With fall conference season in full swing, Miller Center is traveling across the globe with two primary goals:
- Engage with partners on-the-ground in service to our collaborative approach for supporting locally led enterprises. Executive Director Brigit Helms explains, “By partnering with local organizations and deepening our relationships in person, we ensure a seamless continuum of support for entrepreneurs.”
- Promote venture philanthropy as a critical market need to grow the impact investing ecosystem. As Brigit points out, “We’re tackling the damaging narrative that impact investors ‘can have their cake and eat it too’ — earning commercial returns while simultaneously delivering transformative impact. Our goal is to connect entrepreneurs with the right capital at the right time, bridging the gap between philanthropic giving and market-driven investments.”
Check out our conference line-up. If you’re attending any of these, let’s connect!
ANDE Global Conference: Setting the Stage in Bangkok (Sept 10-12)
The ANDE Global Conference in Bangkok, hosted by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs was a great way to kick off the fall season. Miller Center was honored to receive an award for being an ANDE Anchor Member. Brigit co-facilitated a session with Allie Burns from Village Capital and Annie Roberts from Open Capital Advisors titled Impact vs. Returns: The Myths, Realities, and Massive Gap Between Venture Capital Funding and Philanthropy. With the audience, they explored the pressing need to bridge this gap and generated actionable ideas to push the conversation forward.
Brigit also convened a dinner with university-based program leaders from institutions like Stanford SEED, Ashesi University, and the University of Michigan to facilitate knowledge-sharing about challenges facing social entrepreneurs today.
Latimpacto: Driving Innovation in Oaxaca
As part of our effort to increase our presence in Latin America, Miller Center joined Latimpacto, a dynamic peer network in Latin America and the Caribbean, comprising over 210 capital providers across Latin America and worldwide.
With over 600 participants gathering in Oaxaca, México, it was an educational and energizing week. Longtime partners and new connections were excited to learn that we now offer our accelerator program entirely in Spanish. We also learned that Miller Center Capital’s approach to directly invest in social enterprises using flexible debt mechanisms like revenue-based financing is strongly aligned with the region’s financing needs.
Andy Lieberman, Miller Center’s Sr. Director of Programs, joined Alberto Gomez-Obregon, Managing Partner at CO_Capital, Tina Ruchti, Executive Director of elea, and Justin Schwartz, Managing Partner of IMPAQTO Capital, to explore The Role of Impact-First Investment in Pipeline Development.
Diana McKeage, Miller Center’s Sr. Manager of Impact Investing, participated in a discussion on Value Chain Innovation for Social Impact in Latin America with Carolina Cadavid, Social Procurement Leader at ChangeLab, Lorena Guillé-Laris, Executive Director of FEMSA Foundation, Daniel Nowack, Head of Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship of the World Economic Forum, and Antonio Nuño, Cofounder & CEO of Someone Somewhere and member of Miller Center’s Social Enterprise Advisory Council.
Clinton Global Initiative: Commitment to Action (Sept 23-24)
Coinciding with the UN General Assembly, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York City convenes world leaders to take public, bold steps toward solving global crises.
We’re thrilled to be part of this inspiring catalyst for change. Brigit, alongside Paul Belknap, Director of Impact Investing, will represent Miller Center and make a Commitment to Action. CGI is an important platform to amplify our narrative around venture philanthropy, signaling the role of patient capital in the market and ensuring that entrepreneurs can access risk-tolerant capital to scale their impact.
SOCAP: Harnessing AI and Addressing the Funding Gap (Oct 28-30)
One of our most anticipated stops this fall is SOCAP in San Francisco. Miller Center will host a special pitch session featuring social entrepreneurs from our 2024 In-Residence cohort, introduced by Karen Runde, Miller Center’s Sr. Director of Academics and Social Enterprise Relations. This is a unique opportunity for the impact ecosystem to connect with exceptional changemakers driving social entrepreneurship worldwide.
We’ll also be leading two sessions that dive into critical issues for the sector. In Harnessing AI for Social Impact: Practice, Promise, and Pitfalls, Brigit will be joined by Internet Ethics Program Director Irina Raicu of Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and Krutika Ravishankar, Cofounder and Executive Director of Farmers for Forests. They’ll explore the role of leveraging AI to achieve greater social impact while weighing ethical concerns and practical considerations.In our second session, Impact Investing Needs Less Cake, we’re taking a hard look at the myth of achieving both high financial returns and deep social impact without trade-offs. Led by Brigit and a panel of impact leaders — Daniel Barker, President and CEO of Halcyon, Caroline Bressan, CEO of Open Road Alliance, and Diana Sierra, Founder and CEO of Be Girl — this workshop will explore alternative funding models such as concessionary loans and venture philanthropy. Our thesis is that these models offer more patient, risk-tolerant capital that aligns better with the needs of social enterprises in emerging markets.
Sankalp Global Summit: Building Global Connections (Nov 26-27)
Finally, Miller Center will attend the Sankalp Global Summit in Varanasi, India, a key event for the social enterprise sector. Diana McKeage and Linda Gentry, Miller Center’s Sr. Manager of Campus Engagement will be on the ground, meeting with global stakeholders and visiting the operations of our local social enterprise network. We look forward to strengthening Miller Center’s role in building a more interconnected, supportive ecosystem for social entrepreneurs around the world.
See you there?
As we engage in conferences, we deepen our relationships with key players in regions across the globe, contributing to a more inclusive, collaborative approach to supporting social enterprises and a bold, innovative approach to impact-first investing. If you’ll be attending any of these events, we’d love to connect and explore how we can work together to drive social change.
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Photo Credits
- Awards presentation at ANDE Global Conference
- Value Chain Innovation for Social Impact in Latin America panel at Latimpacto. (From left to right: Daniel Nowack of World Economic Forum, Diana McKeage of Miller Center, Antonio Nuño of Someone Somewhere, Lorena Guillé-Laris of FEMSA Foundation, and Carolina Cadavid of Catavid)
- Miller Center social enterprise cohort, staff, mentors, and friends at SOCAP 2023
