We're starting off 2022 with a bang!

Why We Invested

Today over 46M adults age 65+ live in the US, and that number is expected to grow to almost 90M by 2050. Surveys show 90% of these seniors want to remain at home as they age.

The Helper Bees partners with Long-Term Care Insurance carriers and Medicare Advantage health plans to provide quality care and appropriate tools to keep older adults independent, healthy and living at home longer. Read on...

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Team News

Impact Engine Chief Investment Officer Priya Parrish will be a featured speaker at Confluence Philanthropy's 12th Annual Practitioner's Gathering in March where she will join a panel discussing consolidation in the values-aligned investing ecosystem.

Priya is also advising Known Holdings, a new Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latinx platform working towards sustainability and fair distributions of wealth. Read more in Bloomberg.

This month Impact Engine Senior Associate Ander Iruretagoyena was interviewed on the Investor Connect podcast where he talked about IE's approach to investing and the places we think we can make a difference within our chosen impact areas: economic opportunity, health equity, and environmental sustainability.

Listen to podcast episode.

What We’re Reading

Anthropocene Magazine: Circular trash management is a powerful but overlooked climate solution
Senior Associate Chris Wu writes: While people tend to be drawn to other flashier aspects of solving climate change, the truth is that with sustainability the key is often in the details or the dirty work rather than frontier technologies. This study shows that putting circular waste management into practice broadly has the potential to slash global methane emissions dramatically.

Tyton Partners: Education Investing in 2021: The Reckoning
Senior Associate Ander Iruretagoyena writes: With nearly $21B in venture investments for education, 2021 was a truly historic year for the sector. For context, this is the highest year on record and it’s over 3x the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, and more than 20x the amount 10 years ago. With two more yet-to-be public announcements in the coming weeks, Impact Engine will have invested in 4 different companies that all fit squarely into the three trends Tyton has identified in the market:

  1. Efforts to achieve meaningful scale through consolidation accelerated

  2. Making Accommodation for School Disruptions

  3. New Models for Workforce Training and Management

Portfolio News

Afresh announced a major new partnership with Albertsons, bringing their Fresh Operating System into over 2,000 stores in 34 states. Albertsons operates under a dozen brand names such as Jewel Osco, Safeway, and others. This month Afresh also received a Real Leaders Impact Award for their work reducing food waste and making fresh food accessible to using their first-ever Fresh OS.

Array Behavior Health announced that in 2022 their telehealth practice will now be available to approximately 5 million Humana Medicare Advantage Members. “Array AtHome’s telebehavioral health services will provide improved access to behavioral health specialists and help meet the behavioral health needs of our Medicare Advantage members,” said Taft Parsons, MD, Enterprise Medical Director for Humana.

PadSplit CEO Atticus LeBlanc was featured on the Forbes Changemakers podcast about his mission to make more affordable housing units available by empowering ordinary homeowners. "We really believe that the people who are serving our communities deserve an opportunity to live there. And the reality is the current market just has not provided that... It's not just unconventional, it's pretty revolutionary."

PosiGen has closed a $100 million funding round to scale up their work providing solar solutions to low and moderate income customers. Thus far, PosiGen has served over 19,000 customers– about 50% of whom live in communities of color. They plan to expand their offerings to more customers, regardless of income or credit score.

Workit Health co-founders Lisa McLaughlin and Robin McIntosh were interviewed on NBC's The Today Show about their company's drug and alcohol abuse treatment breakthrough. "We both are radical optimists," McLaughlin says. "We believe that new futures can be built. I think if there's someone who tells us oh you can never fix that part of healthcare, this piece is so broken, we become ten times more motivated."