JEI Journeys

JEI Journeys are a series of Q&As with JEI Fellows about the paths they’ve taken to financial activism and what they’ve learned along the way. For this post, we interviewed Nikishka Iyengar, founder & CEO of The Guild, about prioritizing collective wellbeing, a model for community ownership and the importance of self-care when engaging with collective trauma.

The Guild is an Atlanta-based organization building community wealth and power through cooperative real estate, entrepreneurship programs and access to capital for marginalized communities. Their alternative model for real estate development aims to improve the ability of communities to increase asset ownership, anchor jobs locally and ensure local economic resilience.

JEI: How would you describe your community wealth building work? 

NI: Community wealth building is about prioritizing collective wellbeing over individual profit. At The Guild, we do that by building an alternative model for real estate development that enables local communities—especially Black and other communities of color and working-class communities—to collectively own and control assets in their own neighborhoods. In this model, instead of developers and outside investors making decisions for and profiting off of marginalized communities, the communities determine what happens in their neighborhoods and benefit from any development taking place. 

JEI: What are you doing that brings something new to the table in terms of community wealth building? What value are you seeing from that?

NI: The Guild is working on a Community Stewardship Trust that is set up to acquire vacant, underutilized assets, or assets otherwise sitting in extractive models, and develop them into community-owned assets that meet the material needs of marginalized communities. The model allows residents within a ZIP code to invest whatever amount of money is meaningful to them into the CST, and through that investment gain decision-making power about what gets developed in their neighborhood. Community investors also receive a financial return via dividends and share price appreciation. Instead of surplus value being extracted from neighborhoods by developers or outside equity investors, it remains within the community.

The CST can acquire and develop assets like affordable housing, neighborhood grocery stores, daycare centers, commercial space for Black-owned small businesses and meeting spaces for nonprofits. It is tasked with managing the long-term affordability of these assets as well as democratizing any financial returns from development.

As we stand up the first CST in Atlanta, we’re already seeing value in giving people an opportunity to experience land, housing and real estate in an alternative, tangible, non-extractive way. We’ve created a container to collectively question status quo assumptions and design different models and institutions that reflect our values and desires for self-determination and liberation. 

JEI: What lessons can you share about what it takes to be an effective partner to people seeking to build community wealth? What do you wish someone had told you when you started doing this work? 

NI: This work requires you to wear multiple hats, often all at once—from community organizer to capital and resource mobilizer, and everything in between. It requires you to navigate complexity and nuance well. One day you might have to become an expert in investment or tax law, and the next you might have to learn to be a skilled trauma steward and hold space for someone dealing with a traumatic event like an eviction. It can take a lot to balance all of that. 

This isn’t to say you have to be perfect at everything—in fact, recognizing that perfectionism is an expression of white supremacy culture and unlearning that trait is also an important lesson. But being an effective partner in this kind of systems change work does require us to be skilled at navigating complexity and practicing emergent strategy. 

Effective community wealth building necessitates learning to navigate conflict, which is an inherent part of any relationship. If managed well, conflict can even generate progress. 

I wish someone had told me when I first started this work that I needed to learn to take better care of myself. As the world continues to be on literal fire, and structural violence continues to impact our communities, it’s easy to give so much (all) of yourself to this work that you burn out. And burnt-out people can’t build life-affirming institutions.

JEI: What other advice do you have for leaders who want to support community wealth building?

NI: Get clear on your values and double down on them when times get hard and things get uncomfortable (as they often will). Community wealth building is about going against the grain of capitalism in every way. Doing this over a sustained period is incredibly difficult without a clear sense of your own personal values—and your team’s and organization’s shared values. You’ll also need to clearly articulate what principled compromise looks like to you and your collaborators because operating within capitalism will always require that on some level.

JEI: Can you tell me about a project or aspect of a project that you’re proud of? We’d love to hear a community success story. 

NI: I’m proud of our recent launch of the People’s Community Land Trust here in Atlanta. Through the PCLT, we’re acquiring and renovating homes, taking them off the speculative market entirely, and turning them into permanently affordable housing for low- to moderate-income residents across the city, with a specific focus on residents currently battling displacement.

