Joe Parel | Total Impact Capital
“I found myself a collection of round pegs in a square world. I’m forever thankful to everyone who has made and continues to make SIIF what it is. The generosity of time and money enabled me to operate at the nexus of finance and impact in my dream role…”
I can’t imagine what a recruiter thinks when they see my resume. Personally, I find my resume strange. I was hesitant to come to business school—it felt like I was trying to force a round peg into a square hole. I had spent 4 years as a consultant, roughly a year trying to perform standup comedy while managing a comedian, a year working on my own startup, and then a year converting someone else’s startup from a nonprofit to a for-profit. The path may seem non-linear, but for me it’s always been intentional and about impact in my own way to reach a perceived promise land—the world of impact finance. I knew business school, while a daunting financial commitment, was going to be my ticket in. After years of imagining my dream role, I finally got the opportunity to work in impact investing this summer.
I spent the summer at Total Impact Capital—an impact investment firm focused on bringing to market high quality investment products that are financially sound, make the planet a better place, and have the potential to scale significantly. The firm develops themed investment vehicles in several high impact sectors, including health, education, financial inclusion, and water with partners on the ground who have established track records of delivering results in a given impact area and anchor investors who prioritize that area for their portfolios. I spent my summer supporting and developing these types of unique investment vehicles for investors who require for superior returns, non-correlated deal flow, and a chance to positively affect the future of our world. To summarize my buzzword-laden verbosity, I conducted due diligence, created financial models, presented pitch decks and supported operational needs for social enterprise businesses.
I’ve come across two things, in my limited experience, that I find to be truly transformative: technology and finance. Imagine this simple example with two points A and B representing current state and future state, respectively—technology is the mechanism that creates points A & B, but finance is the vehicle that gets us, projects, companies, whatever it may be from A to B. Finance, as I witnessed it, enabled educational institutions to make their offerings more accessible and affordable by streamlining operations. The introduction of financing to remote parts of Kenya literally improved lives because it meant that women and children no longer had to breath in toxic fumes from kerosene lamps as they cooked and studied. I leveraged finance this summer to provide greater access to financing for smallholder cacao farmers in El Salvador, more affordable capital to small and medium size pharmaceutical business in Kenya, and safe drinking water for consumers in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, DR Congo, and Zambia.
I had a disheartening number of people tell me a role in impact investing wasn’t in the cards when I arrived at school. I heard that I didn’t have the finance experience needed. I heard that I didn’t have the operator experience needed. I received a lot of compliments followed by the word ‘but.’ However, I kept dreaming through all of it and SIIF is a big reason why. The mission and the community kept the dream alive. I found myself a collection of round pegs in a square world. I’m forever thankful to everyone who has made and continues to make SIIF what it is. The generosity of time and money enabled me to operate at the nexus of finance and impact in my dream role and allowed me to test my hypothesis—my time in impact investing only further solidified the notion that finance can act as a multiplier to the value of social capital, real assets, and the human experience. I still think my resume is strange, but who wants a “normal” resume.