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E17 - Lisa Hehenberger, Director of the ESADE Center for Social Impact
34 Plays2 days ago
In this episode, Lisa Hehenberger, Director of ESADE Business School’s Center for Social Impact, and a leading voice in Europe’s impact ecosystem, shares her reflections about trends and tensions shaping the sector today. We explore how impact investing is evolving across Europe: from measurement and governance, to the shifting expectations of funders, investors, and social entrepreneurs. Lisa brings deep experience thanks to her journey bridging the worlds of academia and practice, and offers practical guidance on impact measurement: how to start small, why having a theory of change still matters, and how investors can avoid overburdening their investees with reporting. This episode looks at why Europe’s impact ecosystem is one of the most developed today, and what still remains to be done.
Please review the episode, share your feedback, and subscribe to the podcast!
You can also:
- Visit our website: womenchangingfinance.org
- Read Lisa's full bio
- Follow Lisa on LinkedIn
To go further, here are some of the references mentioned during the episode:
- European Investment Fund (EIF) — https://www.eif.org/
- ESADE Business School — https://www.esade.edu/
- ESADE Center for Social Impact — https://www.esade.edu/faculty-research/en/esade-center-social-impact
- Impact Europe (formerly EVPA) — https://www.impacteurope.net/
- Rubio Impact Ventures — https://www.rubio.vc/
- Ship2B Foundation — https://www.ship2b.org/
- Qida — https://www.qida.es/
- Suma Capital — https://sumacapital.com/en/
- Impact Shakers — https://www.impactshakers.com/
- Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler - https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/452776/whos-afraid-of-gender-by-butler-judith/9781802061062
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Transcript
Introduction to Women Changing Finance Podcast
00:00:05
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.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast Women Changing Finance.
Introduction of Dr. Lisa Heihannberger
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm Christina Tora, and I'm welcoming today Dr. Lisa Heihannberger. She's an associate professor in the Department of Strategy and General Management at ESADE Business School and director of its Center for Social Impact.
00:00:37
Speaker
She's a renowned expert on social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, impact to investment, and impact measurement. I met Lisa a long time ago when she was working for a VPA now called Impact Europe.
00:00:49
Speaker
And we both share a passion for market building, collective action, and social impact. Lisa is one of the few thinkers that has been pushing the boundaries of what it means to create real life change.
00:01:00
Speaker
Lisa, it's really wonderful to have you on the show today. Thank you.
Impact Investing in Europe
00:01:04
Speaker
And so as a start, you have been in this space for but sometimes and you are really researching it, witnessing the changes.
00:01:12
Speaker
Can you share some thoughts as we start on the impact ecosystem that you are seeing in Europe? Maybe some evolutions that have happened or some trends that you are witnessing?
00:01:23
Speaker
Thank you so much, Christina, for having me. It's real pleasure to be here on the on your show. So in terms of evolution, and was actually just this week at an Impact Investing academic conference, and we had really interesting conversations about you know what has happened over the past few years.
00:01:43
Speaker
We talked about the influence actually of the European Investment Fund that has been an important LP. So and an investor in impact funds in in Europe over the past few years and how that has actually influenced how the sector has evolved.
00:02:00
Speaker
and And I think that some of the things that I've seen is really that the fund managers, the ones that are investing the the capital that that asset owners invest in the funds, are using quite harmonized measurement systems, you know, so that those have really become kind of standardized over the years.
00:02:20
Speaker
And I think that the EIF has has had some influence over that. And I think also the other thing that we've seen is that the investment funds have become more sector specific, you know, so that they started with ah a sort of a generalist strategy where they invested in all kinds of companies that had an impact on society.
00:02:42
Speaker
But now over the years, they have become more specialized on specific thematics. So that's something that I've seen. And also, I would say that the strategies have become more pan-European.
00:02:54
Speaker
So they started perhaps in their own home countries, you know investing, for example, if you're a Spanish fund, you invest in Spain. But now the fund strategies are also more more pan-European. So that's a little bit looking at European impact investing. of Obviously, there will be and different trends in different parts of the world.