Nikishka Iyengar is a systems entrepreneur working at the intersection of finance, climate action and racial justice. She is the founder and CEO of The Guild, a real estate company creating spaces for social change through new economic models focused on community wealth building. She is also the owner of Whole Systems Collective, an impact consulting collective working towards a just and regenerative economy through two key initiatives – the transformation of our financial systems, and climate action through carbon drawdown and responsible stewardship of our natural resources. Previously, as a sustainability consultant at a top management consulting firm, she helped her clients unlock ~$1B worth of value from renewable energy, water stewardship and emissions reduction opportunities. Then, as a product manager at a waste tech startup, Nikishka built software (including artificial intelligence products) to allow companies to uncover waste diversion opportunities within their supply chain and operations. Nikishka was recognized by GreenBiz as a “30 under 30” emerging leader in sustainability. She has a BBA in Finance, a BA in Economics and an Interdisciplinary Certificate in International Development from The University of Texas at Austin.

JEI Journeys are a series of Q&As with JEI Fellows about the paths they’ve taken to financial activism and what they’ve learned along the way. For this post, we interviewed Kim Pate, managing director of NDN Fund, the lending and investing arm of NDN Collective, about overcoming entrenched barriers to Indigenous prosperity and honoring community-driven solutions.

NDN Collective is is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, NDN Collective is creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.

JEI: How would you describe your community wealth building work? 

KP: I help Indigenous peoples defend, develop, and decolonize their communities by increasing access to funds that can be used to fight resource extraction; build strong businesses, homes, and infrastructure; and restore culture. This work is focused in places that have been subject to colonization and therefore have experienced poverty for hundreds of years.  

JEI: What are you doing that brings something new to the table in terms of community wealth building? What value are you seeing from that?

KP: In 2016, I joined the board of directors at Nimiipuu Community Development Fund, a Native community development financial institution serving the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. Since then we’ve provided consumer and business loans to many Nez Perce tribal citizens. Through our lending, tribal citizens have built better credit, paid off predatory payday loans, and survived the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. 

Businesses financed include a daycare center, a café, a smoke shop, and a tourism company. These businesses are creating jobs and prosperity for the reservation and bringing back the Main Street business sector that has been gone since most can remember. Even more than that, they’re inspiring our youth and giving them hope for brighter futures. 

JEI: What advice do you have for leaders who want to support community wealth building? 

KP: In many cases, there are ample opportunities available to both investors and lenders to be a good relative by listening, learning, growing, and challenging assumptions and processes that create barriers to Indigenous communities thriving on their own terms. It’s never too late to tackle what seem like deeply entrenched barriers to economic prosperity in Indigenous communities. But it takes a commitment to finding out what’s needed and what’s already working, and to really leaning into community-driven solutions that will make a difference.

JEI: Do you have any lessons to share about being an effective partner?

KP: From my experience as an Indigenous lender, we succeed when our loan relatives succeed and when we meet them where they are. Based on our knowledge of what’s needed—capital in the form of debt and equity, plus assistance with various elements of the project or business—we bring a cohesive set of strategies that we call braided capital. We may provide a loan accompanied by a grant and other resources that synergistically support the growth of the project or business throughout the life of the loan. I encourage other leaders to tap into what the need is for the people they serve and create a similarly tailored approach.

JEI: Can you tell me about a project or aspect of a project that you’re proud of? We’d love to hear a community success story. 

KP: Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop in New Orleans, owned and operated by a Lakota woman, has become a community resource for remedies, plant knowledge, healing, and social change by utilizing an ecological and economic sustainability model. During the pandemic, the team had to scale back operations due to the lack of travel and tourism, but NDN Fund’s loan allowed the shop to resume its pre-pandemic service levels, expand its online presence to serve a national market, and hire more medicine makers and herbalists.

