Bernstein Private Wealth Management Deepens Partnership with Impact Engine

Bernstein Impact Alternatives II fund will invest in venture and private equity funds driving measurable impact across economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and health equity.

NEW YORK, February 19, 2025 — Bernstein Private Wealth Management (“Bernstein”), a unit of AllianceBernstein L.P. (NYSE: AB), today strengthened its purpose-driven platform as it announced the final close of Bernstein Impact Alternatives II (“BIA II” or “Fund”). The Fund, which was created in partnership with Impact Engine—an independent, women- and BIPOC-led, and employee-owned asset manager investing in venture capital and private equity strategies—received more than $40 million of commitments.

BIA II is the second purpose-focused fund offered as part of Bernstein and Impact Engine’s unique partnership. Like the inaugural Bernstein Impact Alternatives fund, which held its final close in December 2022, BIA II is exclusive to Bernstein clients and aims to combine meaningful and measurable impact across companies that are committed to improving economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and health equity.

Bernstein Impact Alternatives funds form a part of AllianceBernstein’s Portfolios with Purpose platform. AB’s Portfolios with Purpose totaled $29 billion in assets under management as of September 30, 2024.

“We are thrilled to be expanding our partnership with Impact Engine following the continued success of our inaugural Bernstein Impact Alternatives fund,” said Alex Chaloff, Chief Investment Officer of Bernstein Private Wealth Management. “Our combined expertise is critical in meeting our clients’ increasing demand for impact-oriented opportunities that make a tangible impact across communities. Bernstein Impact Alternatives are funds that address two deeply held beliefs: that providing primary growth capital to private companies is one of the most impactful ways to invest, and that investing in private equity and venture capital will improve client risk-adjusted returns.”

Impact Engine was founded in 2012 with the goal of aligning financial returns with positive impact outcomes. The asset manager partnered with Bernstein in 2022 in response to growing demand among high-net-worth individuals for impact-driven strategies, leveraging its unique vantage point and ability to deploy capital across both venture and private equity capital stages of companies.

“Interest from private wealth investors in impact-oriented funds continues to grow and we expect the same in the coming years as more families realize the potential to align financial and social returns” said Jessica Droste Yagan, Partner and CEO of Impact Engine. “We are proud to be on the leading edge of building this highly specialized investment area that requires distinct expertise and focus, and to do so in partnership with AllianceBernstein. The need for impact capital has never been greater, and the level of innovation and entrepreneurship in the field has rarely been higher.”

About Bernstein Private Wealth Management
Bernstein Private Wealth Management advises ultrahigh- and high-net-worth clients on planning for—and living with—the complexities that come with significant wealth. Bernstein is distinguished among major wealth managers by its expertise in navigating life’s transitions through a holistic approach. A flexible process—paired with innovative research, sophisticated modeling, and cutting-edge investment solutions—also set Bernstein apart. Headquartered in Nashville, Bernstein is a business unit of AllianceBernstein, which ranks among the largest investment managers in the world, with offices in major world markets across 26 countries and jurisdictions and over $792 billion in assets under management.*

For additional information, visit Bernstein.com.

*As of December 31, 2024

About Impact Engine
Impact Engine is a women-led and employee-owned asset manager that has been working to build the impact investing industry since 2012 through investments that deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns and deep impact outcomes. Based in Chicago, Impact Engine invests exclusively in funds and companies that are driving positive impact in economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and health equity. The firm, a Public Benefit Corporation, provides investment capital along all stages of the life cycle of an enterprise, from early-stage venture to growth and buyout private equity, and in funds across this spectrum. Impact Engine’s multi-faceted investment approach ensures that it operates at the center of the impact innovation ecosystem, giving the team unique access to differentiated, high-quality deal flow as well as comprehensive knowledge of the market. Impact Engine has over $244 million in assets under management as of 3Q:2024. To learn more, please visit www.theimpactengine.com.

