Good Future

He grew up in Harare in Zimbabwe, and with grit and determination and a little bit of luck, he managed to get himself a scholarship to Yale in the US, and today, he’s helping manage one of Australia’s leading impact investment advisory firms.

His name is Simba Marekera he’s Chief Research Officer at Brightlight Impact Advisors, the firm helps investors understand how they can invest funds to earn risk adjusted returns, while also having a positive social and environmental impact.

Simba opened up about his upbringing and how he found his way to Sydney. He dealt with his fair share of tragedy, but what stayed with him was his parents’ example in building a business and in pushing their kids to get the education they themselves missed out on.

His background of seeing his father build a business against the odds, of helping those in need in an economy where there’s no social safety nets, it all helped shape him into the leading investment advisor that he is today. It was firsthand experience of social enterprise and of microfinance, just, without the modern terminology.

In past years Simba’s been a huge help to me as I was first learning about impact investing and in this discussion I’m again really grateful for the stories and insights that he shared.

I‘d love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review on iTunes.

Or jump onto my website at www.johntreadgold.com where you'll find short articles from each episode wrapping-up the key concepts. Plus all the links and book recommendations!

Enjoy!

Kat Dunn is at the vanguard of microfinance. She’s CEO of Grameen Australia, and she has some big lofty goals for shifting our concept of banking, to give those who don’t have the backing of hard assets, an alternative route to access loans and capital.

Kat opened up about the big move she made, leaving a role with a major fund manager, she stepped off the corporate ladder and she took a leap of faith, following her heart and her need for purpose, rather than clinging to the security of a big salary.

I‘d love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review on iTunes.

Or jump onto my website at www.johntreadgold.com where you'll find short articles from each episode wrapping-up the key concepts. Plus all the links and book recommendations!

Enjoy!

Innovation is not often associated with government departments. But that’s changing, thanks to my guest, Dr Sarah Pearson.

She’s Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Scientist at the InnovationXchange, within Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). On Episode 6 of the Good Future podcast.

She’s disrupting government, she’s injecting her experience of scientific collaboration and commercialisation to retrofit DFAT as an entrepreneurial leader. She wants to empower the Asia-Pacific region with more than just grants, she wants to help build businesses, in the hope of driving truly sustainable development.

She’s had a remarkable career. She started as a physicist, it gave her a solid scientific foundation and it’s left its make on all of her work. And she spent some time as a consultant at McKinsey.

We talked about the challenges of driving change in a government department, about the huge opportunities that lie in unlocking the entrepreneurial potential of our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region, we looked at impact investing and we dipped into how to balance family, career and productivity.

Please do enjoy this conversation with Dr Pearson, I got so much out of it.

And I’d love to hear your thoughts, please leave me a review on iTunes.

Or drop me a line on my website: johntreadgold.com

Tom Dawkins is a social entrepreneur, and he’s the co-founder of fund-raising platform, StartSomeGood.

He’s been a change-maker from the outset. His parents were big advocates for working in a job that has purpose and reflects your values. And he took it to heart, busily building not-for-profits and social enterprises as soon as he left uni.

And he was soon drawn to silicon valley, a place where there’s plenty of action, but it’s here he had a pivotal revelation, he found a place where they embrace failure. A community that recognises that failure is simply the price you have to pay to achieve truly transformational innovation.

And it’s with this tool kit that he and his American co-founder launched their own platform, called StartSomeGood.

Tom explains the genesis of the company, it’s impact, and his ambitions going forward.

We talk about the struggles facing startup businesses in Australia, and the paradox that it’s far easier to get people to donate money to your business, than it is to get a loan.

This is Episode 5 of the Good Future podcast. Please leave a review or comment on iTunes so we know you're out there.

Or email me, on [email protected]

And don't forget to subscribe!

How much influence can you have as an individual investor? This was the question I asked Piet Klop, he’s senior advisor on sustainable investment at the Dutch pension fund PGGM and he’s a leading voice in pushing these big organisations to consider their impact.