We also provided power-building resources to Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop, including hiring Nativ3 (an Indigenous team of creative experts) to develop a new website that brings to life a unique, one-of-a-kind, mobile-friendly experience encompassing access to products, education, and knowledge-sharing. On the back end, Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop will be able to track how well the website is meeting the needs of the target audience so that there can be continuous improvement. We recently expanded this contract with Nativ3 to include social media marketing, another way to support the business’s growth and expansion.

In addition to all that, Miss Anne is positioning the shop to offer electricity through a solar generator in the case of climate events like Hurricane Katrina. Local residents will be able to go there for power and to receive alternative medicine as needed for themselves and their loved ones.

Kim Pate, NDN Fund Managing Director, is a descendant of the Eastern Band Cherokee and Mississippi Choctaw tribes. Pate leads the daily operation of the organization, supports communications and evaluation, and plays important strategic and communications roles within NDN Collective.  She has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Stanford University and a Juris Doctorate from University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. Pate is admitted to practice in Nez Perce Tribal Court and California.

This is the fifth in a series of Q&As with JEI Fellows about the path they’ve taken to financial activism and what they’ve learned along the way. For this post, we interviewed Ain Bailey, founder and lead designer of  New Seneca Village and a  philanthropic strategist, about feeding her long-term vision.

New Seneca Village is a retreat space and social ecosystem seeking to secure gorgeous land and a founding endowment in order to provide justice-focused leaders and healers with access to time, space and nature within an intentional community centered on restoration, connection and visioning – in perpetuity.

JEI: What is New Seneca Village today? How much of your vision has been fulfilled, and what’s next?  

AB: Today New Seneca Village is entering the third year of our pilot phase, hosting women and non-binary leaders and healers of color in an experience centered on restoration, connection and visioning for the sake of their sustained leadership. We continue to partner with existing retreat centers to host up to four residencies a year while organizing to collectively own our own retreat center space so that we can significantly expand the number of Villagers we can host, while deepening our own ability to be adaptively responsive with our offerings and space.  

New Seneca Village is a love offering born out of our knowing what our leaders, across sector, issue area and region/country, are dealing with, which is often similar patterns of negligent and targeted abuse at the hands of institutions and organizational actors who are not ready to make real space for the presence or contributions of leaders of color. These repetitive patterns exist inside of a broader culture that celebrates productivity at all costs, while sidelining reflection, intuition, the creativity that lies in dormancy and the power that is accessed through our connection to ourselves, to nature and to our communities.  

Our current systems ask our leaders to solve many of our society’s most egregious issues and yet provides them with often conditional funding that is nominal for the current work, much less for the work that lies ahead which requires that they are funded also for nimbleness and creativity. We want our leaders to feel abundantly resourced so that they can connect easily to their wise inner selves as they expansively vision and guide our progress.  

New Seneca Village is an invitation into a self-guided liberatory embodiment practice, and it is designed to be a paradigm shift opportunity. At the same time, the productivity programming of capitalism, philanthropy and nonprofit culture is strong and insistent. We want to make sure that the Village experience, the relationships we build and the intentional and impromptu conversations that center our well-being, dreams and visions continue well past the sacred time we share together and this work is still emerging.  

There are many fascinating patterns and questions that continue to emerge in this offering, and they continue to signal the importance of our founding vision of a permanent retreat center that is designed and governed by us and for us. We are actively looking for donors who understand our work, resonate with our legacy vision and can commit to funding us comprehensively, extending beyond the acquisition of land to the (re)development of structures for the intended use of the property, and for appropriately compensated staffing and ongoing self-determined sustainability. This means funding New Seneca Village in a way that allows us to be good stewards with and for the land (and the structures on it), while remaining centered on our offering and all that it takes to be engaged with and responsive to our Village community.  

JEI: When did the vision for New Seneca Village come to you? Did it seem feasible? How did you respond to it? 

AB: The vision for New Seneca Village came to me roughly eight years ago, and I rejected it immediately as someone else’s work to do. For years I simply ignored the vision because it felt too big and too hard to do right. Creating this vision with intention and the appropriate level of resources was especially important because our work is focused on pouring into communities that too often get shortchanged. In time, I realized that the vision had been working in and on me despite my initial rejection and that I was being led to relationships that significantly shaped the eventual Village offering and to experiences that gave me access to resources and connections to potentially make the vision possible. 