Endorsements are provided by individuals who are invested in an Impact Engine fund and/or are associated with portfolio holding companies/funds and may therefore have an interest in the success of Impact Engine. No compensation was provided for the endorsements. AllianceBernstein’s assets under management (AUM) is based on the most up-to-date information as of December 31, 2024.

Media Contacts 

Bernstein

Katrina Clay

communications@bernstein.com

Impact Engine

Maggie Stohler

maggie@theimpactengine.com  

Legal code: BPWM-667328-2025-01-14

Why We Invested in Unison Therapy Services

By Sophia Friedman, Vice President for Health Equity

There are ~7.5M children with a diagnosed disability in the U.S., and special education (“SPED”) learners make up 15% of the total US student population. The number of SPED students has been growing since before the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to grow as more students are diagnosed earlier and need multiple services. Students with disabilities have been federally mandated to receive customized school support since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was passed in 1975. The IDEA law requires schools to meet Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) requirements for children with disabilities. Children who fall under IDEA are put on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that legally requires them to have specialized instruction in their Least Restrictive Environment. As part of an IEP, students can receive specialized instruction, performance tracking & interventions, paraprofessional support and ancillary services such as speech, occupational and physical therapy. All of these services require specialized clinical staff. However, schools are structurally and operationally unable to hire clinicians to meet the demand for SPED students. As a result, outsourced vendors have increasingly been tapped to fill the supply gap.

Solution

Unison Therapy Services provides therapeutic services in Pre-K through 12 school- and community- based settings via over 190 school district partners and 12 community clinics in California and Colorado. The Company is a multi-disciplinary provider of services for children with developmental delays, autism, social and emotional developmental needs and behavioral challenges. The company currently offers services across California and Colorado, and its suite of offerings include behavior, speech, mental health, psychology, education and OT/PT. 

Why We Invested

Unison Therapy Services fills a critical need for therapeutic services for students that schools are unable to fill themselves and in communities where clinician supply does not meet patient demand. While schools are federally mandated to fill certain speech, behavioral, and other therapeutic service roles, these are extremely specialized and hard to staff for, leaving schools to look to outsourced vendors to fulfill federally mandated requirements.  Unison Therapy Services has a competitive advantage over others in this space in recruiting and retaining talent given their focus on competitive compensation, professional development and better matching of clinicians with districts. Further, the highly fragmented school-based market presents an opportunity for significant organic and inorganic growth. Relative to other players, Unison Therapy Services has a unique ability to provide a faster time to hire / fill school needs, maintain high quality of services and provide a diverse line of services. 

Impact

Currently, school districts are unable to hire and properly staff roles to address the needs of their SPED students. As more students are qualifying for IEPs and increasingly need multiple types of support services, there is a greater need for school-based clinicians to meet this demand. However, districts are unable to properly fill gaps as they are often unable to replace in-house staff that leave due to the specialized nature of the clinicians, the unionized nature of in-house staff (and resulting  inability to match clinician pay rates). Attempts to innovate around insourcing talent strategies at school districts have largely fallen flat. 

As a result, Unison Therapy Services has significant impact potential as the platform helps support SPED students. Key impact & ESG merits include:

• Clinician-founded company that has successfully scaled in California  providing on-site care to SPED students in both school-based as well as community-based settings.

• Improves access to high-quality therapeutic and behavioral health service offerings in markets where supply-demand mismatch leaves students without sufficient clinical resources.

• Community business targets underserved students, in rural and urban areas, who need affordable access to special education care.

• Enhances the quality of care to an underserved student base.

• Creates value by prioritizing organization, care coordination, data analytics and operating efficiency.

