I started my career as a teacher with Teach For America, hoping to replicate in my classroom a version of my grandfather’s rags to riches story, with education as the great equalizer for kids from underinvested communities. My former students would say I taught them well, but I learned more than I taught—about compounding, systemic challenges for people living in poverty, and the insufficient public programs that they often rely on to get by but that are never enough to get ahead. After seven years, I was disillusioned by the persistent gap in educational outcomes and the reality that, for some kids, no amount of talent or persistence was enough to overcome the obstacles.

Around that time, I was approached by Global Endowment Management (GEM), a leading outsourced chief investment office (OCIO) providing institutional investment capabilities for endowments, foundations, and other long-term investors. They had an exciting—albeit unusual—opportunity. It was 2012, and while the concept of responsible investing was not new, the field of impact investing was just entering the mainstream. Big-name universities were at the onset of multi-year battles with students over divestment, but foundations were starting to blur the line between investment portfolios and impact objectives. The firm brought me on to help figure out how to enable our clients to invest for impact.

The learning curve was steep—it had to be; we were building a practice that didn’t previously exist. Today, as investors continue to seek ways to integrate their values into portfolios, I wanted to share four lessons I’ve learned over the past ten years that can hopefully help other families jump into the world of impact investing.  

  1. You can invest for positive impact without sacrificing returns.
  2. ESG investing is not the same as impact investing.
  3. Impact investing complements philanthropy.
  4. There are teams that value impact and returns—work with them.

Read the full article about impact investing by Meredith Heimburger at the National Center for Family Philanthropy.