Good Future

Rosemary Addis, like most of my guests, had some major career shifts in her journey towards impact. Early-on she was a partner at law firm Allens Linklaters. But She would leave the law behind to help develop the impact investing sector.

In 2013 she helped to establish the Australian Advisory Board, to the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce. And part of this process involved helping to build Impact Investing Australia, as the organisation that would manage it.

Australia was the only country outside the G8 invited to work with the taskforce, which has since evolved to become the Global Steering Group on Impact Investment.

She’s a senior advisor to the UNDP’s SDG Impact project.

All the links are at www.johntreadgold.com

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Antony Bugg-Levine has had a huge influence on the modern iteration of impact investing.

He was there at the Belagio Hotel when the term was coined in 2007, he went on to write a seminal text on the subject with Jed Emerson, and he continues his work through the Nonprofit Finance Fund, where they work to make capital available to worthy causes that otherwise wouldn’t have it.

Antony speaks quickly and I’m sure his mind moves even faster. I did my best to keep up with him in this conversation. He offered some rich insights, and it’s inspiring to get his perspective on the change the sector has experienced in the past decade.

The show notes are on the website at www.johntreadgold.com

And please continue the conversation on twitter and Instagram.

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Deb Nelson looks after clients and community engagement at RSF Social Finance, she’s based in the bay Area, and I was lucky to get a chance to sit down with her during my week in San Francisco.

The SOCAP conference is all about people and relationships. And business deals are simply another form of a relationship. It’s a profound concept, because it flips the idea of a negotiation being a battle, and it turns it into a much more intimate interaction between two people, and likely between two communities.

Follow all the stories at www.johntreadgold.com

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Cathy Clark has been coming to the SOCAP conference for more than a decade, and as she explains, there were no investors in the early days, it was just entrepreneurs. Since then the event’s certainly expanded, with all sorts of people coming together to share ideas and pitch their wares.

Cathy is Faculty Director at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (know as CASE) at Duke University. We talked about her journey from business to education, and how her own career evolved in-line with the growth of impact investing and the very modern shift by big corporations to consider on all of their stakeholders, not just their shareholders.

I hope you’re enjoying these bite-size conversations from the conference, please do let me know your thoughts at www.johntreadgold.com

And please do subscribe on your podcast app, so you don’t miss any of my other guests.

Sasha Dichter is co-founder of 60 Decibels, a company that was spun-out of Acumen a year ago, and which is laser focused on getting better data to inform impact outcomes.

Impact measurement has been a core topic of debate for as long as I’ve been investigating the world of impact investing. But the one thing everybody can agree on is that impact measurement is difficult, and my guest today is working hard to shorten the distance between investors, and the beneficiaries their working to help.

He explains that they wanted to flip the approach, from simply requesting data from companies, and instead, to making a data offer to those companies.

60 Decibels uses mobile phones to speak directly to customers to find out what matters most to them.

This was another of my SOCAP chats and I hope you enjoy the insights as much as I did.

For all the stories, head to www.johntreadgold.com

I had the opportunity to head over to San Francisco for the SOCAP Conference this year. It was a hectic week of talks, and meetings, and seminars. But, I also managed to squeeze in a bunch of interviews with some leading voices in the world of social enterprise and impact investing.

First up is Daniel Madhavan. I’m sure a lot of you will know Dan as the Melbourne-based CEO of Impact Investment Group. And for my most dedicated listeners you’ll also know that Dan was one of my first guests on the show, one year ago.

And so this episode marks the first anniversary of the Good Future podcast! I’m enjoying the ride so far, it’s taken a lot of work, but it’s all been worth it to speak to the amazing guests that have agreed to come on board and share their stories.

But I am trying to keep this short. I’ll be releasing a series of these super-short, bite-size episodes over the coming week so do hit subscribe on iTunes or your chosen podcast player to make sure you don’t miss any of the episodes.