Why We Invested in NephroPlus

By Sophia Friedman and Anna Reilly

There has been a significant increase in both the number and severity of end stage renal disease (ESRD) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) cases in India over the past several decades. Of the estimated 1.3M individuals requiring access to dialysis services in India, only ~20% are receiving those services at the recommended frequency. This gap is primarily due to: 1) affordability as the average cost per session is price prohibitive to most; and, 2) supply side constraints given there is a significant gap in supply of dialysis machines, clinicians, and centers. Additionally, geographic location continues to serve as a barrier to access for individuals living in tier II or III cities versus tier I cities. While a number of private dialysis companies have been founded in India, few have been able to scale high-quality, affordable services across high-need areas. Similar challenges exist more broadly outside of India. In The Philippines and Uzbekistan, the number of individuals with kidney diseases continues to grow and the demand for services in these countries has far outpaced supply.

Solution

NephroPlus enables individuals suffering from kidney diseases to resume normal functioning of life through high-quality, cost effective dialysis treatments and services. NephroPlus is Asia’s largest chain of dialysis clinics with ~450 centers across 250+ towns in India, Uzbekistan, and The Philippines. The company offers services through both standalone centers and outsourced dialysis centers located in hospitals within tier I, II, and III cities, and through public-private partnerships. NephroPlus has an in-house dialysis staff training program, which both addresses supply side challenges and ensures high-quality delivery of services. During the last 10 years, more than 1,000 students have been trained and placed successfully at NephroPlus clinics. NephroPlus is well-positioned to serve the large and growing number of individuals with a need for high-quality, affordable dialysis services in India, The Philippines, Uzbekistan, and additional countries in Asia.

Why We Invested

The prevalence and severity of kidney disease cases continues to increase around the world, particularly across Southeast Asia. In India, The Philippines, and Uzbekistan, where NephroPlus operates, there is a significant supply-demand gap in terms of dialysis machines, centers, and clinicians required to care for individuals suffering from renal disease. To combat this discrepancy, the Indian government launched the Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme, which partners with private providers to increase the number of centers, machines, and clinicians offering dialysis services in the country. The governments within The Philippines and Uzbekistan are also offering universal health coverage for these services through government partnerships. However, public programs alone will not be enough to overcome the gap in the number of needed machines. Further, these countries also struggle to properly recruit and train the number of nurses and technicians needed to provide care.

Given the need for machines, centers, and clinicians, NephroPlus is well-positioned to become a market leading provider of dialysis services across Asia. As a single specialty, multi-site provider of high-quality, cost effective dialysis services, NephroPlus will be capable of partnering with governments and outsourcing dialysis services for hospital and center partners. The NephroPlus founding team has extensive experience in the dialysis industry, including effectively scaling the company to ~450 centers since its foundation in 2010. Founder and CEO Vikram Vuppala founded NephroPlus with a clear objective to redefine and transform healthcare in India. Further, NephroPlus’s most significant investor, Quadria Capital, is committed to working together with the company to professionalize and optimize the business as NephroPlus continues to scale throughout Asia. The NephroPlus and Quadria Capital teams share a similar mission to build Asia’s largest network of dialysis centers offering high-quality, cost-effective services in countries with a significant need. 

Impact

NephroPlus addresses all three barriers to services: accessibility, quality, and affordability. The company plans to add hundreds of additional centers across tier I, II, and III cities with the majority of centers added in tier III cities, where there is currently limited access to dialysis services. NephroPlus maintains a highly-qualified clinical board and ensures cohesive standard operating procedures lowering infection rates across centers and markets. Additionally, NephroPlus recently announced the publication of a research study in The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia establishing the first national benchmark for survival amongst dialysis patients in India. The company has partnered with the governments in both The Philippines and Uzbekistan to ensure public coverage for services. Within India, while the company provides the majority of services through government models, either through PPP or offering services under government healthcare schemes, while the rest of services are either private insurance or self pay. NephroPlus intends to continue to partner with the Indian government to provide services through public-private partnership models.

Why We Invested in Mae Health

By Sophia Friedman

The United States is facing a maternal mortality crisis. Maternal mortality rates in the US exceed rates in other high income countries (by more than ten times in some cases, such as compared to Australia, Japan and Spain). Specifically, Black women are most negatively impacted and are 3-4x more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications. Further, 15% of Black births are premature, 35% of Black births are via c-section, and Black women are twice as likely to experience pregnancy-related complications. Various factors drive this inequity in care including access to care, social determinants of health (SDoH), and structural racism. Notably, structural issues such as implicit biases of caregivers and a lack of cultural competency materially contribute to these outcomes. 

