Developing impact-driven leaders: Carry Rich of The Global Good Fund

CEO of the Global Good Fund Carrie Rich joins us today to talk about how their US-based fellowship program for impact-driven entrepreneurs operates, and how it has led to the development of other projects such as the 360 Learning Assessment, the Global Impact Fund and Fund the Good.

Rich shares that her beginning as a social entrepreneur was largely influenced by her personal values and her business mentor. Her strong moral compass and supportive mentor influenced her to co-found the Global Good Fund eight years ago. The fund married young people who cared about making the world a better place using entrepreneurship for good, together with other experienced business executives who wanted to turn their professional success into social significance. By pairing the two populations, Rich hopes that this will serve as a catalyst for good social change in the world. At present, the Global Good Fund has supported more than 160 entrepreneurs across 40 countries, and has built a community of more than 40,000 global changemakers.

Having been exposed to a variety of social enterprises, Rich notes the trends she has noticed as of late regarding the focus of these companies, namely: education, health and healthcare, financial inclusion, economic mobility, and environmental sustainability. She then discusses how they formulated the 360 Leadership Assessment as a way to measure the leadership effectiveness of social entrepreneurs.  Rich continues to say that traditional entrepreneurs must catch up to social entrepreneurs, because the latter are comfortable navigating the boardroom, halls of power, and even the slump while the former are not. For social entrepreneurs, there's a willingness to connect with people at all aspects of the continuum in terms of social class and economic mobility, in a way that there isn't the same interest in traditional entrepreneurship.

Rich also details the founding of their sister company, the Global Impact Fund. It aims to invest in socially impactful companies that produce market leading returns. They wanted to demonstrate that individuals could invest and do good, and do well, at the same time.

Lastly, Rich explains their recently launched Fund the Good campaign as a way to engage individuals to participate in different master classes to raise funds for the Global Good Fund. With all of these projects, Rich envisions a world in ten years where there won't be such a field as impact investing, or social entrepreneurship, because traditional companies and traditional investors will have built impact into the way that we all do business. And as a result, the world will be a better place.

Rich’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “Our philosophy was that if you invest in a high potential young leader, that leader will, in turn, grow business and positively impact the world.” (05:00)
• “And now, during times when people are losing jobs, and there's high unemployment rates especially in young people, there's an opportunity to go out there and make a difference yourself and start a company that can positively impact the world.” (07:07)
• “When you invest in a high potential leader, that leader, in turn, grows the business and positively impacts society. And really, the idea is, let's have a ripple effect.” (10:26)
• “We're really trying to bring together people from across the world who want to get together and in their way, however big or small it is, do their part to make the world a better place. ” (24:37)
• “I trust that, in the future, there won't be such a field as impact investing, and there won't be such a field as social entrepreneurship, because traditional companies and traditional investors will have built impact into the

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