Investing for Good

01 Aug 2019

Investing for Good

Tracy Palandjian is at the forefront of the movement to use public and private capital to deliver social and financial value

Re: Tracy Palandjian (MBA 1997)

Topics: Finance-Impact Investing Economics-Developing Countries and Economies Leadership-Leading Change

Tracy P. Palandjian (MBA 1997) is CEO and cofounder of Social Finance, a nonprofit dedicated to mobilizing capital to drive social progress, and a 2019 recipient of the HBS Alumni Achievement Award. In this video, she talks about the organizations mission and the effectiveness of impact investing.

“Our mission at Social Finance is to mobilize capital—public capital, private capital—in service of society. The tool that we are most proud of is the social impact bond, which is essentially a public-private partnership that brings together government, nonprofits, and for-profit investors in an arrangement to deliver social value and financial value.

“The social impact bond allows government to transfer the risk of performance of particular social programs to the investors. So in the event of a project's success, the government repays investors. Our work has impact on the people that our projects serve. But I think our work goes far beyond the lives of the projects. Our impact is really about changing mindsets.

“Investors should be thinking more holistically about their portfolios, beyond risk and return, and to really think about impact––that governments can shift their mindset from buying outputs to buying outcomes, that nonprofits can begin to think about delivering outcomes for their constituents in a much more intentional way. This is very much what we're hoping to achieve over time.”

(Published August 2019)

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Featured Alumni

Tracy Palandjian

MBA 1997

Featured Alumni

Tracy Palandjian

MBA 1997

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