Solution

Mae Health is a culturally competent digital health platform connecting Black expectant mothers with critical resources to elevate the standard of care for Black women, with a focus on improving maternal health outcomes. Mae works in concert with healthcare payers and states to address the significant disparities in maternal health outcomes for Black mothers across the country by pairing a community-based model of doula support with best-in-class digital interventions.

Mae’s core offerings include continuous digital engagement and culturally aligned support. The continuous digital engagement provides multi-modal touchpoints such as culturally aligned content, virtual, small group ‘Mae Momma classes’ that offer programming on specific topics, SDoH monitoring, care flags to identify risks early and track data, and analytics to share with healthcare providers and payors. Mae’s culturally-aligned support offers virtual or in-person perinatal support from credentialed doulas. Mae connects expectant mothers with doula networks for the provision of care and also provides various levels of support to doulas including a client management interface, workflow tools, and billings and claims submission support.

Why We Invested

We believe that Mae’s approach is unique as it is entirely focused on reaching Black expectant mothers, and their sales traction to date has been 100% with Medicaid payors (though the company does have D2C users who can access free content). Some competitors have avoided contracting with Medicaid payors because of the complex reimbursement dynamics that vary by state, and inherent challenges to engaging these patient populations, but Mae has tackled this head-on and is a first mover in this space. Mae has proven a  strong value proposition to payors by clearly mapping the cost savings of providing doula support and has seen great success with signing and launching new Medicaid payor contracts in recent months.

Further, the doula-centric approach is also unique, and Mae has made progress ahead of other players in building out a bench of doula talent. While there are several players in the maternal health market broadly, Mae’s approach is unique in its focus on optimizing doula benefits for Medicaid populations. Doula support has been directly linked to improved health outcomes as women who give birth with a doula present have a 22% lower risk of undergoing a c-section. By employing this model, there is significant impact potential in a market that not many companies have been willing to focus on. Lastly, the team is extremely impact motivated and brings relevant lived experience to the platform. Founder and CEO Maya Hardigan has prior experience on the innovation team at Pfizer and as the mother of three young girls, she has personally experienced the inequities that she is trying to address.  

Impact

Mae aims to elevate the standard of maternal health care for Black women, with a focus on improving maternal health outcomes. Believing that many of the disparities Black women face are driven by biases in care, its model prioritizes on-the-ground support from community-based doulas who are known to improve pregnancy experiences and outcomes. Mae has already begun to demonstrate improvements, and its solution is linked to reduction in maternity cost of care, improvements in health performance metrics (HEDIS metrics), and enhanced member literacy, satisfaction and engagement.  From an access perspective, at the time of investment, Mae’s enterprise users were 100% Medicaid patients, and several quantitative measures suggest that the approach is driving positive health outcomes amongst this population. Specifically, Mae has shown a 31% reduction in c-section rates and a 58% reduction in preterm birth rates amongst its users. 

While not specific to Mae, many of the tactics Mae is employing have demonstrated a direct link to an improvement in clinical outcomes. For instance: women who attend a childbirth education classes are 26% more likely to have a vaginal delivery than those who do not; women who have a birth plan are 98% more likely to have a vaginal delivery than those who do not; and, mothers who use a lactation consultant are almost 71% more likely to exclusively breastfeed within the first month of the baby’s life. Thus, with time, Mae expects to collect additional data to prove its positive impact on health outcomes.

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Our investment in Mae Health was part of a fundraising round led by Jumpstart Nova.

