The Reconstruction

Ipshita Mandal-Johnson was raised in India and says growing up in an unequal society helped her overcome limitations. With a new life sciences fund, Mandal-Johnson is again going beyond what has historically been possible. Mandal-Johnson and co-founder Giorgio Reggiani are investing their Global Bio Fund exclusively in women-led bio startups with solutions in health and wellbeing, food and agriculture and energy and environment. Women-led companies generate more revenue with less capital and return a higher investment rate of return than male-founded firms

The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, originally founded to incubate green businesses to address social challenges, was relaunched in 2017 to address a major piece of unfinished business: Atlanta’s racial wealth gaps. Latresa McLawhorn Ryan, the initiative’s managing director, joined The Reconstruction podcast to talk about strategies to build income and wealth for Black Atlantans.

Tommy Johnson and Fennie Wang are developing a certification process to authenticate products of Black culture. Through a blockchain-based cryptographic mark, MWBC certifies products as ethical commercial uses of Black culture, even as they change hands over time.

With her team at Insight Center for Community Economic Development, Anne Price last summer called for “a serious and sustained effort to center Blackness and the Black experience as a necessary strategy to ensure economic liberation for all Americans.” ‘Centering Blackness’ in the U.S. became one of the founding principles of The Reconstruction, ImpactAlpha’s podcast series that aims to connect the people and ideas moving capital towards justice.  “I think that centering Blackness creates space for all people to be seen, and that can be restorative,” Price tells host Monique Aiken. “If we want true liberation, we have to solve for the fundamental harms, and build for a future beyond them.”

A just Reconstruction requires an understanding of how the country’s past shapes its present, and how the Tulsa Race Massacre and the systemic injustices surrounding it undermined wealth-creation across generations. Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, founder of the Terence Crutcher Foundation and Greg Robinson of Tulsa’s Met Cares Foundation join host Monique Aiken to reflect on the impact of the massacre on survivors and descendents.

Investing in the success of women and girls is the closest thing to a silver bullet solution that humanity has. Yet a mountain of facts haven’t been enough to motivate much change. Why, and what can we do about it? This question has informed a century of movement-building by women leaders around the world, including Marime-Ball, Founder and CEO of Women of the World Endowment.

Camelback Ventures' Kelli Saulny, reflects on inheritance – the wealth we pass down from grandparents to parents to children, and the systems and structures that perpetuate inequities by blocking access to wealth accumulation.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation says it has nearly fulfilled the commitment made three years ago to align 100% of its $450 million endowment with its mission goals – and confirmed that aligning foundation assets  with positive impact turns out to be a way to make a decent return as well.

A social scientist and founder of TheCaseMade, Tiffany Manuel has released a blueprint for “strategic case-making” to help leaders on the path to what could be called a new Reconstruction.

Illumen Capital's Daryn Dodson joins host Monique Aiken to discuss how reducing racial bias in asset management can optimize performance and boost global prosperity.