My JEI experience—especially the intentionally held container of both introspection and deep listening—supported my ability to communicate my vision, knowing that it would be held with respect. Being with others over the nine months of the experience allowed for the development of trust, which is only expanded whenever I am able to gather with Fellows from my own and other cohorts. JEI attracts such interesting people and creates an environment where we can share not just our professional strategies and innovations, but also our personal passions and heart-held questions.  

All of this resonates personally and within the New Seneca Village vision, which is more interested in questions—and how they inform, expand and guide us—than it is interested in answers, which can often shut down crucial elements of living, creation and experimentation. 

JEI: How do you continue to feed your vision?

AB: New Seneca Village is an invitation to practice the future now. It is a liberated space for leaders and healers to strengthen their connection to their own sovereignty and to their innate and sacred purpose. And to all of the resources that are beyond the limitations of funding and organizational structures.  

To be a useful steward of this transformational work that is alive at both the individual and the collective level, I steep myself in solitude and prayer. Prayer is shorthand for my practice of devoting time, energy and commitment to my intentions for this work while asking for and remaining open to direction.  

In this practice of holding vision, I spend a lot of my time daydreaming generative questions and hosting intentional conversations. How do we get free? Or does this get us free? are the questions that I hold most frequently as I continue to be present to all that is unfolding now for and with Villagers and the Village team.  

I find my answers most often in nature, where it is easy to wait, listen and look for wisdom as shared by the trees, my ancestors, sunsets and the stars, to name a few sources of ever-present clarity and power. Nature tells the true story of our belonging and of all the ways that it is possible to be nourished, sustained and powerful within this human experience.  

I am also deeply connected with and grateful to my growing community of leaders, healers, dreamers and doers who share their hearts and their visions with me, thereby continuing to connect me to the Village vision and beyond it to all that is possible. 

Ain Bailey is a justice focused philanthropic strategist and collaborative leader whose work is grounded in infinite possibility, proven by the miracle of this planet and our shared humanity. After years of funding racial justice, organizational development, housing and narrative shift as levers for advancing an equitable and just society, it became clear to Ain that the systems will not change unless we change the way that we care for the leaders who are doing the complex and perpetual work of shifting them. This belief, along with her deep knowing of the transformative and healing power of nature and the longstanding benefit of healing practices, compelled her to develop New Seneca Village to sustain cis, transfeminine and non-binary women of color social justice leaders who have been at the forefront of all major societal movement in this country (whether they were acknowledged or not.) Ain is most energized by her role as the Founder & Co-Designer of New Seneca Village, a retreat and visioning project designed to connect these critical leaders to nature, restorative practices and each other such that their leadership and work is grounded in restoration, community connection and expansive vision. New Seneca Village is a response to her long-standing question, grounded in 400 years of history and made more relevant by the events of 2020: What is possible for our society, our people and our planet if we abundantly and consistently resourced the leaders advancing our society’s most evolved values ?

This is the fourth in a series of Q&As with JEI Fellows about the path they’ve taken to financial activism and what they’ve learned along the way. For this post, we interviewed Janice St. Onge, president of the Flexible Capital Fund, about strategies for building community wealth, her work in rural New England, how investors can be more effective partners to local entrepreneurs, and her lessons learned.

The Flexible Capital Fund invests in growing Vermont companies that fill a gap or strengthen the supply chain in sustainable agriculture and food systems, forest products, renewable energy, clean technology, and other natural resource sectors.

JEI: How would you describe your community wealth building work?

JSO: I run the Vermont-based Flexible Capital Fund, L3C. We are an impact investment fund and Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) whose mission is to create healthy food systems, preserve working lands, build resilient communities, and address climate change through regenerative solutions and by fostering equitable workplaces. Where others see risk, we see opportunity. At the Flex Fund, we believe that innovative financing tools, used with intention, can be a part of the answer to community wealth building. And we’re currently scaling our investment footprint to all of rural New England so that entrepreneurs who would not otherwise have access to risk capital can go further faster.  