Why We Invested in Vacuumschmelze

By Chris Wu and Aakash Dattani

A majority of the discussion, policy, and investment in the clean energy transition has been focused on renewable energy generation, storage, mobility, financing, consumer adoption, and related challenges. The underlying supply chain and enabling infrastructure needed to support this transition, given its scale, is less well understood, and underappreciated. The growing electrification of the global energy system, both in terms of generation, and final consumption relies on a commensurate growth in the supply of highly efficient electric motors and generators. High quality magnets are an essential component of both of these electrical devices. At present, China accounts for 87% of global permanent magnet production. Consequently, the global magnet supply chain, especially after COVID, is a source of significant risk for turbine manufacturers, electric vehicle OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), and the like, especially in the western world.

Solution

Vacuumschmelze (VAC) is an advanced magnetic materials and solutions company with a 100-year operating history. The company manufactures a variety of different products that play a key role in end markets driven by the energy transition including EVs, industrial efficiency, alternative energy, and electric flight through its soft magnet and permanent magnet segments. The company currently is the only Western manufacturer of significant scale producing permanent magnets, which is a mission-critical component that goes into EV motors, so they are uniquely positioned to serve as a key supplier for this high-value segment of the global magnetic materials market.

VAC has two operating segments: Hard Magnets (permanent magnets) and Soft Magnets (Temporary Magnets). The most common type of permanent magnets VAC produces are sintered NdFeB magnets and their associated assemblies. NdFeB sintered magnets are used in EV car motors to generate propulsion (rather than an internal combustion engine) and have the highest levels of magnetism of any known magnet. VAC also serves several market segments such as wind and solar energy, advanced manufacturing, and aerospace, in which it enjoys a large market share because of the superior performance, high customization, and advanced technology characteristics of its products.

Why We Invested

Almost all of VAC’s segments have differentiated products critical to the energy transition. Key end markets within the energy transition are expected to grow at double-digit CAGRs over the next five years. VAC has longstanding secure partnerships with many blue chip customers, which tend to be sticky on account of high switching costs, and the company’s customers have consistently demonstrated strong willingness to pay. VAC’s management team has extensive industry knowledge, each member of the management team brings 15+ years of relevant industry experience. The company’s R&D pipeline - supported by a demonstrated track record - generates innovative products with attractive, durable markets and opportunities for higher margins. Western auto OEMs are projected to drive demand for an additional 25,000 tons of permanent magnets per year by 2030, which VAC is well positioned to serve. At present, there are only three players in the advanced magnetics space that can take advantage of this massive opportunity and VAC is the only producer in North America or Europe and VAC is the only one who has signed an offtake contract with a Western OEM, General Motors. VAC is in the process of building a new North American facility to supply under this contract, which is likely to meaningfully scale the company’s operations, allowing it to play a greater role in supporting the energy transition. 

Impact

The company manufactures key products that are considered foundational components that go into EV motors as well as EV charging infrastructure. OEMs desperately need these components in order to meet the transportation sector’s goal of electrifying mobility. The transportation sector accounted for 27% of the US CO2 emissions in 2020, according to the EPA. As more electric vehicles are sold they will displace polluting internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. The greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those from an average gasoline-powered vehicle, even when accounting for manufacturing and mining of rare minerals.The International Energy Agency estimates that the lifecycle GHG emissions for a mid-size EV is ~53% lower than for gasoline-powered cars. VAC’s soft magnet products, such as closed loop sensors and common mode chokes, are mission critical components that are necessary for the continued rollout of solar energy. VAC’s permanent magnets are also a core component of wind turbines, where they are used in gearbox technology for offshore wind turbines and in direct drives for onshore wind turbines. By delivering more of these products to customers, the company will enable more solar and wind energy projects to come online, which ultimately will help decarbonize the grid by displacing GHG intensive fossil fuel-based energy generation.

