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In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Julie Samuels, the founder, president, and CEO of Tech:NYC, a network of technology leaders dedicated to fostering a dynamic, diverse, and creative New York. Launched in 2016, Tech:NYC operates at the intersection of business, government, academia, and philanthropy, convening leaders to strengthen New York's innovation economy through policy, partnerships, and programs. We begin with some of Samuels's formative experiences at the intersection of technology and policy: a college internship at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, work as an IP lawyer and at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and her leadership of Engine, the national nonprofit focused on technology entrepreneurship and advocacy. We also discuss the context and conditions that would inform the launch of Tech:NYC: the groundwork laid by the Bloomberg Administration to foster the growth of the city's tech sector, a critical mass of tech firms in the city, and industry leaders like Fred Wilson, Kevin Ryan and Tim Armstrong who recognized that better and coordinated leadership could help shape New York's continued growth as the country (and world's) number two tech hub behind Silicon Valley. Samuels is passionate about the technology-city nexus. "Tech culture and tech zeitgeist really lend themselves to an urbanist way of seeing the world," she says. "People in tech have a systems framework, and big urban centers like New York are all about systems — think about things like public transit. This makes for natural connection between tech and urban centers." She notes that New York has been particularly successful in tech because of the diversity of its other industries: companies can apply and test technologies developed on the West Coast to other markets, from financial services and health care to real estate, hospitality, media, fashion, or wherever New York is the world's "center of gravity." According to Samuels, these dynamics underpin the sector's extraordinary growth: today technology is the city's fastest growing industry with over $30 billion in annual venture capital flowing to 25,000 startups and accounting for 300,000 jobs (64 percent growth over the last decade, 41 percent of net job growth since 2019) and nine percent of the Gross City Product. Samuels underscores the cultural reasons this growth is durable: "Tech is a creative industry," she explains. "It benefits from the creative energy of a big city… density, networks of different kinds of people, cultural institutions, night life. When I lived in San Francisco, I would meet tech people who lived in SF. Here, we have New Yorkers who work in tech." Tech:NYC's work has evolved over the last ten years, while remaining true to its mission "to ensure New York City is the best place to start and grow a tech company." For Samuels, this mission is two-fold: create the conditions for the tech industry to thrive and integrate technology into the life of the city in ways that uplift everyone. "As tech radically changes how all of us live and work," Samuels says, "Tech:NYC exists to ensure transition is as smooth as possible." As a research and policy advocacy organization, Tech:NYC focused its early years primarily on technology policy and the role of the tech sector in the city and state's larger economy. Today, Samuels notes, while Tech:NYC still works closely on tech policy — things like data privacy, broadband, or public private partnerships like Empire AI, which will provide state-of-the-art power for New York's top University researchers to develop safe, equitable, and responsible AI — it is also focused more broadly on basic "livability" issues like housing, education, and public safety that allow people to live, work and raise families in New York.  Tech:NYC's work also extends to programs like Decoded Futures, a capacity-building AI initiative that equips leaders from the social sector with the tools and skills to use AI to scale their impact, and the Grid Fellowship, which connects technology leaders with New York's public sector. And since its earliest days, Tech:NYC has undertaken many initiatives in K-12 and higher education and workforce development to invest in the participation of all New Yorkers in the tech economy. We discuss the challenges of the current moment, including the advent of AI and its attending economic and political complexities. Ultimately, Samuels says, "Progress is real; we're strivers, builders, creators. Let's lean into that, and make sure growth happens with intention and with the right guardrails. New York can lead on this."   Mentioned in this episode: Tech:NYC Built to Lead: New York's Momentum Toward Global Leadership in Applied AI, (Tech:NYC and Accenture, 2025)

In this Episode of Capital for Good we speak with Antony Bugg-Levine, a global leader in economic development, policy, and responsible business and investment. Twenty years ago, Bugg-Levine convened the meeting that coined the phrase "impact investing;" he would go on to co-found the Global Impact Investing Network, write a definitive book on the subject, lead the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and shape the ways capital flows to important economic, social and environmental challenges — giving more people access to fair finance, and opportunity. His new book, Investing in America, is as much a window into the inspiring work of "practical problem solvers" as it is a personal chronicle: in Bugg-Levine's words "one grateful immigrant's 250th birthday gift to the country that has given my family and me so much." In this wide ranging conversation, we discuss the formative experiences that animate Bugg-Levine's life-long commitment to expanding opportunity: his childhood in South Africa during apartheid and his later work in the country when the new Constitution afforded political rights that were challenging to achieve in the face of entrenched economic inequality; his experience in the US as an immigrant for whom the "American Dream" was both inspiration and reality — often because of access to "fair finance" like college loans and a 30-year mortgage; the recognition that these kinds of opportunities are increasingly elusive for many Americans.  