The Mission Driven podcast featuring Karina Wong
“Entrepreneurs are the ones who are driving change and bringing about innovation. The more diverse set of entrepreneurs I can support along the way, hopefully the more impact I can have in the world.”
Our Head of Investments Karina Wong was recently interviewed by Richard Brubaker on the Mission Driven podcast.
Karina spoke about her career trajectory, from the UN to investment banking, ultimately leading to her 20-year career in impact investing. She shared her personal impact thesis, guided by her passion for working with entrepreneurs, and her advice to other impact investors.
Other insights include:
- How to create genuine partnership and the importance of trust in the investor-entrepreneur relationship:
“If an entrepreneur tells you they’ve never failed, that’s someone you can’t trust.”
- The limitations of grant funding, what we mean by catalytic capital, and why funders must work together to shift capital flows and affect systems change:
“You’re halfway there by just talking to each other, because we need a lot more capital to be crowded in.”
- How capital flows in Africa are changing and how Small Foundation hopes to see the investment ecosystem evolve, particularly for agriculture.
“We have a long-term view; we know poverty isn’t going to be solved overnight. We hope to make incremental changes that will catalyse other changes. We say the returns will get there, it’s just a matter of timing, and we’re willing to take the risks to make those changes happen.”
Watch Karina’s full interview on the Mission Driven YouTube channel.
Mission Driven is a series interviewing entrepreneurs and ecosystem actors whose mission is to scale their solutions against the environmental, social, and economic challenges we face.