Why We Invested in Cloverly

By Chris Wu

The Role of Carbon Removal and Voluntary Carbon Markets

Carbon removal technologies are likely to play a crucial role in limiting warming to 1.5°C. In its April 2022 report on mitigating climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the need to rapidly deploy carbon removal technologies to counterbalance hard-to-abate residual emissions and meet net-zero targets at a global scale. High-quality carbon credits are necessary in order to scale-up the deployment and operation of carbon removal technologies. Carbon credits enable businesses to make earlier and more ambitious climate commitments by allowing them to reduce their current emissions through offsets. Further, an active market for high-quality carbon credits is necessary in order to catalyze the flow of investments for deploying existing carbon removal technologies and developing new technologies. Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) allow carbon emitters to offset their unavoidable emissions by purchasing carbon credits generated by projects targeted at removing or reducing greenhouse gasses (GHG) from the atmosphere. Each credit – which corresponds to one metric ton of reduced, avoided or removed CO2 or equivalent – can be used by a company or an individual to compensate for the emission of one ton of CO2 or equivalent gasses. A high-quality carbon credit represents real, quantifiable, additional, leakage-proof, and permanent GHG emission reductions or removals. VCMs represent an important mechanism to scale high-quality carbon credits from $2 billion in 2021 up to $40 billion by 2030. 

Solution

Cloverly is an API-first marketplace for high-quality carbon credits, enabling businesses to meet their climate goals by offering seamless access to high-quality carbon removal credits from across the globe. While Cloverly is a marketplace for businesses of all sizes looking to offset their emissions voluntarily, it has seen strong traction in the enterprise segment, with customers across industries from logistics to financial services. Cloverly offers an API that matches any transaction with a carbon offset in real-time. Their API calculates the amount of carbon emissions generated by a particular activity and then purchases an offset instrument that pays for avoiding or sequestering the same amount of carbon elsewhere in the environment. Cloverly’s focus on project quality ensures that every carbon credit meets their criteria for additionality, permanence, leakage and other indicators. All projects listed on the marketplace undergo a rigorous quality evaluation process by climate science experts that look at 60+ quality indicators to pick the best projects in the voluntary carbon market. As a result, only 10% of carbon credits pass through their screening process and are deemed high-quality and eligible to be on their marketplace. Cloverly’s marketplace allows customers to buy both spot and forward credits in one click. That means they can purchase and build an inventory of credits that can be retired when needed to help them manage carbon credit price volatility.

Why We Invested

Our investment and impact thesis are premised on the catalytic role that VCMs are likely to play in the coming years. Active and efficient carbon markets will be necessary in order to create the right set of incentives for the deployment of projects offering high-quality carbon credits and the development of new carbon removal technologies. The rapid development and deployment of carbon removal technologies is imperative to the achievement of global climate goals, it’s estimated that 10 gigatons of CO2 will need to be removed from the atmosphere annually by 2050. As governments and corporations set ambitious climate targets that entail more than just reducing their emissions, the relevance of VCMs will increase. With the use of carbon capture technologies set to increase 13x, driven by the provisions of the IRA, VCM transaction volumes are likely to register exponential growth.

While today’s VCM is growing at a breakneck pace, it lacks some of the fundamental elements required to drive meaningful impact at scale. Cloverly has been addressing these problems surrounding access, ease, trust, and transparency since its inception as the first API in the world for carbon credits. On the demand-side, Cloverly’s approach is characterized by a focus on the enterprise segment, a recent change in strategy for which there is already clear evidence of success. Cloverly has seen strong growth in transaction volumes and customer acquisition, and has signed key partnerships with Visa, American Express, Redwood Logistics, Ecolytiq, and Salesforce. On the supply-side, what sets Cloverly apart is its ability to provide customers access to a vast and diverse, high-quality portfolio of both nature-based and technology-based carbon offset projects from across the globe. Its focus on high-quality offsets and sourcing and verification processes are key, and this was critical to us (and, we believe, to its customers), given the significant challenges associated with tracking and verifying project credentials and performance. Lastly, we believe the team, led by CEO Jason Rubottom, has a strong understanding of the problem and the market, as well as a clear and compelling vision for the company. 