Bugg-Levine, who is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, explains how "Investing in America" has a long and foundational history, citing the example of Ben Franklin, who rewrote his will in 1789 to create revolving loan funds for workers in Boston and Philadelphia to start their own businesses. The youngest son in a family of seventeen siblings, Franklin worked for his brother in a print shop, and only through a loan arranged by a friend was able to start his own small business that would change the trajectory of his life and make possible his contributions to community and country. Franklin's "core insight," Bugg-Levine notes, is that "hard work, grit, and determination are necessary, but not sufficient;" they often need to be linked to access to fair finance to translate opportunity into progress. Investing in America shows Franklin's legacy is alive and relevant, covering 70 case studies across 42 states and a broad range of topics that most Americans agree are national priorities: among them worker well-being and good jobs; housing and homeownership; clean, affordable, and resilient energy; education; health care; technology; natural resource protection; and direct access to capital. We discuss several. While clear eyed about many of the challenges Americans face, Bugg-Levine is also optimistic that solutions to these challenges often enjoy bipartisan support. He also believes that all of us have a role to play and cites tangible ways — from banking locally to voting for candidates who advance these solutions — everyone can participate. "Investing in America is not a spectator sport," Bugg-Levine says. "We as a people can be part of the project of making the ideas of the American Dream a reality for everyone."   Mentioned in this episode: Investing in America, (Antony Bugg-Levine, 2026)

In this episode of Capital for Good, we speak with two extraordinary media leaders — Christy Tanner '99, the president and CEO of New York Public Radio, an iconic and 100-year-old center for local and global media, and Carroll Bogert, the CEO of The City Reporter, the independent newsroom founded in 2019 to cover breaking news, investigative, and service journalism in New York City. In this wide-ranging conversation, we hear from these industry veterans about their early callings as reporters, their respective careers as pioneers — one using journalism to hold power to account, one forging new business models in the face of technological transformation — and their thoughts about the challenges, and opportunities, of the current moment in New York and around the world. We start with Tanner and Bogert's gravitational pulls to journalism and the formative experiences as reporters that would shape their careers in media. Tanner explains how as a young girl, inspired by the likes of Nancy Drew and Nellie Bly, the ability to "ask questions, investigate things, find out what's going on," and the creative process of writing "captured my imagination." Her first jobs at the AP and in local newsrooms in South Carolina and Tennessee taught her how investigative reporting could have tangible impact, prompting changes in government policies. For Bogert, a member of the generation of idealists who grew up on "Woodward and Bernstein and All the President's Men," journalism was "something noble… and world changing:" a way to "uncover abuse at the top and change history." As a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, she would chronicle the Tiananmen Square crackdown and the fall of the Soviet Union. As the industry evolved, so too did their respective paths. Bogert would go on to leadership roles at Human Rights Watch and as the founding president of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice in the United States. "The though line," she says, is that "challenging the abuse of power is the essential role of journalism. Power requires constant vigilance because it will trend towards abuse if it's not watched." Tanner, whose experiences included hosting a kind of proto-podcast in the mid-1990s, saw early on that "the internet was going to change media forever." Back in New York, she had a "front row seat to the invention of streaming as we know it" — newspapers, magazines, television, audio — and would become a leader in the digital transformation of legacy media companies like The Washington Post, Reed Elsevier, TV Guide, and CBS.  While both new in their current seats, Tanner and Bogert bring their expertise as seasoned industry leaders — and New Yorkers – to the roles. Tanner notes that while NYPR has grown into a multiplatform organization with radio (WNYC, WQXR), digital news, and podcasts with significant national and global reach, its local resonance with New Yorkers is remarkably strong. Bogert explains that at "this historical moment," when investigative newsrooms are disappearing, "local media is where it's at." She believes that the independence of nonprofit media organizations gives them "a particularly special role" to hold political leaders accountable and to rebuild trust in media. While acknowledging any number of challenges — in the industry, in a fraught political environment — Tanner and Bogert are optimistic: about the opportunities for organizations like theirs to collaborate, to "share best practices," to develop more sustainable business models, and to cultivate greater understanding of the need of philanthropy to support media as a critical pillar of our civic infrastructure. Mentioned in this episode: New York Public Radio The City Reporter

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Bob Steel, partner and vice chairman of Perella Weinberg Partners, whose career has spanned the pinnacles of business, government and nonprofit leadership. Following nearly three decades at Goldman Sachs, Steel held senior roles at the US Treasury, as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance under President George W. Bush, and in New York City government as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development under Mike Bloomberg; was CEO of Wachovia Corporation and Perella Weinberg; and along the way has served on numerous boards, corporate and civic, including at major universities like Duke, important ideas and policy organizations like the Aspen Institute, and several of New York City's anchor institutions. We begin with some of the formative individuals and institutions that would shape Steel's trajectory: his parents, who set an example of service to their North Carolina community; the attention of Dr. Joel Fleishman, a Duke Professor who challenged Steel to become a more engaged student; and the opportunity to join Goldman Sachs in 1976 when John Whitehead and John Weinberg took over the leadership of the firm. "I got on the bus at the right time," Steel says. Steel describes what it was like to work at Goldman Sachs in a period of extraordinary growth and globalization. Over close to three decades, he built several businesses across the US and Europe — "multiple careers in one institution" — and ultimately served as the firm's vice chairman and member of its management committee. "The moral of the story," he observes, "is that well-led firms that are growing create opportunities that are pretty special." In 2006, at the urging of fellow Goldman Sachs partner — and recently confirmed US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson — Steel went to Treasury to serve as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. Within a year, the country was in the throes of the financial crisis, and with the support of Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, Steel and his colleagues labored to prevent the worst impacts of the crisis on the American people, and to begin to steer the economy to more stable ground. After Treasury, Steel returned to the private sector as CEO of Wachovia, where he led the bank's sale to Wells Fargo. Soon after Mike Bloomberg recruited him to serve as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, where he would oversee the administration's five borough economic development strategy and job creation efforts across more than a dozen city agencies: tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in annual operating budgets. We discuss a number of the major initiatives that Steel and the Bloomberg team undertook, among them the creation of the Cornell Technion campus, today a center of applied science in the city and region. We also discuss Mayor Bloomberg's vision for long-term investments, and the latitude given to an exceptional and collegial cohort of talented commissioners. "It might be my best job ever, I learned so much," Steel says. Through these experiences, Steel has come to understand the distinct but complementary roles of the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, and their respective and mutually supportive "vectors of leverage." "You can't have successful business without government," he believes, "and you can't have good government without successful businesses. And then you add NGOs that provide exceptional seasoning and consciousness that is beneficial." Although no longer at city hall, Steel remains deeply involved in the life of the city, with board roles at Lincoln Center, Rockefeller University, the Hospital for Special Surgery, the Economic Club of New York, the Partnership for New York City, The Morgan Library, and the New York Climate Exchange. We touch on New York's recovery from the pandemic; why some of today's challenges, including affordability, are a function of the city's success (i.e., not enough housing for all the people who want to be in New York); the competition from smaller cities across the country as attractive places to live and work; and the opportunity and imperative to make long-term investments in the city's future: schools, infrastructure, arts, parks, among them.  We conclude where the conversation began: "I'm so appreciative of the organizations and people that helped me grow," Steel says. "If you did a balance of trade, I've gained so much more than I gave that I feel incredibly fortunate."   Mentioned in this episode: Cornell Tech

In this episode of Capital for Good, we speak with Angela Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City and the first woman to lead that congregation in its 185-year history. Born in Korea to a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother, Buchdahl is the first Asian American to be ordained as a cantor or rabbi in North America. She is also well known for her innovations in leading worship, reaching millions across 100 countries via livestream and cable broadcast. Her New York Times best-selling memoir, Heart of a Stranger, roots her unlikely story and experience as an outsider and boundary crosser in both ancient Jewish traditions and in the universal longing for belonging. Heart of a Stranger, Buchdahl explains, is both a particular and shared narrative. She tells us that, as a child, she often felt she was an outsider: Korean in America, American when she returned to Korea, and an unusual mixed-race family in the Jewish community. She connects this experience to her family's — starting with her mother who was born in Japan, where her family had been displaced, before returning to Korea and eventually immigrating to the United States — and to ancient Jewish narratives, from the biblical story of Abraham, a stranger in a foreign land, to millennia as diaspora outsiders around the world. Buchdahl also speaks of crossing boundaries to find home. "Home is where your people are," her mother told her, and then demonstrated how welcoming others (as an ESL teacher in Tacoma, Washington and a founder of an organization to assist new immigrants to the US — in Buchdahl's words, a "serial welcomer") could be transformative for everyone, creating community in the place of strangeness. This too, Buchdahl reminds us — the act of welcoming, with compassion and empathy — has roots in Abrahamic and other spiritual traditions and can be a powerful antidote to the isolation and polarization dividing us today. Agency and intentionality are central themes of the book, and of our conversation. We discuss what this means in the Jewish context — Buchdahl's decision and acts to define her own identity and path –— and its more universal applications: the spiritual imperative we all have to be boundary crossers. For Buchdahl, much of her early calling and connection to faith came through music, what she calls "my natural spiritual language." We explore how music has shaped her identity, her roles as cantor and rabbi, and the way she leads the congregation at Central Synagogue. Music is about beauty, she notes, but even more so about the "energy and electricity that comes when we're making it together." Buchdahl believes that much of her responsibility is to feel and modulate that energy.  We end with a broader discussion of leadership and what it means to have the "appropriate" amount of humility (in Hebrew, "anavah") to lead. Sometimes, Buchdahl says, even if it is uncomfortable, "you have to step in to fill that space," and all the more so in moments of destabilization. "You have to speak to people's fear, to then move forward and beyond." While there is no shortage of challenges — Buchdahl cites anti-Semitism, climate and technological change, isolation and polarization, to name a few — she also believes "there are ways to mine each crisis for the opportunity it provides us." We conclude with a return to agency — and exhortation. "Every day," Buchdahl says, "we can take one step towards building the world we want to live in." Mentioned in this episode: Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity and Belonging, (Angela Buchdahl, 2025)