00:03:12
Speaker
That's amazing as an entry point. Thank
EU Support through Social Business Initiative
00:03:15
Speaker
you. Just for those who don't know, yeah eif is the European Investment Fund. And so perhaps can I ask you to expand a little bit more on the role of the European Union and the European Commission and kind of this this whole ah space has actually been little bit seeded and and helped and supported by the EU, right?
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, so this is quite interesting because I but have been part of the policy discussion since I was working at EVPA, or now Impact Europe.
00:03:46
Speaker
And there was something called the Social Business Initiative that was launched now probably like 20 years ago. with the objective of really building these the social entrepreneurship ecosystem in Europe. So thinking about how to support social business through different ways, you know so financing, but also regulation and so forth.
00:04:06
Speaker
So I think this has been really important to sort of building the impact investing ecosystem in in Europe. So part of it was regulation. creating sort of the the environment for these types of funds to be properly set up so that people would trust them with their money, that there would be legitimacy, you know, for these types of funds.
00:04:30
Speaker
But then also with different financing instruments, not just sort of paving the way for the instruments, but also putting... so money into the the sector. So one of these vehicles was the the one that the European Investment Fund then developed, which was called a Social Impact Accelerator, which acted as a fund of funds, basically providing anchor investment to many of the ah pioneering European investment in impact funds.
00:05:00
Speaker
So I think that this has been quite important in terms of pushing the sector you know in in the direction of of impact, but also obviously with some potential negative consequences as well that that we are currently discussing in impact investing.
00:05:16
Speaker
Can you just expand on that one? Because I'm curious about actually your thoughts on
Challenges in Impact Fund Balancing
00:05:21
Speaker
that. Yeah, I mean, when I started working at EVP, which was in 2010, most of the funds were quite small.
00:05:30
Speaker
So we're talking about 5 to 10 million euro funds. And I guess the difficulty for those funds was really to make the the sort of fund economics work, you know, because you have to, through your assets under management, support...
00:05:45
Speaker
the management team, the investment functions, and and you know all the costs of of a ah running a fund, which you do with the management fee, which is a percentage of the assets under management.
00:05:56
Speaker
So they the dilemma a little bit for those first funds would be that if you want to make this work, you need to to raise bigger funds. But in order to raise bigger funds, you probably need to promise higher financial returns in order to attract more funding.
00:06:14
Speaker
And the EIF, when they launched this social impact accelerator, there was a bit of a debate within that kind of pioneering ecosystem, saying that they will require certain financial returns, which will push the the early stage fund managers to move in a direction of of more financial return. And this has been a discussion, I would say, like since then, i guess a positive effect no of setting up these this fund of funds has been that a lot more money has been channeled into impact investing. So they have been able to mobilize as well private capital into those funds.
00:06:51
Speaker
But then some of the fund managers perhaps were pushed into a direction of requiring or promising a higher financial return that than they they really wanted.
00:07:02
Speaker
So moving into like another part of the social innovation ecosystem, which is more kind of later stage, companies, bigger companies. And yeah, so I mean, that's what I meant with potential negative side effects.
00:07:15
Speaker
But I think that probably like the positive effects have been really quite enormous, you know, in in the sense of of attracting more funding and mobilizing capital. So you have to kind of consider the pros and cons.
00:07:28
Speaker
Brilliant. Thank you for this explanation, Lisa. And for the audience to also understand where does this money go can you perhaps ah give one or two examples of really cool impact funds that you have been working with or that you know about and perhaps also some social enterprises that you think have demonstrated growth or real impact over time?
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah.
Examples of Impact Funds and Focus Areas
00:07:54
Speaker
So I'm currently working with a few different impact funds in the function of impact committee member, which is quite an interesting function that that has emerged as well over the past few years.
00:08:08
Speaker
And, you know, so i I'll perhaps mention a couple of those. So one is a Dutch impact venture capital fund called Rubio Impact Ventures.
00:08:19
Speaker
So I've been collaborating with them for the past few years in their impact advisory board. And my function there is to help them when they're deciding the impact objectives for their the companies that they invest in.
00:08:34
Speaker
And they want an external perspective because they set expectations. as well objectives that are linked to what they call an impact carry, which is basically ah ah sort of a bonus that the investment team gets if they achieve their objectives.
00:08:50
Speaker
I have been so working for the past few years with Ruby Impact Ventures, which is an impact VC based in the Netherlands, investing in Netherlands, but also other European countries.