And follow-along on the website: www.johntreadgold.com

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**SPECIAL episode**

We've done 32 episodes of the GOOD FUTURE podcast, so I’m doing something a little bit different for you this week. To say thank you for sticking with me, on this journey I wanted to shift the perspective to ask, what is the impact… of podcasting.

To do it I’ve reached out to some of Australia’s best voices.

First up I was lucky enough to get some time with Jules Lund, he’s the founder of the very successful marketing business, Tribe, and with many years in TV and radio he remains an important thought leader about all things digital media.

Rachel mason-Nunn is the host of the Good Will Hunters podcast and she has a special place in the heart and the origins of this show, so stay tuned for that section.

I also spoke to Glen James who is flat-out managing the success of his show, My Millennial Money. Where he helps this much-maligned generation of young-adults understand personal finance. He does it with a dose of humour and it’s clear there’s plenty of demand for financial advice without the jargon.

And Tommy Jackett. This guy is a content producing dynamo and his show, which is aptly titled The Daily Talk Show, is Australia’s only podcast that releases a show every day of the week. It’s a mammoth effort for him and his podcast, but he’s committed, and he’s learned a lot about the unique nature of podcasting and how to keep an audience engaged.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment or a review. And you can find links to all the shows I mentioned by heading over to my website, at www.johntreadgold.com

Radek Sali is best known for his work at Swisse Vitamins, he was key to the company’s early growth and he would later go on to become the CEO.

A few years ago he and his colleagues sold their final stake in the company they had built, and Radek went out on his own, to build a family office that invests in all sorts of ventures, that are all focussed on wellness. And, one of his key investments was to seed an impact investment fund, called, wait for it, The Impact Fund.

Radek is a big picture thinker, and he knows how to manage a dynamic organisation, but as I did research for this chat, and after speaking to people who work with him, it became clear that at the core of Radek’s power is his ability to nurture the people around him, and to promote culture, above all else.

And there’s ample proof in the fact that so many of Radek’s colleagues from his previous role have moved over to help him build his next venture.

Find links and contact details at www.johntreadgold.com

Enjoy!

The digital revolution has made the world a lot smaller. But, we’ve also seen live events like conferences grow more popular than ever.

Lindsay Smalling is CEO of the SOCAP conference, that stands for Social Capital Markets. It’s held every year in San Francisco, and its arguably the biggest event focussed on driving New Global Markets at the Intersection of Money + Meaning.

The SOCAP conference is being held on the 22nd to the 25th of October, and Lindsay generously gave us some time today to tell us all about it. She’s worked with the conference in a range of roles since 2014, she’s also worked at Impact Assets helping them develop their ImpactAsset50 list of impact investors. And she talks about her journey from being an arts major to finding her feet in the world of finance.

Now, hopefully my conversation with Lindsay gets you excited for the conference, I’ll be heading over, at the end of October, and if you are too please do reach out so we can catch up.

And if not, stay tuned because I’ll be bringing back a whole swag of great interviews and there’ll be lots of coverage on Instagram and Twitter.

All the details and links are on my website at www.Johntreadgold.com

Enjoy!

Simon Holmes a Court is a director at the Smart Energy Council, he’s a senior advisor to the Energy Transition Hub at Melbourne University, and he was also a director of the Hepburn Wind Farm cooperative.

It was the story that came from the Hepburn community that brought Simon to my attention. They said no, to the developers who wanted to build wind farms, and instead, they built them themselves! It was local money, building local infrastructure to make clean energy.

Simon has long experience in the battle to clean up Australia’s electricity grid and despite his furious activity on Twitter, calling our politicians to account, he doesn’t regress to complaining about burning fossil fuels, instead, he focusses on the opportunities, on the efficiencies of renewable power, and the huge market for our technology, and even for sending the power to our neighbours in Asia.

This was a great chat, we’re long overdue to have a renewable power expert on the podcast. And Simon was generous with his insights, he was slow and patient in explaining the complexities of a power grid and the challenges of running an efficient market.

All the links are over at www.johntreagold.com

Let me know what you think!

Enjoy