recommend a whole range of behavioral economics books. So I'm actually going to send you a few after this podcast.
Speaker: So you can cut it at like just focusing on onbe behavioral economics because if I just do one, it won't kind of do the field justice. Perfect. And I will add those to the show notes as well. Thank you, Tracy.
Speaker: So do you have any final thoughts or any advice for fellow changemakers, maybe a specific ask of the listeners? Just start by doing. I think a lot of us have the tendency because we are analytical people and we're rigorous people that we got to sort it all out and understand the whole thing before taking the first step.
Speaker: What I've found in the last 15 years is so much of the joy and the learning is actually start by doing. So I would encourage everyone to take the first step. Brilliant.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Tracy, for your time today. This was a really wonderful conversation. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Christina.
Speaker: If you will stay with us, thank you so much for the time that you took to discover one of the amazing women changing finance. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and on social media.
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Speaker: Women Changing Finance is part of the Impact Alpha podcast network. Smart conversations by and for impact investing professionals.
