S6E9: Jacqueline Novogratz, MBA ’91, on The Role of Storytelling in Investing

Stanford GSB: View From The Top

"I've seen unbelievable change happen in places that the world sees as not investible. Part of storytelling is doing the work of investing so that people can tell their own stories because of the changes they've made."

In 1986 Jacqueline Novogratz quit her job on Wall Street and moved to Rwanda to help open the country's first microfinance institution. She then came to Stanford GSB in 1989, and, in 2001, founded Acumen, a nonprofit impact investing fund.

"We look at poverty always in terms of income, but poverty is so much more than income. Poverty is a lack of choice, it's a lack of opportunity, it's a lack of agency, it's a lack of feeling that you can contribute. Dignity is the opposite."

In this View From the Top interview, Novogratz sits down with Kathleen Schwind, MBA ’23, to talk about her journey into impact investing and how the industry has grown in the last decade.

"We are in this moment of just extraordinary technological acceleration. Our challenge is to ensure that our moral reasoning, our moral imagination, our moral courage keeps pace with that acceleration."

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