That’s a wrap on our final Generation Impact Academy of 2023.

Thank you to all our amazing speakers who shared their insights with us, our partners Deloitte Ventures and Investec and, of course, our wonderful cohort of students!

The course kicked off with Francesca Spoerry, University of Zurich, leading an introduction to the sustainable and impact investing ecosystem. Max Richardson, Senior Investment Manager, Rathbones, then led an informative session on investing for impact from a public markets’ perspective.

Our students then engaged in a stimulating session on how to approach building an impact portfolio with excellent panellists: Hannah Wheatley, Acumen, Sophie Bidwell, Springwise, James Bidwell, Springwise and Lucy Rands, ETF Partners, and moderated by Eva-Maria Dimitriadis, our Managing Partner.

Olivia Prentice, Head of Impact, Bridges Fund Management walked our students through the IMP’s framework for measuring impact and Liam Black wrapped up the day with his seven deadly sins of impact investing.

Day 2 began with Conduit Connect’s Investment Management team, Gabrielle Morgan and Alexander Shapiro, sharing their insights into how we approach impact and commercial diligence. Followed by an interactive diligence workshop focusing on real life case studies from our portfolio. After lunch John Alder and Leonid Levin from Deloitte taught our students everything, they need to know about term sheets, cap tables and valuations.

In the afternoon, we ventured out to LIS and Fin, two of our portfolio companies, to put the learned into action.

The last day brought everything together, thinking about some of the bigger themes in impact venture, we started with an inspiring panel discussion on Diversity & Inclusion in Venture Capital, moderated by Susannah Preston, with Helen Oldham, Lifted Ventures, Gosbert Chagula, Startup Discovery School, and Kariel Parian, Deloitte.

This was followed by two expert workshops on healthcare and climate by Aahuti Rai, Guy Ranawake, and Jim Totty. Afterwards Gabrielle Morgan set out how to put the theory into practice, and the course concluded with a discussion moderated by Alexander Shapiro on The Future of Impact Investing with Laurie Felker Jones.

We celebrated our Autumn Class of 2023 with an incredible dinner at The Conduit with a keynote speech from Malcolm Preston.

We'll be back in April 2024 with our next cohort - email susannah@theconduitconnect.com to learn more!