Jacqueline Novogratz, an international banker who started the Acumen Fund in 2001 to help finance fledgling local companies, will address a forum in Minneapolis Wednesday afternoon sponsored by the Hendrickson Institute for Ethical Leadership at St. Mary's University of Minnesota.
Novogratz is a pioneer in the field of "social capitalism," a hybrid of venture capital, lending and philanthropy that attempts to uplift poor people with sound investments that can improve conditions and enable them to earn a living through related goods and services.
Acumen-funded ventures have developed a drip-irrigation systems to help subsistence Indian farmers, improved housing and running water to Nairobi slums and brought a low-cost mortgage program to Pakistani villages.
The "patient capital" strategy is a market-oriented, bottom-up approach that contrasts with generations of top-down foreign aid that often doesn't touch those most in need.
"The Acumen Fund is a sustainable and ethical use of social capital to successfully fight poverty around the world," said Lindsay McCabe, the Hendrickson Institute's executive director.
Novogratz is the author of "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World," a memoir of her life's journey from a Stanford MBA-trained international banker with Chase Manhattan Bank to a development consultant with the World Bank who merged her finance background with a desire to make a difference one small investment at a time.
The forum will be moderated by Fred de Sam Lazaro, the Twin Cities-based, globe-traveling broadcast journalist who profiled Novogratz in Kenya in 2010 as part of his "Project for Undertold Stories." De Sam Lazaro, who recently became a senior fellow at the Hendrickson Institute at St. Mary's, tells those stories on his website (www. undertoldstories.org) and in his role as a correspondent for "PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."
Novogratz has demonstrated for the last decade that small amounts of capital, combined with business acumen and technical support can help enterprising villagers improve their lives. Acumen manages more than $50 million in capital through companies in several countries that have leveraged an additional $140 million in investments and that have created more than 35,000 jobs serving markets aimed at people who survive on $4 a day or less.