JEI: What are you doing that brings something new to the table in terms of community wealth building? What value are you seeing from that? 

JSO: The Flex Fund takes an integrated capital approach and provides flexible financing in a variety of structures—from debt to revenue-based financing (RBF) to equity—to help businesses in New England’s food system, forest products, and climate change solutions markets grow.

When we started the Flexible Capital Fund in 2011, there was only one other organization in New England using RBF as an alternative to equity investment for growing mission-oriented businesses. We have had to do a lot of educating on what RBF is and how it can benefit growing companies in a rural state like Vermont. I got a lot of deer-in-the-headlights looks from the lending and investing community. On the entrepreneur side, I heard, “Wow, that seems like an expensive interest rate.” I’d explain that RBF loans don’t have an interest rate, and that repayment is based on a percentage of revenue over time. Our returns are really a function of the time value of money.

Our capital is less expensive than equity, though it can be more costly than a bank loan. However, a bank or lender has primary claim to a company’s assets, like equipment and real estate, and if a business can’t pay back the loan from cash flow, the bank has the right to sell the assets. With RBF, we don’t necessarily require a personal guarantee or hard assets. Payments are flexible and based on a percentage of revenue rather than a fixed principal and interest payment. And we don’t dilute ownership or ask for a role in decision making like equity investors do. This makes RBF a great alternative to equity for growing businesses in rural New England. 

Now, 12 years in, RBF is gaining momentum as a type of capital that can help entrepreneurs grow in a more sustainable way at the pace that makes the most sense for them in the rural areas where they operate and in the communities they support.

JEI: Can you tell us about a project or aspect of a project that you’re proud of? We’d love to hear a community success story.

JSO: I’m proud of all our portfolio companies that are doing the hard work every day of providing products and services that feed us in a healthy (and delicious) way, create healthy living spaces, produce renewable energy, reduce waste, and cut down the carbon emissions of infrastructure materials. They’re paying living wages and creating wealth in the communities where they reside.

Encore Renewable Energy, based in Burlington, Vermont, is a great example. Encore’s revenue was inconsistent. Its solar projects required up-front work leading to construction and sale, and its project timelines often changed. Encore was in a steep growth phase and there were holes on the team that needed filling. In the past, Encore had self-financed new hires, but it was bumping up against its capacity to self-fund relative to the opportunity it saw in the solar development market. 

We provided RBF-structured financing in 2016 and 2019 that allowed Encore’s payments to mirror its cash flow. Following our integrated capital strategy, we also brought in mission-aligned CDFI partners and a private investor to ensure Encore had the capital it needed.

Encore’s team viewed our capital as catalytic, and during our investment, the company more than tripled its revenue, quadrupled the number of high-quality jobs, grew a more diverse workforce, and raised significant additional capital from other lenders and investors.

Encore’s environmental impact to date is equivalent to eliminating 1.6 million barrels of oil.

JEI: What lessons can you share about what it takes to be an effective partner to people seeking to build community wealth?

JSO: First, invest in people, not companies. Be more than a checkbook. Relationships matter. Get to know an entrepreneur and their team before you write the check. Then keep in mind that entrepreneurs and their teams are doing the hard work. When funds and economic development entities say, “we created X number of jobs,” let’s be honest—they didn’t create the jobs, the entrepreneurs did. And sometimes job creation isn’t a good measure of success. Sometimes stuff happens. To keep the doors open, entrepreneurs may have to let people go. That’s a really hard thing—for everyone. 

Second, financial returns aren’t the end all, be all. There is no Planet B. While growth is good, growth for growth’s sake is not sustainable. Investors’ goals need to change to include social and environmental returns. And more investors need to take a systems-level perspective if we want a future for our children and their children on this planet with limited resources. Failure is part of this work. As investors, we need to talk about it and learn from it. When things don’t go as planned, and a business needs to wind down, we can find ways to do this with dignity and respect for what the entrepreneur built.