While many pension funds are now using the SDGs as a framework to map their impacts, PGGM had already set themselves some key themes to tackle, well before 2015 when the SDGs started to build momentum for the private sector to make a change.

From an Australian perspective, this is even more interesting because the Dutch don’t get a choice of pension fund. If you’re in the health and welfare sector, PGGM is the manager your stuck with. While in Australia, most of us have the freedom to choose our super fund, and more and more people are voting with their feet, and switching to a fund that better aligns with their social and environmental values.

Piet has a lot of energy for this stuff and it was great to dig into the challenges of measuring impact for companies who are publicly listed, as well as how much of the credit an investor should take for a company’s good work. He’s got some really valuable insights there.

Dive in, and let me know what you think.

Please consider leaving a review or comment on iTunes, so we know you're out there.

Or email your host, John Treadgold, at [email protected]

And don't forget to subscribe!

Have you ever cried during a World Vision ad? Or, maybe you didn’t cry, and you felt guilty for it? They’re powerful feelings, we’re forced to ask questions about how we live our lives, and what impact we can have on people far away.

For the third episode of Good Future I’m speaking with Anthea Smits, she’s felt the full array of these emotions, and she acted on them.

She is CEO of The Difference Incubator, otherwise known as Tdi, an organisation that works with entrepreneurs to build social enterprises. They work here in Australia but they also do a lot of work in the Pacific; in Vanuatu, Samoa and Fiji, and that’s what our conversation focuses on today.

Anthea’s journey is diverse; she went from working for Disney, to setting up a charity in Cambodia, but that was before she decided to combine her business and branding skills with her passion for helping to build sustainable communities.

Dive in, and let me know what you think.

Please consider leaving a review or comment on iTunes, so we know you're out there.

Or email your host, John Treadgold, at [email protected]

And don't forget to subscribe!

Last year Daniel took on the role of CEO at the Impact Investment Group (IIG) one of Australia’s leading impact fund managers. I dug into the projects they’ve got on the go, including building the world’s tallest timber office building, which is pretty epic. As well as a new fund they’ve got in the works targeting retail investors, I was super interested in that one, but Daniel would only give us a taste, as it’s not yet officially announced.

I asked Daniel what brought him to the impact investing space. Plus, he offered some very sound advice about getting your act together and getting a little more purpose in your life. And he speaks from experience there having taken some big leaps of faith in his time.

This conversation was a really great one to have early on in the life of this podcast, Daniel is one of Australia’s leading thought leaders in this space in Australia, he’s done a huge amount to boost awareness, and this shines through in the conversation where he breaks down some complex investing concepts, making it all really accessible to those who aren’t as financially minded.

Daniel shows his skills as a story-teller and we discuss the role that story-telling has in helping people understand the power that we all have, to make a change, and to make impact.

This is Episode 2 of the Good Future podcast. We're still getting the hang of it, so we'd love some feedback.

Please leave a review or comment on iTunes so we know you're out there.

Or email your host, John Treadgold, on [email protected]

And don't forget to subscribe!

Abhilash Mudaliar is well equipped to help us understand the world of impact investing. He’s the Head of Research at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), which has an important leadership role in maintaining the integrity of the new financial paradigm that is impact investing.

While this term might not be familiar to everybody, that’s okay, because we explore the concept from all angles, and really break down this idea of investing and of making a profit, but doing it with purpose and with a positive social or environmental impact.

We talk about impact measurement, the challenges of setting universal principles, we dig into the different asset classes and how they’re evolving, but there’s also some really practical advice about how people who might not work in the sector, who might not even work in finance, can take a few small steps to bring more purpose to their jobs and to their lives.

This is Episode 1 of the Good Future podcast. We're still getting the hang of it, so we'd love some feedback.

Please leave a review on iTunes so we know you're out there.

Or email your host, John Treadgold, on [email protected]

And don't forget to subscribe!