00:09:01
Speaker
And their role is as part of their and impact advisory board, helping them their requirements impact KPIs and objectives for the for each investment so that there's an external perspective since that's linked to their impact carry and it has to be you know a neutral perspective on on on that.
00:09:18
Speaker
And they work on climate and also investment in in people, meaning that things like employment, things like and gender equality.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I'm also involved with here in Spain, Ship2B, which is a, they have a foundation and also now an impact venture, a capital fund.
00:09:41
Speaker
They have actually similar approach to Rupi Impact Ventures, and they invest in some exciting companies. So One example would be company called Kida that works with elderly. So one of their focus areas is actually the elderly, considering that in Europe, it's definitely growing population, but it's also a population that sometimes is a little bit under-invested in by public sector as well.
00:10:07
Speaker
And this company is really helping to provide healthcare care services to elderly living on their own, you know, so that they are have access to technology and help and and aid.
00:10:19
Speaker
So this company has been growing quite a lot, you know, in the past few years. So it's I think it's a nice example of social impact-oriented company that is also profitable and investable, etc.
00:10:31
Speaker
I'm also working with the Climate Infrastructure Fund that is based in in Barcelona that is called Summa Capital. And they have a 300 million climate infrastructure fund that invests in in projects around sort of recycling and and also biogas and all kinds of ah technologies that are really about energy transition.
00:10:54
Speaker
And this is totally different, totally different strategy, but also very impactful. So what I'm seeing as well, i guess, in terms of the evolution of of impact investing in Europe is that I would say like the very early players used to be more like early stage venture capital, even more what we call venture philanthropy.
00:11:14
Speaker
and So it was more about sort of that missing middle of of between philanthropy and and and venture capital. And now there are also private equity funds and and sort of larger investors that are interested in impact.
00:11:28
Speaker
And it's a little bit of a different strategy, right? so it's But it can I think it has a lot of potential. ah so So yeah, and and I'm also working with they an impact VC based in Belgium called Impact Shakers.
00:11:42
Speaker
And what they do is invest in diverse founders. So the problem that they have identified here is that many, actually, the statistics about venture capital funding and in Europe, ah you know I think that only 2% of VC funding goes to female teams.
00:12:01
Speaker
And sometimes when you talk about diversity, it's almost like ridiculous to talk about women as part of diversity because we are, in the end, half of the population, right? But it's quite alarming, you know, how the the venture capital industry is so slow at changing and that the Impact Shakers fund management team, they're working on sort of identifying founders that are basically anything but white male.
00:12:28
Speaker
So diversity considered quite broadly and really sort of identifying incredible founding teams that have ah great solutions to problems, but also with the high potential for growth and profitability and and also impact.
00:12:45
Speaker
That's amazing. Thank you, Lisa, for these examples. um I look forward to looking them up.
Practical Impact Measurement Approaches
00:12:51
Speaker
I know, I think only ship to be at the moment, so I will be exploring the other ones.
00:12:56
Speaker
One of your areas of expertise and actually one of your even opening statements was about impact measurement. And so I was wondering if you can reflect you know on this debate about how to balance rigor and rigorous impact management and measurement as opposed to what is practicable and what is efficient or in terms of operations for both the funds, but also for the entrepreneurs. Like how do we not overburden the different stakeholders around the investment chain with too much investment?
00:13:31
Speaker
of data requirements. What are your thoughts on on that? Yeah, no, this this is the kind of eternal question. But I started working on on impact measurement when I was research director for EVPA.
00:13:45
Speaker
And that's when we at EVPA developed this practical guide to measuring and managing impact that we launched in 2013. And it was really just kind of a sort of meta-analysis of ah the different frameworks that existed and and seeing like, what do they have in common?
00:14:01
Speaker
And then we said, okay, these are basically the five steps that we would recommend to go through and ah doing it in a very common sense, easy way and drawing, you know, from the different sort of best practices around the world.
00:14:15
Speaker
And this was, has been quite helpful for social enterprises and impact investors. I think a lot has happened since then, but I mean, I still refer to this when people ask me like where to get started.