And third, our experience over the last decade—through a recession and global pandemic—has taught us that impact companies need more time than a traditional venture funding model offers to build their business and create the change that we and our entrepreneurs envision. Systems change takes time. This quote from an essay by William McAskill on longtermism sums it up: “We live at the very beginning of history, in its most distant past. What we do now will affect untold numbers of future people. We need to act wisely.” 

JEI: What other advice do you have for leaders who want to support community wealth building? 

JSO: Invest with diversity in mind. Diversity among investors and entrepreneurs leads to better financial, social, and environmental returns. If you haven’t read The XX Edge by Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber, M.D., pick up a copy. Data shows that gender-inclusive and diverse teams are 21% more likely to outperform their peers in profitability, and new companies with a female founder performed 63% better than those with all-male teams over an observed 10-year period.

Entrepreneurs are not superhuman. Mental health is important. We need to bring empathy, understanding, vulnerability, and humanity to our work as investors. Entrepreneurship is a deeply personal journey, and it can be difficult for entrepreneurs to separate their identity from the business they’re trying to create. 

We need all kinds of capital across the continuum. We found that taking an integrated capital approach—using a combination of financial, human, and social capital—ensures our companies have the right financing as they grow, at whatever pace makes sense. 

Finally, you can’t change systems without saying goodbye to those that aren’t working. We all—philanthropists, investors, lenders, policy makers, government, individuals, and entrepreneurs—need to take risks with our capital and activate our voices. 

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Janice St. Onge is President of the Flexible Capital Fund, L3C (“Flex Fund”), a mission based investment fund providing flexible risk capital to Vermont’s food system, forestry and clean technology businesses. As President of the Flex Fund, Janice manages all facets of the Fund’s operations, including raising capital, deal flow, due diligence, and portfolio/financial management. Janice brings economic and business development as well as financial expertise to the organization, having served in the technology, financial services, higher education and state government sectors during her 25+ year career.

Previously, Janice served as Director of the Vermont Business Center at the University of Vermont and Technology Business Development Director for Vermont’s Department of Economic Development. She received the 2001 National Tibbetts Award in recognition for her outreach work with the Small Business Innovation Research program in Vermont. As Assistant Vice President at Peoples Bank, she originated and managed a $21 million commercial loan portfolio. Janice is a graduate of the University of Utah with a B.A. in Marketing and is an alumnus of the Snelling Center for Government’s Vermont Leadership Institute. She recently helped launch the Vermont Women’s Investors Network, and serves on the Vermont Small Business Development Center Advisory Board and the Clean Energy Development Fund Board. She is a founding member of Slow Money Vermont’s Organizing Committee. A Stowe, Vermont resident, Janice was co-founder of the Stowe Energy and Climate Action Network and a former International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup Freestyle Skiing Judge.

“At a young age I was already acutely aware of economic and racial segregation, growing up in a divided community on Long Island,” shared Jasmine Rashid, Director of Impact at impact investing firm Candide Group, and a Just Economy Institute alum. “I always had this interest in social justice and racial equity —  and in the background, the role that money plays in all of that — before I had the language for it.”  

An emergent financial activist was born. 

“I started college as an economics major, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around these concepts that felt so detached from reality,” Rashid said. “We weren’t talking about people and power, we were talking about numbers and equations. I decided to craft a special major in Peace and Conflict Studies instead, focused on social change theory of larger systems, and things started to click into place.” 

After leading and participating in grassroots campaigns to divest investor capital from extractive industries, with a focus on mass incarceration, Rashid came to realize that as much as she honors and appreciates divestment work, she gets more energy and comes to life when she’s working with others on the investment side of things. In other words; co-creating real alternatives to the systems of inequity she studied in college. “It’s more sustainable for me to work on building new systems and contributing to that hopeful, joyful future and economy that we deserve.” 

The Just Economy Institute fellowship was a perfect fit — a community where Rashid could hone her critique, and more importantly, develop the connections, insights, and courage to embrace her own voice and expertise. 

