This November, we have the opportunity to hand the Fellowship over to you for the topics you really want to dive into! To support you in your work and to make connections for you in the space, we’ll let you direct theSkill Sessions for November. We will help you bring in the speakers and organizations that you want to network with and get more information from or support you sharing your own experience.
Finalized Sessions
A big round of applause - you called 14 skill sessions into life for November 🎉🎉🎉
Amongst them there are several ones where you will be hosting 👩🏫external guests, and some where you are stepping up to 👯♀️host each other.
The majority of calls will be 🎫open to public (share the event links below & with your networks!), whereas some are reserved for 🔓 fellows only(they will contain sensitive information or are for you to connect internally).
🎫👩🏫 04/11 - The Cynefin Framework - Creating System Change through Impact Investing w/ Dave Snowden - open to public
Time: 11am EST, 5pm CET, midnight SGT
Host: Sandrine
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Understanding complexity is vital for thriving in today’s ever-changing environments. This requires sensemaking; the ability to understand and react appropriately to different contexts. In 2021, Dave Snowden and the EU’s Science and Knowledge Service wrote a guide to managing complexity, providing tools for decision-making in complex settings. Building on this, the Cynefin Company’s agile programme offers tools for decision support, engagement, and collective sensemaking. It promotes deep, inclusive engagement and evidence-informed decision-making, useful in areas like agile development, marketing, and project management.
Join to learn about the Cynefin Framework & how it explains systems change & the work needed for real impact to happen.
The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. They believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. They are the world leaders in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
🎫👩🏫 05/11 -How to Design an Equitable Retirement Plan w/ Just Futures - open to public
Time: 10am MST, noon EST, 6pm CET, 1am SGT
Host: Lisa Akorli, Mika Weinstein and George Guerrero
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Join us for a webinar on #equitable #retirement plans and investing. Just Futures will share practical guidance for how to ensure your organization’s plan supports an equitable distribution of retirement benefits and unpack what is possible for organizations who want to collectively harness our retirement investments for social justice. The racial wealth gap is than the racial income gap, and yet conversations about equity in the workplace tend to focus exclusively on pay. Most employers have yet to take up the mantle of using the tools at their disposal to directly advance equitable wealth building for their employees. Because of the huge role that retirement savings play in household wealth, the design of a workplace retirement plan can just as easily exacerbate wealth gaps as it can offset them. At the same time, the over invested in U.S. retirement accounts are overwhelmingly invested in traditional financial vehicles that are fundamentally extractive and continue to reproduce massive inequality and environmental harm. This represents a huge opportunity for the progressive community to leverage our dollars towards racial, social, and economic justice, rather than allowing profit-driven financial service providers to continue to operate business as usual. Join Just Futures for a webinar that shares practical guidance for how to ensure your organization’s plan supports an equitable distribution of retirement benefits and unpacks what is possible for organizations who want to collectively harness our retirement investments for social justice.
🎫👩🏫️ 07/11- Networking and Connecting Together w/ Scholars of Finance - open to public
Time: 8pm EST, 2am CET, 9am SGT
Host: Aaron Yeo
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🎥 Recording
Join for a chance for networking with our friends at and our program Fellows through the Impact Investing Fellowship. Other organizations and groups are invited and we all join together to share and connect.
🎫👩🏫 12/11-Non-extractive Community Investment 101 w/ CommonFuture - open to public
Time: 11am EST, 5pm CET, midnight SGT
Host: Roselle Croitoru, Chelsea McDaniel, and Melonie Tharpe
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Join for an informative session from our friends at Common Future. Roselle Croitoru, Chelsea McDaniel, Melonie Tharpe, and Jaime Gloshay are helping to organize this session and we're glad they could be here. Roselle was a Spring 2024 Fellow and Melonie and Chelsea are with us this Fall. In this session, together we'll be exploring areas such as racial and economic justice, the transfer of capital and power to communities, the challenges and opportunities of funding this work, and operational enablement of these initiatives. After the presentation, they will be opening the floor for general reflections / questions, and then breaking out into groups according to interests in impact measurement & analysis (Melonie), investments (Chelsea) or investment operations (Roselle).