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Marla Blow, the president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, the leading philanthropy focused on social entrepreneurship and innovation around the world. Over the course of this conversation, we learn how Blow's career in finance and financial inclusion, across the private and public sectors, would prepare her to lead a dynamic institution and community of innovators in this era of extraordinary change — and resilience.   We begin with important elements of Blow's origin story, including her childhood outside of Atlanta, a city (then) on the precipice of rapid growth, where she was drawn to the idea of helping people translate opportunity into long-term financial security. "I thought I could help people make better decisions," she said. That instinct would carry her to Wharton, Wall Street, an MBA at Stanford, and to Capital One, where she learned the discipline of applied behavioral economics and consumer lending. In the Obama Administration, Blow joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she began to see more clearly the full landscape of American consumers — including those who were not well served by the traditional financial system or many of its products. That realization led her to found FS Card Inc to provide fairly priced credit to underserved consumers, an experience Blow describes as a "crash course" in entrepreneurship and the capital markets. Following the successful sale of FS Card, Blow helped lead Mastercard's Center for Inclusive Growth, where she was able to pursue financial inclusion at scale.   Blow speaks candidly about the extraordinary moment in which she assumed the CEO role at Skoll in 2025. The dismantling of USAID and broader cutbacks of support to and from multilateral finance institutions sent seismic shocks through the social entrepreneurship ecosystem that Skoll has supported since 1999. "I don't think any of us could have predicted that things would shift in this magnitude, or that they would shift this quickly," she says. And yet, Blow also describes with great admiration the resilience of individuals and organizations "that have been able to figure out how to pivot," efforts the foundation supported with a $25 million "pivot fund." Blow draws on the analogy of a forest of seemingly freestanding trees that are deeply interconnected beneath the surface. "It's the roots that enable them to transmit nutrients, to transmit information, to rebuild and regrow after absorbing and experiencing a shock," she says.   We also discuss a signature dimension of Skoll's work: the role of catalytic capital in driving impact. Today, approximately 80 percent of Skoll's endowment, managed in partnership with the Capricorn Investment Group, is aligned with the foundation's impact objectives in climate change mitigation and resilience, economic opportunity, health care, and responsible stewardship. Blow explains that these kinds of investments are not concessionary — their "financial returns continue to meet or exceed the performance of comparable asset classes" — and are exemplified by social enterprises like Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, a 2025 Skoll Award recipient that transitions small businesses to employee ownership – and has enabled main street workers to increase their net worth by a factor of ten.   We close with Blow's sources of optimism. They begin, she explains, with community — the cross-ideological partnership emerging across philanthropy, the private sector's increased engagement, the deep networks built over more than two decades of convening social entrepreneurs at the Skoll World Forum. "We are going through something, it's going to take a toll," she says. "And there is a light on the other side of it. We can continue working toward that light."   Mentioned in this episode: The Skoll Foundation Skoll World Forum Transformation and Renewal in the Impact Ecosystem, The Skoll Foundation 2026 Annual Letter Capricorn Investment Group Evolving Philanthropy for Collective Action, (Stanford Social Innovation Review, Blow & Gips, 2024) Apis & Heritage Capital Partners Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

In this episode of Capital for Good, we speak with Tony Marx, the president and CEO of the New York Public Library, the nation's largest library system and the world's preeminent public research library. Marx's reimagination of this storied institution builds on his transformative leadership in higher education when he served as president of Amherst College. A distinguished scholar and political scientist, Marx's education — in the power of education — was forged by his experience in South Africa in the 1980s. We begin this wide ranging conversation with Marx's beginnings: his childhood in New York City's Inwood neighborhood, high school at Bronx Science, the intellectual care and attention he received from professors at Wesleyan and Yale, and his early passion for political science, inspired by his involvement in the anti-apartheid movements on campus and the "excitement of being involved in something bigger than myself, and thinking about social justice at scale." Marx would soon move to South Africa, where he helped create Khanya College, a free, residential liberal arts college for Black South Africans to prepare them for entry and success in the country's top universities, where they had long been excluded. Marx notes that his years in South Africa were "life changing," allowing him to live and work with "people who were living and dying for the rights of democracy that we take for granted," and teaching him how one year of high-quality education at Khanya could "undo" twelve years of a stunting K-12 system. "The power of the human mind, the power of education to feed the human mind, should never be underestimated," Marx says. These lessons would define his career and life's work. Back in New York, Marx's scholarship on Africa and questions of nationalism earned him tenure at Columbia, where he and his family spent thirteen fruitful years. Without extensive administrative experience or ties to Amherst, Marx was surprised to find himself a serious candidate in the presidential search of the country's leading liberal arts college, but soon discovered that Amherst's board was ready to lean into change from its position of strength. "When you're at the top of the game is when you should take risk," Marx believes. "It's a wild way of thinking, but it's the right way of thinking, but nobody thinks that way." With the board's support, Marx undertook a number of groundbreaking initiatives that would make Amherst an even stronger institution; he is best known for his efforts to increase significantly the economic diversity of the student body, improving the school's racial diversity, and academic standing, in the process.   In 2010, the New York Public Library came calling. Marx saw in the library's unusual combination of assets — a branch system that served millions of people in person each year (the most trusted and visited civic institution in the city) and the world's most used public research library — a 130-year-old educational institution ripe for "innovation at scale." Over fifteen years, Marx and his colleagues have invested significantly in the branch libraries, transmuting them into community centers, which today are, after the schools and CUNY, the city's largest provider of educational services, all free, from early literacy and career training to English language and technology instruction. In Inwood, Marx's childhood branch, the NYPL has partnered with various public development agencies and philanthropies to build 175 units of affordable housing atop a new library and community center, a model they are pursuing at other sites across the city. In wifi "deserts," the team has worked with internet service providers to beam broadband from local libraries into the neighborhoods. Technology has also been crucial to expanding global access to the research libraries, starting with vast and copyright-respecting digitization efforts. "The notion is that every book ever written should be available to anyone on the planet for free through their library — that's the aspiration and we're building it," Marx proclaims. He has not shied away from the promise of artificial intelligence to support this work, if AI can be harnessed in ways consistent with the institution's values including "privacy, veracity, and respect." "Even more than books, trust is our greatest asset" Marx says. He therefore holds that institutions like the New York Public Library have a role to play in shaping the responsible evolution of these new technologies, and to ensure equitable access to information and knowledge. "It all goes back to the same lesson I learned in South Africa… that the world learned in the Enlightenment," he concludes. "We have to respect everyone. We have to be compassionate towards everyone. We have to understand that everyone has the capacity to learn, to create, to inspire, to inspire others, to have empathy, so that we can live in the world we want to live in." Mentioned in this Podcast Khanya College Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960-1990, (Oxford University Press, 1992) Making Race and Nation: a Comparison of South Africa, the United States and Brazil, (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Amherst College The New York Public Library Neighbors Fight Affordable Housing, But Need Libraries. Can't We Make a Deal?, (Michael Kimmelman for the New York Times, 2024)

In this episode of Capital for Good, we speak with John Fabian Witt, the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School, a professor of history at Yale, and one of the country's most distinguished legal historians. The author of numerous award-winning books, including American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19 and Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History, Witt joins us to discuss his latest, The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America (Simon & Schuster, 2025). We begin with the genesis — of the Garland Fund and Witt's interest in writing about it. He explains that most histories of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case include mention of a "funny little foundation" that gave early support to the NAACP, launching the legal campaign that would culminate in the desegregation landmark. Witt discovered, however, that Brown was "just the tip of the iceberg." The Garland Fund — named for the young idealist Charles Garland, who at twenty-one refused a million-dollar inheritance — in fact had its fingerprints on a sweeping range of progressive movements in the United States that would shape American democracy. And Witt notes, the conditions of 1920s America that shaped the fund's creation — deep economic inequality, declining labor unions, surging ethno-nationalism, immigration backlash, threats to free speech — look "astonishingly like 2020s America." The fund would come to be known officially as the American Fund for Public Service.  We discuss the fund's three principal focus areas — labor, civil liberties, and civil rights — and the extraordinary cast assembled by inaugural director Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, to govern it, including labor leader (and New Deal "industrial democracy" architect) Sidney Hillman; James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP; and editors from The Nation and The New Republic. We explore some of the initial tensions between the fund's labor and racial justice priorities, and the eventual fusion of the two via efforts like A. Philip Randolph's creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the all-Black union within the Pullman Car Company. Witt suggests that this marriage of civil rights and labor organizing — "working class solidarity across racial lines" — was a central contribution of the fund and its grantees. We also touch on the fund's intentionally unconventional approach to philanthropy. Conceived as a kind of "anti-Rockefeller Foundation," the Garland Fund had virtually no staff and was deeply conscious of the "paradox" of "using a Wall Street fortune to attack capitalism and inequality." Many of the fund's progressive investments failed, and others would take years to come to fruition, paying dividends in the newly "plastic" political landscape of the Great Depression.  We conclude with lessons for today from the Garland Fund's experience. Witt asks, if the industrial union was the unit "well suited to manage mass production capitalism" and therefore "responsible for a good deal of equalization of the American economy" for much of the 20th century — what is the 21st century equivalent. "What's going to connect people together and to their economic futures such that some kind of decent political coalition of people who feel the security sufficient to be good citizens can come out of it?" This episode of Capital for Good was recorded at a book talk hosted by the Open Society Foundations in New York. Mentioned in this Episode:  The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, (Simon & Schuster, 2025) Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History, (Simon & Schuster, 2012) How to Save the American Experiment, (New York Times, 2025) NAACP CIO ACLU

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Deven Parekh, renowned technology investor, civic leader, and managing director of Insight Partners, the global software investment firm. Over the course of the wide-ranging conversation, we learn about Insight's deep expertise and differentiation in software investing, Parekh's own evolution as a business leader, and how he thinks about the current moment — as an investor, engaged nonprofit board member, and New Yorker. We begin with Parekh's early days. He entered college as a budding scientist, but soon "traded his early love of biochemistry for economics," and graduated from Wharton into a career in finance, first at Blackstone and then the merchant bank Berenson Minella & Company. When Parekh joined Insight Partners in 1999, it was a team of approximately ten; today Insight is a 450-person global firm, with over $90 billion in assets under management, and investing out of its thirteenth fund. Parekh walks us through the distinguishing elements of Insight's strategy, including a singular focus on software across the full investment continuum from early-stage venture to private equity like buyouts; a nearly 70-person strong and proactive sourcing team; and a dedicated operations group, Insight OnSite, that works in a hands-on way with portfolio companies. Having made over 140 investments over his career — across business cycles and dynamic market conditions — Parekh underscores the value of flexibility in Insight's approach. For example, "venture buyouts" — acquiring controlling interests in strong but not-yet-public software companies — initially structured in response to liquidity challenges in private markets — have become one of Insight's strongest-performing deal archetypes, with over 70 completed to date. Parekh also explains Insight's approach to artificial intelligence: as an investment opportunity, particularly in early-stage companies; as a tool to improve Insight's own operations; and as a lever for value creation across the portfolio, where the OnSite team helps incumbent software companies integrate AI into their products and business models.  We touch on Parekh's civic commitments, including as a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the US International Development Finance Corporation. In this moment of market and geopolitical volatility and uncertainty, Parekh believes nonpartisan policy institutions have a particularly important role to play. Parekh is also a devoted New Yorker. He believes the city — where Insight is based, where he and his wife (and partner in all things, including philanthropy) raised their family, where he serves on several boards — is thriving in the post-Covid world. "I feel really bullish about New York," he says. Parekh's optimism is also abundant when we speak about the next generation. "Young people give me hope," he says. And his advice to them: "Have a plan, but follow your passion." Mentioned in this episode:  Insight Partners Council on Foreign Relations Carnegie Endowment for International Peace US International Development Finance Corporation The Economic Club of New York NYU Langone Tisch New York MS Research Center

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Mellody Hobson, one of the country's preeminent investors and business and civic leaders. Hobson is the co-CEO of Ariel Investments, a board director of several Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations, and a nationally recognized advocate for financial literacy and economic inclusion. We begin with a discussion of the formative childhood experiences that would shape Hobson's personal and professional trajectory. Hobson recalls how, as a young girl on the South Side of Chicago who regularly experienced economic insecurity, she was driven to work very hard and "to understand money" as a path to economic security for herself and for others. "My purpose was sealed very early," she says.  After graduating from Princeton in 1991, Hobson joined the Chicago-based Ariel Investments. In the thirty-five years since, she has traveled from intern to co-CEO, building a $14 billion asset management firm with a mission to "transform the lives of everyone who entrusts us with their financial futures."  Hobson walks us through her evolution as a leader, and describes Ariel's signature approach to long-term investing in companies and sectors that are "misunderstood, ignored and underfollowed," where vigorous and original research allows the team to identify mispriced securities and the opportunity to outperform. According to Hobson, Ariel's success has derived from the principles and practices of active patience ("being patient is really hard, it requires great restraint, great study, great discipline"), bold teamwork, and independent thinking – the focused expertise that supports the "conviction to have a different opinion." This approach made Ariel a pioneer, first in small cap stocks, where the firm's founder John Rogers tested the long-term value investment thesis, and later in mid cap and international markets. In 2021, Hobson launched Ariel Alternatives, which included its inaugural private equity fund, Project Black, focused on building to scale minority businesses that will be tier one suppliers to Fortune 500 companies, and Project Level, a new vehicle focused on "changing the game" in women's sports. Given the seismic and secular shifts in the industry, Hobson believes women's sports are "the next big growth opportunity… the small cap of sports." Hobson speaks passionately about all she has learned as a corporate director. Today, she serves on the board of JP Morgan Chase, and was a director of Estée Lauder Companies, DreamWorks Animation, and Starbucks, which she led as chair. She is equally animated by her civic commitments, learning early on it was "part of your job to be of service to others… it was sewn into my DNA." We discuss the inspiration she finds in her work with a number of nonprofit organizations, including After School Matters, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a new cultural institution she has created with her husband and filmmaker George Lucas. Hobson is fervent about the power of storytelling, and her and Lucas's belief that "everyone's story matters." Hobson has captured part of her own story in the New York bestselling Priceless Facts about Money, an immaculately researched and illustrated children's book that makes learning about money and finance accessible — and fun. And it is in young people that Hobson sees hope, even in challenging times, as they affirm her faith in the wonder and promise of human potential. "If you believe that is true," she says, "then everything is possible. Not anything — everything." Mentioned in this episode John W. Rogers, Jr., Ariel Founder, Chairman, and Co-CEO A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Burton Malkiel, 2024) Ariel Alternatives: Project Black, Project Level After School Matters Bloomberg Philanthropies Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Priceless Facts about Money (Mellody Hobson, 2024)

Welcome to Capital for Good, the podcast where we hear from business and civic leaders about their visions, plans, and hard work to build a vibrant, inclusive and sustainable society.  Hosted by seasoned executive and award winning author Georgia Levenson Keohane, and presented by Columbia Business School's Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change, Capital for Good features in-depth and candid conversations with leaders across the private, nonprofit, and public sectors exploring solutions to some of our most urgent challenges. Season five offers an extraordinary line up of guests including business and civic leader Mellody Hobson, the Co-CEO of Ariel Investments; Tony Marx, the President & CEO of the New York Public Library; Yale Law Professor, legal historian and award winning author John Witt; Marla Blow, the CEO of the Skoll Foundation; Technology investor and Managing Director of Insight Partners, Deven Parekh; Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the renown religious leader and author of the new bestselling book, Heart of a Stranger; Bob Steel, whose storied career in finance and government service now finds him as Vice Chairman of Perella Weinberg; and impact investing pioneer Antony Bugg Levine. Learn more and subscribe today at The Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change at Columbia Business School –  or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Maria Ressa, the globally celebrated free speech champion, journalist, entrepreneur, dissident, and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work "to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." Ressa is a co-founder of Rappler, one of the most influential media platforms in the Philippines. For her reporting on the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa was threatened, arrested, tried, and convicted of cyberlibel, facing over one hundred years imprisonment. Today Duterte has been arrested by the International Criminal Court and awaits trial in the Hague, Ressa has been cleared of nearly all charges, and her work as a journalist and activist continues as she warns of the very real world challenges of online disinformation. We begin with Ressa's earliest days in the United States, when her family immigrated in 1973 after martial law had been declared in the Philippines. We discuss the importance of her education in those years, in elementary, high school, and at Princeton, and the support of those who "taught her to keep learning," lessons that would inform her pursuit of journalism when she returned to the Philippines. "I fell into journalism," Ressa says, as she found it to be critical "connective tissue between government and the people," and a way to "hold power to account." She and three fellow journalists launched Rappler in 2012; by 2016, when Duterte was elected President, Ressa found herself persecuted by the government — threatened, arrested, tried and sentenced to over one hundred years in prison — for reporting on its corrupt and increasingly authoritarian practices. We discuss Ressa's fight for her rights "as a journalist and a citizen" and her realization that technology could accelerate misinformation, distort truth, and blur the boundaries between the virtual and real world. "A lie told a million times becomes a fact," she says. Ressa chronicles these experiences in her 2022 memoir and call-to-arms How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future. Ressa cautions about the dangers of and linkages between the weaponization of algorithmically driven disinformation — and illiberalism worldwide. "Without facts you can't have truth, and without truth you can't have trust. The only government that exists without trust is a dictatorship: you can't have journalism or democracy." In her own work, she and Rappler are building upon the Matrix protocol, a secure, open-source decentralized platform that has the potential to become a global independent news distribution outlet.  Although she is deeply concerned — "I feel like Cassandra and Sisyphus combined," she says – Ressa also maintains her faith in the power of people to come together for change. "It's all about community," she explains. "We are standing on the rubble of the world that was; we need to take responsibility for the world we want. We can build a world that is more just, more equitable, more sustainable; we can do this if we decide to come together, to demand better." Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at [email protected].  Mentioned in this podcast: Maria Ressa Nobel Prize Lecture, (2021) How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future, (Harper Collins, 2022) A Thousand Cuts, (Frontline, 2021)

In this episode of Capital for Good with we speak with Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller and recent Mayoral candidate. As Comptroller, Lander serves as the city's chief financial officer, budget watchdog, auditor, and custodian of the City's five public pension funds, representing the retirement security — $275 billion in assets — of over 750,000 current and retired public sector workers. As fiduciary, Lander has ensured these assets are invested with a prudent, diversified, long-term approach, while also becoming a national leader on responsible investment when it comes to issues of climate change, worker protections, strong governance, and diversity. At the time of this interview, ranked choice voting had just concluded for the Democratic primary for New York mayor, with Zohran Mamdani winning in an upset over both Lander and former Governor Andrew Cuomo. We begin the conversation with Lander's early days working in community and economic development at the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center, where he learned how to use "capital for good:" creative financing for affordable housing, including new ownership and equity models for wealth creation for lower income families, small business support and job training. These issues would inform Landers' decade in the City Council, where he co-founded the Progressive Caucus and advanced legislation on workers' rights, tenant protections, affordable housing, education, and public safety. We also explore Lander's work leading the rezoning of the Gowanus neighborhood (and former Superfund site) to create 8,500 new housing units, nearly half affordable, and affordable art studios and community spaces, as a successful model of inclusive development.  Lander discusses the Comptroller's "most sacred responsibility:" its role as fiduciary of the city's pension funds, and Lander's work to deliver retirement security — achieve market rate returns — while stewarding resources "in ways that build on the values New Yorkers share." We walk through a number of examples where the Comptroller's engagement as asset owner led to better conditions for workers, greater accountability on corporate net zero commitments, enhanced board oversight, and improved financial returns. His office has also hit its performance targets while expanding the diversity of partner fund managers. "I believe firmly that attending to environmental, social and governance risks, the ESG work, is not just consistent with fiduciary duty, but an essential part of fiduciary duty," Lander says. In recent years he has worked closely on these issues with other comptrollers and state treasurers across the country. We touch on the New York City mayoral race, the twist and turns of ranked choice voting, and the developments just before the June primary that brought additional attention to the election: Lander's arrest escorting a migrant out of immigration court, the Office of the Comptroller's recovery of $80 million illegally removed from a New York City account by DOGE, and Lander and Mamdani's cross-endorsement. Of the latter, Lander notes, "it wound up unlocking a very lovely response I hadn't anticipated," a kind of hopefulness, as voters and young people especially saw that "politics can involve people working together towards shared goals for the city we love." Lander is clear eyed about the very real challenges facing the New York: affordability, government capacity to deliver a well-run city — to keep streets and subways safe and clean — and to manage budgets and growth in the face of significant headwinds from Washington. This means continuing to strengthen the cross-sector coalition he ran on to create what Dan Doctoroff has called "the virtuous cycle of a successful city," one that harnesses and celebrates growth while investing in the public goods that make that growth possible and more inclusive, and make opportunity and prosperity more broadly shared. If we can do that, he says, "I know we can keep that virtuous cycle going." Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at [email protected].  Mentioned in this podcast: This Is Brad Lander's New York, (New York Times, 2025) For the Long Term Who Should Lead New York City?, (New York Times, 2025)

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Emma Bloomberg, the founder and CEO of Murmuration, a nonprofit technology company that works with local organizations to amplify the power of civic engagement by providing the data, tools, and research necessary to build healthier and more equitable communities. Bloomberg has been working with communities and leaders for over 20 years to tackle some of our country's most pressing challenges. She founded Murmuration with the belief in the power of community driven civic engagement to affect sustainable systems change.   We begin the conversation with some of Bloomberg's formative personal and professional experiences: her childhood "rooted in deep civic engagement," and the belief that we all have "a responsibility to help make our community a better place;" the opportunity, just out of college, to work on her father Mike Bloomberg's first mayoral campaign; an early stint in city government focused on the creation of the 311, New York City's government service information line, and her time at the Robin Hood foundation, New York City's largest poverty fighting nonprofit and philanthropy.   Over the years, and through her work with many community-based organizations, Bloomberg observed how access to better tech and data infrastructure could make their work more efficient, effective, and therefore higher impact. Murmuration set out to solve this problem by serving community organizations with tools, data, and, more recently, research and insights — often tailored to a very local context.    We explore critical decision points in Murmuration's ten-year evolution, including the choice to understand community organization needs and fit with existing products in the marketplace, curate those off the shelf tools and data, identify gaps, acquire the IP of existing tech companies, and only then begin to create tools in-house with requisite partner knowledge and engineering and product development expertise. Bloomberg also explains what it means to be a truly mission driven technology company, electing to incorporate as a nonprofit (versus a fully commercial entity) to better serve the needs of community-based organizations.   We end with a discussion of Murmuration's newest offerings — original research and insights — among them a three-year deep dive into the aspirations, concerns, beliefs and behaviors of Gen Z, including those related to political and civic engagement, and "civic pulse," a continuous tracking survey that collects daily responses from Americans across the country about how they feel and what they care about, providing real time insights into community well-being and local engagement.    Despite the many challenges nationally, Bloomberg remains optimistic. "I am hopeful because I believe in the importance of community organizations; I think of them as the engine of sustainable change," she says. "Local organizing, in communities, in neighborhoods, that's where people can feel impact, and that impact is ultimately power."   Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at [email protected].  Mentioned in this podcast: Murmuration The Memphis Lift Insights by Murmuration Substack Murmuration Research and Insights (website)

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Kevin Ryan, one of New York's leading internet entrepreneurs and investors, and often called the "Godfather of NYC tech." Ryan is a co-founder of MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, Pearl Health, and Transcend Therapeutics, and every year founds and invests in new companies through AlleyCorp, the New York based venture fund and incubator. Ryan is also one of New York's driving civic leaders, serving as vice chair of the Partnership for New York City, a founding board member of Tech:NYC, and a gubernatorial appointee to numerous commissions focused on New York's economic and civic health and well-being. We begin with Ryan's early and pioneering days as a 1990s internet entrepreneur. As the president of DoubleClick, he grew the company in two years to 2,000 people across 25 countries, took it public, navigated the dotcom bust and sold it to Google in 2007. We discuss AlleyCorp's unusual model as early-stage investor and incubator, and Ryan describes AlleyCorp's most recent investment vertical, economic infrastructure, focused on the economic mobility of low- or middle-income Americans: "the 80% of families who power our economy." This has meant identifying and backing entrepreneurs pursuing innovations in health equity, fintech, and workforce development with companies like Patch Caregiving, a first of its kind employer sponsored emergency childcare provider for frontline workers. We also explore the growth and vibrancy of New York's tech industry. New York City is one of the world's fastest growing and most valuable technology hubs, and Ryan explains how and why it powers the local and regional economy, and measures the city and state can take to continue to foster the ecosystem and its critical contributions to New York's dynamism and social fabric. Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at [email protected].  Mentioned in this podcast: AlleyCorp Patch Caregiving Partnership for New York City Tech:NYC "Empire AI": New York State AI Consortium