00:14:27
Speaker
And it's it's really about starting with understanding your own objectives. So setting your objectives using normally like a theory of change framework that helps you kind of map out what is it that you're trying to achieve, you know, your ultimate impact, but then also how are your activities leading to that?
00:14:44
Speaker
And that helps you kind of just map it out. And then you start, you have to engage with your stakeholders, try to understand from them if they're experiencing that impact that you think that they will experience. you know So at the beginning, it's the theory, right?
00:15:00
Speaker
And then you start having more data, collecting the the information to substantiate your claims. And then you start having concrete KPIs that you can measure.
00:15:11
Speaker
And then you you collect data on that. And then you you kind of look back at your theory of change and see like, what works and what doesn't work. Like, how can i change it? And how can I alter it so that it's a better image of what's happening?
00:15:26
Speaker
So then, and then you start kind of making that into a ah learning and feedback loop. And that's also how you develop your monitoring framework. So whether you're a social enterprise or you're an impact investor or foundation, you need to understand how to measure and manage your impact.
00:15:43
Speaker
I guess the this sort of question about overburdening your investees, I mean, that's something that, I mean, we see a lot. We see that in public funding. We see that in philanthropy, development aid, where there are like lots of reporting requirements and Sometimes it just can become ridiculous, right?
00:16:04
Speaker
And I guess the recommendation that we always have made for funders is that you should ask your investees, your grantees, what is it that you're trying to achieve? What kind of impact are you trying to achieve?
00:16:17
Speaker
And what should be then the key? What are the key indicators that you want to use to measure your own impact? And those should be the ones that you report to the funders. You know, rather than the funder saying, OK, these are a bunch of indicators that we want you to report on, because then they just become and additional burden, an additional layer of bureaucracy.
00:16:38
Speaker
They don't really to see the point. But if it's something that is bottom up and something that is useful for them and their own management of impact, that's really the sweet spot, I would say. Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
And it has to be, a in a way, a co-created conversation about what's helpful for whom rather than a top-down exercise, right? Exactly. Yeah. So I would like to move on to hearing a little bit more about your day job at ESADE.
00:17:06
Speaker
It's quite a
Bridging Academia and Practice: ESADE's Role
00:17:07
Speaker
unique position. And if I'm correct, it's quite a unique business school for having a center for social impact. Not all business school have that. Can you tell us about your work at ESADE?
00:17:19
Speaker
What does a typical day look like? And maybe also reflect on the role of academia, generally speaking, in this system change. How do we advance and create progress within the financial and generally speaking in the impact ecosystem?
00:17:36
Speaker
Okay. I work you know as a professor. So I teach, I do research and ah set up a ah research center called the SADA Center for Social Impact. We work basically on the the topics that you mentioned and in the introduction of me, you know, so it's social entrepreneurship, impact investing, venture philanthropy, and impact measurement.
00:17:58
Speaker
So those are the the topics. And I guess what I've tried to do with this this research center is to build a bridge between academia and practice.
00:18:10
Speaker
I guess From my own experience, you know I was trained as an academic, did my PhD, but then actually left academia when I had just finished my dissertation, which is a bit unusual.
00:18:23
Speaker
And that's went on to work at EVPA as research director. And there I was doing research, which was very much applied. you know, it was about developing solutions for practitioners in the venture philanthropy and impact investing world.
00:18:36
Speaker
And I think this, I brought this with me to my academic role. And the way we have set up the center is to make sure that the research that we're doing is, first of all, the topics that we work on, it's related to social impact. Okay. So it's we talk about the research being about social impact, but also for social impact.
00:18:59
Speaker
So we work on impact-related topics, but we also want to generate impact with the work that we do. And that means that we want the research to be rigorous. no So we're using research rigor in the way we set up the research, but we also want it to be relevant.
00:19:16
Speaker
The other thing is we also have recently experimented with setting up research ah teams that are composed of both academic researchers and applied researchers working together. And meaning that, for example, i would have a PhD student who's working on impact investing or philanthropy, who's doing his dissertation about this topic, and then put him together with a researcher who's very experienced on developing more applied research.
00:19:47
Speaker
And the applied researcher will think about, okay, how can I develop some practical frameworks and recommendations for practitioners, whereas the academic researcher will think about, let's make sure that I transcribe all the research, all the the interviews, all and So that I can code them and I can develop mechanisms that are related to theory and in this way that contribute to building new theory.