🎫👩🏫14/11 - How to do an Impact Investing Deal w/ Carl Valenstein - open to public
Time: 12noon EST, 6pm CET, 1am SGT
Host: Neal
So far in the Fellowship we've been giving a broad overview of the industry and many different aspects of the space. Maybe sometimes this has felt like we've been looking at this from 30k ft view of the impact investing space. We'll now spend some time with Carl Valenstein of MorganLewis having a better understanding of how people have put together their own projects, raised capital, and put together their first fund. Carl will walk us through a presentation he's given before where he's guided our Fellows on the path of what it takes to make an impact investing deal happen and share with us his perspectives and experience. Carl and MorganLewis have been longtime partners and supporters of NEIII and we're grateful to have them join us.
🔓👯♀️15/11 - Shareholder Advocacy Coffee Chat w/ Trillium Asset Management and Lisa Hayles - fellows only
Time: 12noon EST, 6pm CET, 1am SGT
🎥 Recording soon available
For nearly 40 years, Trillium Asset Management has been at the forefront of ESG thought leadership and draws from decades of experience focused exclusively on responsible investing. Trillium uses a holistic, fully integrated fundamental investment process to uncover compelling long-term investment opportunities. Devoted to aligning stakeholders’ values and objectives, Trillium combines impactful investment solutions with active ownership. Are you curious about the approaches that Trillium uses? Think this session will be a great challenge to the industry in general and how much traditional Asset Management needs to change. Join this talk with Lisa Hayles who is the Director of International Shareholder Advocacy, overseeing engagement with corporate leadership on environmental, social, and governance issues.
🔓👯♀️18/11 -Learn about the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation w/ Audrey - fellows only
Time: 12noon EST, 6pm CET, 1am SGT
Host: Audrey Atenico
Audrey will share her experiences working for DRK like venture philanthropy and impact-first investing, and on DRK's model of extremely deep engagement with the portfolio organizations over a 3 year period (far more so than traditional funders and investors).
🎫👩🏫 19/11-Success Model of Socially Responsible Business and Global Impact w/Dame Doria Cardova - open to public
Time: 10am PST, 1pm EST, 7pm CET, 2am SGT
Host: Azeeza
Redefining Wealth and getting Access to Cash. Secrets to the proven formula for building successful and profitable organizations. Learn principles, tools, and systems to reach financial success. Live a prosperous and productive life that adds value to humanity.
🎫👩🏫 21/11 - Holistic Approach to Impact Investing w/ Nina Cejnar - open to public
Time: 11am EST, 5pm CET, midnight SGT
Host: Sandrine
🎥 Recording
🎫👯♀️ 24/11-Conscious Capitalism vs Impact Investment w/Azeeza- open to public
Time: 10am EST, 4pm CET, 11pm SGT
Host: Azeeza Jalaludeen
Why the Business & Wellness Tourism industry needs us? How Conscious Capitalism serves the purpose? The challenges of Conscious Capitalism and Impact Investment. Which will you choose for this industry? Presenting 21st Century Sociomity (Social Equanimity) system, that demonstrates solutions for global peace through global business. Explore the Conscious Tourism Framework & Game Theory Model (with Case Studies) as Solutions to serve the purpose WITH profit, aligning with Impact Investment fundamentals. Will also draw on Conscious Leadership - The 7 wisdom Framework to live impactful life. An Interactive learning session with discussions to challenge the concepts & case studies, and activities with roadmap to take inspired actions.