After that, there was no looking back. Hard at work on her first book, tentatively titled The Financial Activist Playbook: 8 Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth & Collective Well-Being, Rashid credits the JEI community with giving her the confidence needed to pursue such an ambitious goal. “The idea of myself as a book author — at the time I was 26 — was overwhelming, and that imposter syndrome still shows up. But by the end of the fellowship, when I was presenting my creative capital project, it was really just naming what seemed obviously mine to do: like, I’m doing this book, because the other Fellows helped me see I was the right person for that work.” When she signed her book deal with Berrett-Koehler Publishers in April, the JEI community were among the first she shared the news with, in the spirit of a collective win for financial activists everywhere. 

You might be wondering, what exactly is a financial activist? Rashid spends a lot of time thinking about that too.

“To me, a financial activist is someone who believes that we deserve more than what’s currently happening in our economy. We deserve more pathways to not just stability but flourishing, at the individual and family level, and also at the community and economy level.” Being a part of JEI offers a structured way to focus on activation of capital in all spheres — the personal, the interpersonal, the systemic. “A financial activist is someone who wants to live in a more sensible financial system, who wants to make sure their actions, even in small ways, are aligning with building a system that is more equitable and sustainable.”

The Financial Activist Playbook isn’t designed just for people passionate about economic justice or those who already have  significant financial wealth to redistribute. “The audience I’m targeting wouldn’t necessarily call themselves financial activist[s]; they may be interested in social change and improving conditions, but probably aren’t spending every night in someone’s basement organizing the next campaign. I’m trying to reach people who have the right intentions and the right motivation, giving them an on-ramp to see themselves reflected,” she shares. “In this work, change doesn’t happen because of mystical, singular, expert leaders. Everyday people, working class and middle class folks, who are often left out of conversations about money, wealth, philanthropy, and investing, have way more power than we’ve been told to shape the financial system where we are. The book is meant to help anyone who’s interested access to some of the tools, strategies, and insights that I’ve been given through JEI, as well as the stories that so powerfully  nourish and inspire us to keep innovating.”

Rashid’s role in the JEI community is only deepening, as she currently supports the team on  facilitation guidance for incoming cohorts.. She is eager to “continue bringing intentionality, openness, and emergence to this joyful, powerful, and generous community.”

The Financial Activist Playbook will be available in September 2024, with pre-orders opening up later this year. In the meantime, Rashid hopes that anyone who’s curious about financial activism is willing to “just start somewhere. I happen to work in the impact investing field, that’s my profession, but you don’t have to actually be a financial intermediary or dedicate your whole life to becoming a financial expert to be a financial activist. Even small actions with deep intentionality add up. As long as we’re connecting to one another, in community.”

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Jasmine Rashid is a financial activist, writer, and impact investing professional. In her role as Director of Impact for Candide Group, she helps investors flow tens of millions of dollars to predominately women & BIPOC-led social justice-focused companies, funds, and organizations building the economy we deserve. Her forthcoming book, The Financial Activist Playbook: 8 Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth and Collective Wellbeing, will be available in Fall 2024 with Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 

This is the third in a series of Q&As with JEI Fellows about the path they’ve taken to financial activism and what they’ve learned along the way. For this post, we interviewed Keoni Lee, CEO of Hawai‘i Investment Ready, about what it takes to partner across differences and how the effort can produce deeper impact. 

Hawai’i Investment Ready is a 501(c)3 nonprofit impact investing intermediary working at the nexus of purpose, business, and culture to restore regenerative abundance to Hawai’i’s economy. HIR supports purpose-driven enterprises (for-profit and nonprofit) and funders in Hawai’i to strengthen and scale their impact through a variety of programs and services for capacity building and impact capital deployment.

JEI: Can you share any a-ha moments you’ve had when engaging with someone through JEI, or in another professional context, that changed your perspective on how to do the work? 

KL: Just going through the fellowship program creates conditions for conversations that I don’t think ever would have existed otherwise. The cohorts are so diverse. You have people who hold the wealth, who steward and manage the wealth, and who receive the wealth all thinking about a more just and equitable community. 