00:20:11
Speaker
And what we've seen is that having these different approaches in the same team, it also helps generate somehow more innovative and creative ideas because they feed into each other.
00:20:23
Speaker
I really am quite excited about how the center is working, what kind of how we do research, but also like the kinds of recommendations and solutions that we are able to produce.
Research on Foundation Boards and Impact
00:20:36
Speaker
It tends to resonate quite a lot with practitioners, so they they get excited about it as well because they learn something new. And then we also set it up in such a way that we can publish in academic journals.
00:20:47
Speaker
Can you give some examples of what you're working on now or some recent publications? Yeah, sure. So one project that I've been working on during these past years has been on the governance of impact.
00:21:00
Speaker
And this has been mostly with foundations, although now I'm thinking about extending this to impact funds. But the idea here was, and this was something that I kind of saw and and went in detected in discussions with foundations, that often the boards of foundations are composed of people from banking or corporate background or legal background.
00:21:24
Speaker
And perhaps don't have a strong experience in in the social sector. And they come into the foundation board, obviously, with an objective of contributing their experience, etc. But they sometimes and often don't understand what impact is and and how that's generated, how that's measured and all of that.
00:21:44
Speaker
And the measurement impact measurement part is seen as a kind of a technical thing that like some teams are doing you know in the foundation, but it's not really concerning them. And it's a bit of a paradox because many of these mission-driven organizations are then like having strategic discussions about things like financials,
00:22:04
Speaker
things about legal issues, et cetera, but not really talking about, are we achieving our mission? Are we moving in the direction of solving some problem that is actually what they're set up to do?
00:22:18
Speaker
So they they might be a foundation working on education or healthcare, or maybe on a particular beneficiary group, but they don't really have the data in the board meetings about that. And they don't really have the understanding.
00:22:30
Speaker
So that that was kind of the motivation of the research project. And then we set it up in the way that I described, know, with with an academic and practitioner side and worked with six foundations that opened up their doors to us. And and we had lots of interviews I think we had 53 interviews with them and then analyzed all that data and then provided recommendations for like how foundations could actually integrate impact into these strategic conversations at board level and how to create systems as well where they're able to aggregate and data and information about impact at the the foundation board level.
00:23:11
Speaker
And it's been really interesting, you know, because the foundations were really like this information and they've asked for workshops and and trainings and so on to improve the conversations in the boards.
00:23:23
Speaker
And I think it's not just for the boards, it's also for a senior management team and you know different levels of the foundation to actually understand that this is an issue. And then we also had an academic team. So we work here with professor from Northeastern University, Ruth Aguilera, who's an expert on governance.
00:23:41
Speaker
And together with our PhD students, we're developing two academic papers that are under review and in top academic journals. So it's a good example of like this sort of model that we have built, you know, where we're generating both relevant, impactful information and knowledge for practitioners, but also publishing in academic journals.
00:24:03
Speaker
That's a project that we've been working on. And we're now about to launch a project on systemic impact. And this is a part of the... We're about to launch a new ah chair on social impact.
00:24:15
Speaker
So this is some this an academic project you know within ADESA. And this is in partnership with a few prominent foundations. where We will reveal this very soon. so Okay, waiting for the big reveal then.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah, but systemic impact sounds great to my ears. I think it's a very important issue. And I mean, so is the one around governance, which is a little bit the next frontier of our work.
00:24:41
Speaker
Thank you, Lisa, for these
Lisa's Journey and Ecosystem Impact
00:24:43
Speaker
explanations. I wanted to actually kind of move on to hearing from you on your personal journey. I'm very curious to hear how you got here, what sparked your interest in social impact? What was the first spark in your journey?
00:24:58
Speaker
And yeah, reflecting on kind of the different steps and milestones that got you to this unique position today. Okay, yeah. I started this personal journey actually like when I was a teenager. knows I was quite interested in environmental problems. I was very passionate about whales and oil spills and that kind of thing.
00:25:21
Speaker
And i actually wanted to become a journalist working on environmental topics. And then my grandfather told me that I had to study economics first to know how things work in the world.