Impact

We believe that Cloverly’s marketplace enables both SMBs and large enterprises to effectively offset their emissions through the purchase of high-quality offsets. Purchasing high-quality carbon credits, in addition to eliminating avoidable emissions, plays a critical role in accelerating the transition to net-zero emissions. Making and achieving credible decarbonisation commitments is challenging for businesses, particularly in emissions-intensive sectors. Credits allow businesses to reduce their emissions now through offsets, while taking cost-effective action to reduce future emissions through asset turnover and evolution of their business models. In the longer term, credits have an essential role in offsetting hard-to-abate emissions from products which lack low or zero emissions options. At scale, the carbon removal purchases that transact on Cloverly’s platform can improve the economic viability of emerging carbon capture technologies, thereby catalyzing the flow of capital to that sector. In the case of high quality nature-based offsets, which promote the preservation of natural ecosystems, they direct private financing to climate-action projects that would not otherwise get off the ground. These projects may also offer additional co-benefits in terms of biodiversity protection, pollution prevention, public-health improvements, and local job creation.

Why We Invested In Pear Suite

By Sophia Friedman

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are frontline public health workers who typically share ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, and life experiences with the community members they serve. CHWs have been identified as a valuable resource that can deliver services around the healthcare journey in a culturally sensitive way, thus leading to positive health outcomes. While the market for care navigation and care coordination is crowded, there is tremendous potential to leverage CHWs as a resource on a larger scale to drive improved health outcomes for underserved communities. The US Department of Health and Human Services’ recently announced of the availability of $226.5M in American Rescue Plan Funding to launch a Community Health Worker Training Program, and there have been (and are expected to be more) shifts in Medicaid funding for the development of community health centers and reimbursement for services provided by CHWs that were not previously reimbursed, therefore creating new opportunities for innovative CHW models. 

Solution

Pear Suite aims to be a trusted care navigator to guide otherwise underserved populations through their health journey. Pear Suite empowers CHWs to support older adults and individuals in underserved communities by providing culturally sensitive, empathetic care navigation. CHWs are lay members of the community who typically work in association with the local health care system in both urban and rural environments. CHWs typically share ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status and life experiences with the communities they serve (NIH). Pear Suite leverages CHWs to connect people to resources (vaccination resources, food access, transportation, housing support, economic support) and also helps them to get onboarded to digital health programs or telehealth to support their health journey.

Pear Suite’s platform allows the CHW user to build custom care journeys to automate patient support and facilitate person-centered interactions; achieve higher activation rates through personalized recommendations and goal tracking; engage patients using omni-channel communication tools; and track real-time metrics to evaluate impact and drive actionable solutions.  Pear Suite has both SaaS and tech-enabled services lines of business: the SaaS product is used by Pear Suite’s clients for their CHWs and the services product provides outsourced CHWs employed by Pear Suite to supplement the clients’ teams. 

Why We Invested

Pear Suite transforms social determinants of health data into actionable solutions and empowers community health workers to provide culturally sensitive care navigation. Without actionable data, healthcare organizations struggle to address the social drivers of health at scale. Researchers estimate that a lack of data and inaction prevents 20M adults from living at home and costs billions annually.  Pear Suite's cloud-based platform enables anyone to leverage data to better assess and address the social drivers of health in a scalable, cost-effective, and person-centered way. Pear Suite’s Cofounder and CEO, Colby Takeda, is mission driven and has a strong impact orientation to maximize the CHW as a valuable community resource to drive improved health outcomes by addressing often overlooked sociocultural factors that have a strong impact on health. 

Pear Suite has traction with several different customer types. While sales to date have focused on government agencies, Pear Suite is expanding to focus its sales on healthcare organizations and startups as well as payor clients. Pear Suite has developed both a strong SaaS platform as well as a services business to address the multiple facets related to operating in the CHW market. We believe that Pear Suite is differentiated via its focus on CHWs as a key stakeholder in the patient journey with ability to drive impact both in terms of improved outcomes for patients and improved socioeconomic opportunities for the CHWs themselves.