🎫 👯♀️- Human Rights Compliance as Risk Management w/Pilar - open to public
Time: 12noon EST, 6pm CET, 1am SGT
Host: Pilar Sorensen
🎥 Recording
Join for an overview of human rights compliance and the implications in investor relations and risk management. This will be a really diverse session as Pilar Sorensen shares with her background and current work. She would draw on her experience in investor relations and fund manager/corporate engagement in nonprofits. She would introduce the work she provides through her consulting firm. She'll also share from her experience working for Majority Action and get into proxy voting guidelines/policy and data in this area. Do join for this diverse session with a chance for advice and info on breaking into the space yourself.
🔓👯♀️26/11 - Career Transitions Coffee Chat w/ Joanna, Noba & Camilo- fellows only
Join for some space to discuss and share resources as it relates to Career Transitions. This is a space for you and your peers to help each other in the learnings on how to transition into impact careers and what steps you can take to make this happen.
Organizing
There are 2 options:
A - You can design & host a session yourself, sharing from your experience
B - You can propose an organization/speaker you would like to hear. We'll help invite the organizations and speakers you are interested in networking with, and you could even host this person yourself (introduce, moderate, Q&A).
Timeline
September - suggest speakers and/or sign up to host a session
October - review and invite speakers and/or prepare your session
November - host skills sessions to complement your learnings
December - share learnings with our community
Information for hosts
We created a calendar invite for each session. I set it for 1 to 1.5 hours, so there is plenty of time, but it can be as short as you want it to be. If you feel like using the remaining time for networking, please do so. Also, please check the title and description. We can update this with any suggestions you have.
The event will automatically start recording in our cloud so we can share the recording with the Fellows who cannot join live. Please let the recording continue on its own, and we'll trim off any extra time at the beginning and end.
Feel free to invite people using the calendar invite. The session can be as open as you would like it to be, with others in your network benefiting from the workshop. We hope the session can benefit you and your work, as much as it will help the fellows learn.
Finally, we'll created social media announcements that you can use to promote your participation and co-creation. We'll publish this announcement ourselves on the day of your session. You can publish them whenever you would like.
Thank you again for your contribution. I know that with your help, we're living up to our principle of making the Fellowship co-creative to the interests of our Fellows. You are helping them go deeper into topics that are helpful to their careers.
Please let me know soon if there are any issues or additions. We will make updates to the sessions till the end of this month and then lock in the details so the Fellows can plan their time accordingly.
Feel free to reach out to us in case you have any questions!
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In this session, we'll explore some on hand experience of impact investing in Uganda. Self employed / direct action / genuine relations. To introduce Nina Cejnar and her work, here is a link to a podcast where she explains her learnings from impact investing, and her vision. And here is a paper she recently wrote about the “wealth of Uganda” that we in the global north have lost a lot.
🎫👩🏫 22/11 - Catalyzing Change through Capital: The Business Angel’s Role in Driving purpose driven innovation w/ - open to public
Time: 11am EST, 5pm CET, midnight SGT
Host: Cecilia Raza
Catalyzing Change through Capital: The Business Angel’s Role in Driving Purpose-Driven Innovation: this session will showcase how business angels like Dr. St. Hilaire at ADA Venture fuel innovation by supporting founders whose ventures prioritize societal impact and ethical practices, aligning financial success with purpose-driven missions.
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🎫👩🏫 28/11- Sustainable Investment in Development Economies w/ - open to public
Time: 5:30am EST, 11:30am CET, 6:30pm SGT
Host: Sibabrata Choudhury
We'll have Nirmal Beura, Head of Carbon Project Development, at ClimatePartner Impact chat with us. Mail ID: nirmal.beura@climatepartner.com.
Please completesoon so that we will have plenty of time to schedule your session and/or invite the speakers. Remember that outreach can take time, and we will need to coordinate with each speaker's (or your) busy schedule. We're confident many will want to join our program and with your help providing sufficient details we will be able to make the process easy.
We'll leave it up to you to host the session however you'd like. If you want to create breakout rooms, one of you will first have to claim host privileges. To do so, use the code 217993 in the participant tab (click 'claim host'). You can also use the Zoom room whenever you'd like for coffee chats or meetings for your projects: