Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Smart Impact Capital is produced by the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, with funding from USAID and Duke. The modules draw from a wide range of experience with entrepreneurs and investors, including in-depth work through our Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) with 25 impact ventures creating change in India and East Africa.

The lead author of the modules is Cathy Clark, Professor, Founder and Director of the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing, and Co-Principal Investigator for SEAD. Named in 2014 as one of America’s Top 20 women working in philanthropy, social innovation and civic engagement, Cathy is a leading authority on for-profit social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and impact assessment.

Building on 25 years of experience as a private foundation executive, impact investment fund manager, consultant, and policy researcher, including 15 years as a professor at Columbia and Duke Universities, Cathy has worked with hundreds of organizations, companies, funds and institutions working to develop innovative solutions to social and environmental problems. Prior to her academic work she was a professional impact investor, who founded and ran a foundation and venture fund incubated by Fred Wilson and Jerry Colonna of Flatiron Partners, a JP Morgan Partners affiliate, and was Vice President at the Markle Foundation, where she helped two foundation presidents manage the foundation’s portfolio of grants and program-related investments over seven years. Cathy holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She has published over 25 books, articles and case studies. Her blog posts have appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Huffington Post, Skoll World Forum, Next Billion, the World Economic Forum and on CASE Notes. She tweets at @cathyhc.

Co-producers and co-authors of Smart Impact Capital include Carrie Gonnella, Kimberly Langsam, and Erin Worsham of CASE. Expert Advisers include serial social entrepreneurs Natasha Goldstein and Alden Zecha. Video Production credits go to the incredible team within Fuqua Education Technology Services and Multimedia Production, notably Lucy Pless and Jason Van Sant. We are also grateful for the many contributions of local website design and development firm Cuberis.

In addition to these contributors, Smart Impact Capital has engaged with numerous CFOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and other intermediaries to inform and develop the content and tools.