00:25:34
Speaker
And then I could write about it. Then I so i studied it at Stockholm School of Economics. And i think that something that happens to many like business school students and really students and in of economics is that you get into this kind of track of like everyone else is going into investment banking or consulting and and I was good at numbers you know and so I did a major in finance and then I got into investment banking and and then after a few years of doing that I'm like what happened you know I wanted to work on environmental issues in Wales, you know, and here I am working on mergers and acquisitions in London.
00:26:11
Speaker
And then after a few years of doing that, I i just decided to to leave that world. And and I did a PhD in here in Barcelona at IESE. And I didn't really know what I was going to do the PhD about. it was in management and I wanted to work on sustainability.
00:26:29
Speaker
But then I had the opportunity of working with a wonderful company professor called Johanna Meyer. And she was already at that time a pioneer and and on the topic of social entrepreneurship, had been writing a lot papers and studies about that. And she got me sort of excited about that topic.
00:26:49
Speaker
But we were then like trying to find like the topic from our dissertation. And she actually found this kind of venture philanthropy movement that was just getting started. This was in 2004, you know, when EVPA was just set up.
00:27:02
Speaker
So then my dissertation was about venture philanthropy. ah And I got more and more integrated into like the work of EVPA. And then when EVPA decided to set up a knowledge center, which is like the research center, they asked me if I wanted to be the director of the knowledge center.
00:27:20
Speaker
What a great journey. It's also an opportunity today to reflect on any achievements that you're really proud of, or even also achievements that you're planning for, like big moonshot goals that you have.
00:27:35
Speaker
Oh, I think, I mean, in terms of of achievements, when I feel in a way, now that I look at what's happened, you know, in impact investing in in Europe that I feel proud to have been part of driving this.
00:27:49
Speaker
And it was interesting, like a few years ago, I got this award in Spain, actually from Ship2B. And the award was, it was Impact Champion.
00:27:59
Speaker
ah And the the motivation was that I had helped develop the impact investing ecosystem in Spain. And I was proud of this because I felt like the work that I do is very much like in the background.
00:28:13
Speaker
You do research, you like you develop data, you develop reports and best practice, and you're like advising, but you're not actually the one out there working. doing the investment or the social entrepreneur with the inspiring story and so forth. You know, so I was surprised in a way when I received sort of the the news that I would get this award because I said like, oh my God, you know, like actually someone noticed, you know.
00:28:40
Speaker
And I told my kids, I have two children, and I think it was like the first time they they understood something about what I do, I think. And my son was like, oh, so you're you're getting this award. You're becoming the impact champion of Spain, of the entire Spain.
00:28:57
Speaker
And he was like somehow proud. So I think, I mean, this whole thing of like being in the background, like trying to help and develop the ecosystem and and in a way like the infrastructure for the sector is something I'm proud of.
00:29:11
Speaker
And when I see like lots of young people working on the topic and maybe using some of our early reports and, you know, some of the papers that we published, like when there was almost nothing, available, that makes me feel happy.
00:29:25
Speaker
Working also with a lot of really amazing people like you, who are also so committed and dedicated to this topic. This is what makes me happy and proud. And I guess for the future, what we're working on now Part of, I told you like that we're launching a chair.
00:29:42
Speaker
so this is exciting. But as actually as well as a school, ESADE is developing ah sort of an impact strategy and and looking at how we as a school can actually elevate some of the work that different units, not just the ESADE Center for Social Impact, but a lot of other initiatives that we have been doing in the past in terms of service learning, in terms of really helping students on their journey towards transformation and becoming leaders that have purpose and impact at the core of what they want to do, really building that school in that direction. I think that is really a big project going forward for me as well.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah, building the future changemakers of tomorrow. It's a really, really important role that you have there. Thank you so much, Lisa, for sharing this. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. And definitely, yeah you have been one of the the champions. so congratulations for that.
Comparing Investment Banking and Impact Investing
00:30:40
Speaker
You've also touched on this before, and it's a question I ask all my guests. How do you feel as a woman doing this job? I would say maybe like moving from investment banking to impact investing has been very positive as a woman, just because I feel in my current role that it's a natural it's natural to be a woman, whereas in impact and but sorry in investment banking, it it was always a bit awkward.
