Good Future

Anna Crabb is General Manager of B Lab Australia. The team work tirelessly to manage the B Corp certification: assessing the sustainability credentials of purpose-led companies and giving them the B Corp tick if they’re up to scratch. But, they’re also working to bring Benefit Companies to Australia. A Benefit Company is a new type of legal structure that offers Australian companies more options t...

Claire Rogers made a big shift in her career, she went from being head of digital banking at ANZ to become the CEO of Australia’s largest charity, World Vision Australia. Claire’s move gives us a good indication of where this hugely influential charity is directing its priorities. As it recognises the evolution in how social impact is measured, in how the public want to engage, and the growing imp...

Adam Verwey, is Founder and Director of Future Super. In our discussion he offered some great insights about the Australian superannuation system. We dug into the importance of investment managers including a focus on sustainability, climate change and environmental factors in their analysis, and it’s not just for ethical reasons. It’s also, simply good risk management, and it’s at the heart of lo...

What will the world look like in 2040? That’s the question Damon Gameau asks at the start of his new film called 2040. It’s a documentary that has a big impact because of its optimism. It dispenses with the dystopian future envisioned by so many sci-fi films. Instead, he takes a trip around the world looking for the sustainable technology of the future, that’s available today. The film’s framed ar...

You’ve probably heard the line before, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” But in a world where inequality and the scarcity of resources are both increasing, perhaps a better statement is, “measure what matters”. Georgina Camp is CEO and founder of Huber Social, a social impact consulting firm that wants to enable all organisations to measure their impact. It’s something her background...

Elyse Sainty works at the intersection of social impact and finance, which is the sweet-spot of this show. She’s director of Impact Investing at Social Ventures Australia (SVA) where she designs and manages Social Impact Bonds, and her take on this was really refreshing, from her perspective, It’s not really about investors… instead, it’s seeing capital as an enabler, it’s the means to an end. And...

Joel Solomon is a passionate advocate for the power of business to do good. He was a founding partner and Senior Advisor for Renewal Funds, Canada’s largest mission venture capital firm managing some $98 million. He ran an “activist family office” for 14 years deploying more than $70M. He helped found the Social Venture Network in Canada, and RSF Social Finance’s Integrated Capital Institute. He’s...

Simon O’Connor is CEO of the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA), they’ve got more than 240 members that collectively manage some $9 trillion of investments globally. And if he wasn’t busy enough, he’s now also the co-chair of the Australia Sustainable Finance Initiative (ASIF, it was launched last week with the aim, in their words, to drive : “A sustainable and resilient economy...

Matthew Weatherley-White is an impact investment advisor at Caprock, but his personality and his passion for life stretch far beyond his day-job. He’s as interested in hiking in the mountains and in crafting a lifestyle, as he is to reshaping markets for the better. He’s inquisitive and he’s a deep thinker, and most importantly he’s not afraid of telling it how it is. We dug into the political sta...

Seb Beloe lives in the country, just outside London, he’s struck a balance between the rural and the urban, and this is echoed in his work where he combines his passion for sustainability, with making investments that earn a decent return. He’s Head of Research at WHEB Asset Management, which is a fund manager that seeks out progressive companies that make products that are doing good in the world...

Kylie Porter is the newly installed Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Network Australia. The organisation is founded on a set of ten principles that companies agree to abide by when they sign up. It’s been hailed as, the world’s largest corporate social responsibility framework, and while it doesn’t enforce any rules or dole out any punishment, it operates as an important network of comp...

Giles Gunesekera is CEO of the Global Impact Initiative and he’s been a valuable mentor for me in the world of impact investing; so it was about time I invited him to be a guest on Good Future. I’m your host John Treadgold, and this is the podcast where I ask the big questions about sustainable business, the new economy and how your spending & investment decisions, no matter how big or small, can...

Is Impact-investing a paradox? Is another complex financial structure really the best way to deal with the problems caused by putting too much faith in finance in the first place? It’s a valid concern, and it leads many in the sector to be forever on their guard, forever defining and redefining what this term, impact, really means. My guest today knows this challenge well. Jed Emerson has been at...

Everybody hates paying booking fees when buying tickets, and for Adam McCurdie that was an opportunity. He recognised the ticketing industry’s profits were ripe for a little 'impact disruption'. The result was Humanitix. It’s a charity, that looks a lot like a business. And it’s both, and that’s what we like here at the Good Future podcast. My name is John Treadgold, and I’m asking the big questio...

Laurie Spengler is the President and CEO of Enclude, an impact investing advisory firm that gives itself the unique title of being an impact investment bank. They work all over the world helping to build businesses that are solving some of the world’s biggest challenges As will become clear in the conversation, Laurie isn’t phased by much. She has a high tolerance for working with uncertainty and...

He grew up in Harare in Zimbabwe, and with grit and determination and a little bit of luck, he managed to get himself a scholarship to Yale in the US, and today, he’s helping manage one of Australia’s leading impact investment advisory firms. His name is Simba Marekera he’s Chief Research Officer at Brightlight Impact Advisors, the firm helps investors understand how they can invest funds to earn...

Kat Dunn is at the vanguard of microfinance. She’s CEO of Grameen Australia, and she has some big lofty goals for shifting our concept of banking, to give those who don’t have the backing of hard assets, an alternative route to access loans and capital. Kat opened up about the big move she made, leaving a role with a major fund manager, she stepped off the corporate ladder and she took a leap of f...

Innovation is not often associated with government departments. But that’s changing, thanks to my guest, Dr Sarah Pearson. She’s Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Scientist at the InnovationXchange, within Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). On Episode 6 of the Good Future podcast. She’s disrupting government, she’s injecting her experience of scientific collaboration and commercialis...

Tom Dawkins is a social entrepreneur, and he’s the co-founder of fund-raising platform, StartSomeGood. He’s been a change-maker from the outset. His parents were big advocates for working in a job that has purpose and reflects your values. And he took it to heart, busily building not-for-profits and social enterprises as soon as he left uni. And he was soon drawn to silicon valley, a place where t...

How much influence can you have as an individual investor? This was the question I asked Piet Klop, he’s senior advisor on sustainable investment at the Dutch pension fund PGGM and he’s a leading voice in pushing these big organisations to consider their impact. While many pension funds are now using the SDGs as a framework to map their impacts, PGGM had already set themselves some key themes to t...

Have you ever cried during a World Vision ad? Or, maybe you didn’t cry, and you felt guilty for it? They’re powerful feelings, we’re forced to ask questions about how we live our lives, and what impact we can have on people far away. For the third episode of Good Future I’m speaking with Anthea Smits, she’s felt the full array of these emotions, and she acted on them. She is CEO of The Difference...

Last year Daniel took on the role of CEO at the Impact Investment Group (IIG) one of Australia’s leading impact fund managers. I dug into the projects they’ve got on the go, including building the world’s tallest timber office building, which is pretty epic. As well as a new fund they’ve got in the works targeting retail investors, I was super interested in that one, but Daniel would only give us...

Abhilash Mudaliar is well equipped to help us understand the world of impact investing. He’s the Head of Research at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), which has an important leadership role in maintaining the integrity of the new financial paradigm that is impact investing. While this term might not be familiar to everybody, that’s okay, because we explore the concept from all angles, an...