Social innovators and entrepreneurs of color often highlight challenges they face in making connections with funders, champions, and sponsors. These result in barriers that hamper development and advancement of their creative work. Dr. John Brothers, President of the T. Rowe Price Foundation, talks about the evolution of the Foundation’s approach to philanthropy, leading to the creation of Moonshot, an innovative, multi-year program designed to bring Baltimore’s entrepreneurs of color together with the global investment management firm’s network of investors and sponsors.

Impact performance reporting has been too influenced by mainstream financial reporting, trying to boil everything down to numbers, metrics and scores. Sarah Gelfand and Laura Budzyna, impact specialists, highlight the critical importance of also integrating qualitative information so the field does not lose the nuance that would ultimately make it better impact investors.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

Urban heat islands, compounded by the effects of climate change and environmental neglect, have a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged communities. David Cifrino, a 2022 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Senior Fellow, uses Dorchester’s Columbia Road greenway as a model of our opportunity to bring about environmental justice.

Aligning the economic interests of shareholders and senior management with equity incentives is a foundational principle of American capitalism. Can the same principle also be harnessed to address wealth inequality in America by extending “ownership culture” to a broader cross-section of America’s workforce?

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION IN SOCIAL IMPACT SERIES:

Digital innovation and open-source technology have evolved and matured over the last two decades and are now being applied to various uses beyond their traditional applications to business and industry. In this article, Heifer International’s Product Manager, Antoinette Marie, explores various use cases for technology to address the sustainable development goal of Zero Hunger using a collaborative and multi-stakeholder approach with smallholder farmers.

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION IN SOCIAL IMPACT SERIES:

Many of the greatest leaps in technological advancement have emerged from a desire to improve the quality of life for underserved members of society. The article questions and addresses how sustained efforts to develop inclusive and accessible tech might lead to further progress for humanity as a whole.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for a revived labor movement that looks drastically different from the stereotype of white men working in a factory. Americans who want all workers to live a life of dignity must get involved.

Michael Brennan and Adam Selzer, co-founders of Civilla, discuss the importance of embedding human-centered design from concept to implementation to address the process and system challenges plaguing our public-serving institutions.

Professor George Serafeim discusses the latest news of the Harvard Business School Impact-Weighted Accounts Project, an initiative that will mark a critical turning point for capitalism as we know it. The goal is to enhance Milton Friedman’s ‘fair rules of the game’ by fixing one of the most significant deficiencies of modern-day capitalism: social and environmental externalities.

TRANSFORMING CITIES SERIES:

Failing to apply a rubric for social impact, government-funded infrastructure has been culpable for legacies of segregating communities, spurring blight or displacement, and devastating natural environments. Daniel Balmori discusses how innovative efforts to reimagine underutilized public spaces -- including prior infrastructure follies -- have demonstrated that, deployed thoughtfully and with a lens toward equity, infrastructure improvements have the potential to positively transform the quality of life for entire communities, catalyze economic opportunities, and make environments more resilient.

TRANSFORMING CITIES SERIES:

Planners and engineers in the 50's and 60's often built freeways directly through African American communities, severing neighborhoods and dismantling small businesses in the way. Sally Bagshaw, Scott Bonjukian, John Feit, and other advocates and government leaders are now speaking out against these 70-year-old road design practices, offering solutions to restore and reconnect neighborhoods.

TRANSFORMING CITIES SERIES:

OPINION COMMENTARY:

Urban greenery can help create more resilient cities -- but only if residents are engaged in the process. Professor John Wilson, working at the intersection of sociology, environmental science and technology calls for an all-hands approach.

As we work to ensure a more just economic recovery, business leaders, policy leaders and philanthropists all have an important role to play. Paul Salem discusses how tested programs like Year Up plays a critical role in creating an integrated talent ecosystem for young people of color to succeed.

A conversation with Andrea Jung, President and CEO of Grameen America and former Chairman and CEO of Avon Products, Inc., discussing the use of microfinancing to help small businesses in America.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

Bob Levey provides a personal perspective on how individual institutions and organizations must also wrestle with the complex problem of homelessness within their own communities.

THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION SERIES:

America infrastructure received a score of ’C-’. It is no secret that our nation’s many infrastructure networks, from the electric grid to transit systems to drinking water pipes and port facilities, have been underfunded and gradually deteriorating for decades. Emily Feenstra, from the American Society of Civil Engineers, discusses how this needs to change.

A conversation with social entrepreneurs Rebecca Taber Staehelin and Connor Diemand-Yauman, the Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of Merit America — who seek to change the workforce on-ramp.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

We see them in most major cities: tents in our neighborhoods, tarps on our sidewalks, and encampments in our parks. We see garbage piling up. Feces in doorways. Teresa Mosqueda and Sally Bagshaw emphasize, however, that inside the tents, there are people trying to survive.

ONE YEAR AFTER GEORGE FLOYD'S MURDER SERIES:

A conversation with Quincy Miller, Vice Chair and President of Eastern Bank, on supporting the communities where he lives and works with a focus on equity and youth.

COVID-19 RECOVERY SERIES:

As with all complex economic and social inequality in America, the path to achieve wage equity has engaged thousands of activists, scholars and public servants. Yet few employers, some only after settling racial and gender discrimination lawsuits, have publicly supported wage equity efforts. Evelyn Murphy discusses the need for transparency and accountability to achieve gender equity.