00:31:10
Speaker
You're laughing. I think it's definitely, that's definitely a very masculine world. And I mean, although it was a great learning ah place, you know, like I really think learned a lot of like professional sort of how to work under pressure, you know, all of these things, you know, that are important.
00:31:28
Speaker
I think impact investing is much more of a friendly environment where there's a lot more collaboration cooperation between different people and actors. there's so I don't think I ever had a moment where people said, no, I don't want to share this with you.
00:31:44
Speaker
There's much more of a sharing attitude. And I really love that. It's really a warm atmosphere. i think also in academia, it's an interesting place. So definitely competitive.
00:31:55
Speaker
But I also think that you can kind of carve out your space. I've had that opportunity as at ESADE to really do... in a way, what I want, like build my own center, build also like my professional identity around sort of this focus on impact.
00:32:13
Speaker
And i I really appreciate that, all that support that I have been ah getting. I mean, I'm not saying that it's because I'm a woman. I think I'm just saying that it's see an environment where I think it's not an issue, like it's not a special challenge to be a woman.
00:32:29
Speaker
I think it could even be an advantage, know, in a way. So in that case... I don't have any any problems. so That's a brilliant reflection. Thanks. And another question that I also ask all my guests is what has or what is helping you to be your best self?
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's definitely this atmosphere collaboration. So having networks, working with people that are dedicated, that are that are have a lot of important competences as well.
Balancing Work, Family, and Network Support
00:33:00
Speaker
no So I have built a team at SADE over the years with really wonderful individuals who are supporting what we're doing.
00:33:11
Speaker
So that has been really important, I think. And also this whole network of people like you and people like Anne Holm-Ranelet in Sweden and I don't want to mention more names, you know, because there's so many, but actually a lot of women that have been supportive over the years.
00:33:28
Speaker
And I think it's it's also a matter of finding balance, you know, between like doing something that you really enjoy and like, and then also having a little bit of free time and and time with family and so on. i Obviously like having my my family, my my children have been, you know, amazing To actually help me as well set boundaries and see that that's it's not just about work, but it's also about other things in life.
00:33:56
Speaker
That's been important as well for me. Beautiful. So we're approaching the end of this interview. i have three quick questions for you. What is inspiring you? Oh, yeah. Or who is inspiring
Inspirations and Optimism
00:34:09
Speaker
you? Can be what or who is inspiring you?
00:34:11
Speaker
I probably would say like young scholars. I've been just now at this academic conference and and I have been meeting with all of these like wonderful young academics who are passionate about what they do and are really hardworking. And, you know, so i'm I'm inspired by them.
00:34:28
Speaker
Beautiful. What is keeping you optimistic? o Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, like in the current political climate, it's it's sometimes a bit difficult.
00:34:38
Speaker
But i would say ah a lot of these social entrepreneurs who are working on finding solutions to the problems, that's definitely big driving force.
00:34:49
Speaker
And do you have anything that you would recommend for audience in terms of what you're reading or any reading recommendations? Oh, I'm ah currently reading and an interesting book. I just started it, so I don't know if whether to recommend it yet, but it's called Who's Afraid of Gender?
00:35:07
Speaker
yeah. And it's quite interesting because it's like looking at how the political movement has turned against gender and like putting everything in the same box.
00:35:18
Speaker
And it's something that people are like afraid of. And so it's become like the enemy. So I'm finding that quite interesting currently. Fascinating. Great. Thank you so much, Lisa.
00:35:29
Speaker
This has been such an insightful and great conversation. Do you have any final thoughts or advice to fellow changemakers or any ask of the listeners?
Advice for Aspiring Changemakers
00:35:41
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think people who are so sort of getting into this topic and i also have like many students who are interested in finding jobs. in the the sector.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think often it's a matter of just kind of getting into it and trying and and maybe doing an internship and getting to know people, taking a class, you know, taking a course.
00:36:03
Speaker
So I think all of what we do is is about learning. So I'm learning things all the time. So really having this equivalent open mind and and willingness to learn new things.
00:36:13
Speaker
So that would be my advice. Be learning forever is so it's a great conclusion to this conversation. Lisa, thank you so much for your time today. it was wonderful to have you on the show and I hope perhaps to see you very soon somewhere.
00:36:31
Speaker
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00:36:43
Speaker
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00:36:54
Speaker
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