Impact

Pear Suite was founded to address the lack of focus on social factors within healthcare. More specifically, there are many solutions in the healthcare space that aggregate healthcare data, but few are focused on translating social determinants of health (SDoH) data into actions to help individuals address their needs. Existing solutions do not lead to an action on behalf of the member, as solutions typically focus on what the data means to payors or providers. Therefore, Pear Suite seeks to leverage data to assess what actions can support long term outcomes for patients.

Community health workers are uniquely positioned to drive impact as frontline public health workers who typically share ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, and life experiences with the community members they serve. As a result, they understand the sociocultural needs of that community and can effectively drive better health outcomes. The platform provides resources such as better understanding local food resources, support in accessing SNAP benefits, understanding affordable senior housing options, enrolling in virtual physical activity classes, connecting users to technology classes so that they can better leverage tech to manage their health and so on. 

In addition to the impact in terms of improving health outcomes for the patients that Pear Suite will reach, the company can also create better economic outcomes for CHWs. The CHW role provides a potential path for upward mobility for individuals within a community. CHWs often move on to work as clinicians, nurse practitioners or in government agencies. Therefore, this role provides a meaningful starting point from which to kickstart workers’ careers. 

Why We Invested in LearnLux

By Rahul Bhide

It’s clear that financial wellness is becoming a table-stakes benefit, and the current offerings are no longer enough. Only 22% of Americans feel that they are ‘financially well’. Fiduciary planning and other financial wellness solutions could play a big role in bridging that gap for the other 78% of Americans. It’s not a coincidence that only 16% of Americans use plans built with a financial professional, a similar share to those that consider themselves financially well. Financial planning has long been focused on high-net-worth individuals, and many of the current solutions for low- and middle-income individuals are heavily focused on budgeting tools.

Employers have also identified financial wellness as a key focus area for employee benefits to address the impact on productivity from financial stress, but also to differentiate themselves and retain talent in the wake of the Great Resignation. Surveys done by Bank of America and TIAA demonstrate these trends, with results showing that 95% of employers feel a sense of responsibility for the financial wellness of their employees, up from 81% in 2015. Furthermore, more than 8 in 10 employers agree that financial wellness programs result in greater productivity and more satisfied employees.

Solution

LearnLux is a workplace financial wellbeing provider that blends fiduciary digital planning with access to one-on-one guidance from Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP) professionals. LearnLux's program equips employees with a financial plan to guide them through key decision points across all life events. On the tech platform, employees can complete a quick financial checkup, set goals, and get an individualized financial plan. If employees need more support, they can book a free video call with a CFP. Employees usually start with a check-up to establish a baseline and identify blind spots and priorities. Subsequently, the platform gets into personalized elements such as health insurance and retirement planning.

Once a strong foundation is in place, the platform addresses more sophisticated elements such as savings for real estate, managing education loans and tax optimization. The platform also enables employers to speed up their onboarding process by helping new hires make benefit decisions, communicate the economic value of the benefits they are providing to differentiate themselves from other employers, and drive retention.

Why We Invested

We’ve been really impressed with the founders, the sister-brother duo of Rebecca Liebman (CEO) and Michael Liebman (COO). Both have focused on financial inclusion in different ways throughout their careers so far. LearnLux is serving people across income brackets, and the product was designed from the beginning for both blue collar employees and executives alike, giving LearnLux a differentiated positioning in the market and strengthening the impact potential. So far, customers of LearnLux have been similarly impressed, with all choosing to grow their relationship with LearnLux from year to year. Lastly, we see significant tailwinds as employers prioritize the financial wellness of their employees to reduce stress, improve productivity and retention, and differentiate themselves from other employers.

Impact

LearnLux enables the 78% of Americans that don’t have financial planning support to access unbiased financial planning and advice. We expect LearnLux to drive important results including reduction in financial stress for employees, greater use of pretax products, on-time retirement, and healthcare savings. LearnLux is inclusive across all ages, income levels, and job types; and the employee base it serves includes traditionally hard to reach populations like manufacturing, construction, retail and hourly workers.