To hear the wealth holders’ perspectives on money and how it can negatively impact them, especially those with inherited wealth, was enlightening to me. I came from asking for money, and my assumption was that if you have all this wealth, life’s easy for you—no problems. I realized through this experience that in order to have productive conversations, I have to first have empathy for the other person’s truth. Understanding the nuances that I didn’t understand before allows me to have better conversations with wealth holders and get to the core of “Can we be in right relationship down the road?” 

It’s made my fundraising a lot easier. If I demonstrate aloha for their person, they’re more willing to listen to my perspective, especially if what I’m offering challenges their current position. They’re more willing to lean in instead of closing the door or pushing back. 

JEI: Can you give an example of a cross-class, cross-race collaboration you’ve been involved in? How did it come together? 

KL: We are in the early stages of building out a food systems funder cohort involving 24 active investors across philanthropy, government, and the private sector. It’s cross class, cross race, cross culture. They’re coming forward to learn from each other about better ways to move money and solve for some of the market challenges we have in scaling healthy food systems. 

When we brought participants in for the first in-person event, they thought they were coming to learn about impact investing, and there was this energy of uncertainty—“Why am I here?” But we started with a group visioning exercise that allowed people to get to know each other on a personal level. After we did that work, the energy rose, and you could tell folks were seeing “There’s something special going on here; this is different.” There was a sense of abundance and possibility rather than scarcity and skepticism. 

I learned all that through JEI. I don’t think I would have been able to imagine this funder cohort had I not gone through the fellowship. I saw the power of the JEI approach and wanted to recreate that experience for my cohort. As we move into more difficult conversations and there is conflict, because we now have the foundation of a relationship and know why we’re together, we can pause those conversations and ask ourselves, “How can we have this conversation differently?” It opens up possibility.

JEI: What does it take to effectively partner across differences? 

KL: You have to understand that the system has programmed us all in particular ways, and we are all subject to the way the system is currently designed. Some obviously have it better than others, but we’re not going to fix the system just by being righteous, by saying “my community has been wronged” or “you gained this wealth through bad business practices and extraction,” or by taking on a hero or victim mentality. We don’t get anywhere by playing those roles; we get somewhere positive by saying “How can we be different?” 

For those who have power, there is a trend toward acknowledging the need to cede power. The more important part is that hearts and minds are shifting. I think of Grace Lee Boggs, who said “movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.” We build these critical connections by first changing our internal conditions. Change at the individual level then transmutes into the collective level. 

Whatever perspective we’re coming from, we are all going to have to change in this evolution of finance. Challenging the conditioning we’ve been subject to and trying to be different in a system that’s programmed us not to be is hard work. As we unwind the ways to think, act, and be, we have to approach the collaborative work ahead with the understanding that it is going to be messy and imperfect along the way. To be successful in achieving our shared, long-term goals we need to have aloha for each other on this journey and stay in grounded in relationship with each other — especially when things get hard.

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Keoni Lee is the Chief Executive Officer of Hawai’i Investment Ready, a 501(c)3 nonprofit impact investing intermediary working at the nexus of purpose, business, and culture to restore regenerative abundance to Hawai’i’s economy. HIR supports purpose-driven enterprises (for-profit and nonprofit) and funders in Hawai’i to strengthen and scale their impact through a variety of programs and services for capacity building and impact capital deployment. Before joining HIR in 2019, Keoni co-founded ʻŌiwi TV – Hawaiʻi’s first and only Native Hawaiian language and cultural television station and media production company – where he spent over a decade learning from and producing stories in and about native communities throughout Hawaiʻi and around the world. These stories and relationships grounded in indigenous knowledge and values have shaped his perspective and drive his work to shift contemporary structures of power.

Keoni is active in community work and initiatives around decolonizing education, food systems, and the economy, including the Omidyar Fellows program, the First Nations Futures Program, and the Just Economy Institute Fellowship. He is a member of Toniic, the global action community for impact investing, was awarded the 2021 Investor of the Year by the Hawaii Venture Capital Association and named to the 20 for the Next 20 class of 2022. He is a co-leader of the ‘Āina Aloha Economic Futures initiative – an indigenous-led mainstream movement calling out and addressing the inequities, injustices, and unsustainability of Hawai’i’s economy.