Dollars and Change Podcast

Karl Khoury, Co-founder and Partner at Arborview Capital, and Russell Diez-Canseco, President and CEO of Vital Farms, join host and Vice Dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative Katherine Klein to discuss their successful partnership. In 2014, Arborview Capital made an impact investment into Vital Farms, an ethical and sustainable food company that produces pasture-raised eggs and butter. Karl remains on the board of Vital Farms after the company went public in 2020. Karl and Russell reflect on why it’s important for investors to be aligned to the mission of the companies in which they’re investing. They also discuss why stakeholder capitalism makes business even more successful. 

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Rachel Robasciotti, founder and CEO of Adasina Social Capital, joins host and Vice Dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative Katherine Klein to discuss how her firm is serving as a bridge between social justice movements and the financial markets. She also discusses why she sees the potential for real impact in public markets. "If you're going to make systemic change, you're actually going to be required to have impact that extends well beyond your own portfolio. And the only real way to do that is by organizing other investors," Robasciotti said.

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Suzanne Biegel, Founder of Catalyst at Large, joins host Sandi Hunt, Managing Director of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, to discuss their recently published co-authored report, Project Sage 3.0. This report presents a global scan of gender lens private equity, venture capital, and private debt funds, as well as key findings on the current state of the field. In this podcast, Biegel and Hunt reflect on what they hope readers of the report do with it, what these findings show, and why it matters. Access more insights as well as the full Project Sage 3.0 report here. 

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Roy Swan, Director of Mission Investments at the Ford Foundation, joins host and Vice Dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative Katherine Klein to discuss how the Foundation uses grant capital, mission-related investments, and program-related investments to advance social, economic, and racial justice. In addition to capital tools, Swan discusses the importance of “influence tools”: helping others understand the flaws in our system and charting a road map for change.

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Gayle Jennings O’Byrne and Pialy Aditya, General Partners of the WOCstar Fund, join host and Vice Dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative Katherine Klein to discuss investing in women of color. Their early stage venture fund invests in women of color and their diverse tech startups. Black women are the fastest growing group of start-up founders. Yet, biases in investing cause major disparities in the amount of venture capital dollars they receive. WOCstar Fund’s goal is to not only change the trajectory for the companies they invest in, but also help other investors find these innovative and successful businesses.

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Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at the London Business School and author of the new book Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, joins host and Vice Dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative Katherine Klein to discuss emerging research on responsible business. Edmans offers a perspective on employee satisfaction and CEO pay research to explain how both shareholders and stakeholders can receive long-term value with a “grow the pie” mindset instead of a “split the pie” mindset.

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Second-year Wharton MBA students Ellen Halle and Susanna Hamilton join host Sandi Hunt to discuss how they helped launched the Philadelphia chapter of Off Their Plate. This grassroots movement helps provide meals to hospital teams while restoring jobs to restaurant workers who have lost work due to COVID-19.

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Lisa Hall, fair finance lead and fellow-in-residence at the Beeck Center, joins host Katherine Klein to discuss “fair finance,” a term coined at the Beeck Center “to really describe what it means to have shared prosperity using the tools of the financial market.” She also discusses the tools and strategies that could be employed to “increase the fairness of finance” and the lessons learned from other programs that have tried to address inequality.

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C. B. Bhattacharya, Professor of Sustainability and Ethics at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, joins WSII's Sandi Hunt on Knowledge@Wharton to discuss why sustainability needs to be strategic to a firm’s business and how it can be orchestrated. Bhattacharya says that when a company defines its purpose, it will find that sustainability is built into that definition.

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Cynthia Muller, Director of Mission Investment at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, joins hosts Nick Ashburn and Sandi Hunt to discuss the unique position of corporate foundations in addressing systemic inequities. Since 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has focused its investments on benefitting disadvantaged children in poor and rural areas and addressing race-based issues. Original airdate: June 27, 2019.

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