IMPACTASSETS 50™
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
ImpactAssets 50
An Annual Showcase of Impact Investment Fund Managers
Impact America
Management, LLC
Education
Financial and Economic Inclusion
Microfinance and Low-income Financial ServicesFirm Overview
Impact America Fund makes early stage venture investments in high-growth, tech-enabled companies that are capturing billion-dollar opportunities and advancing economic agency for low- and moderate-income communities of color in the U.S. We invest in founders who recognize the tremendous value that exists among workers, consumers, and communities of color and who are realizing that value by deploying technologies and business models that are inclusive, equitable, and sustainable.
Years of Operation: 5 – 9 years
% of Capital from Top 3 Investors: 25% – 49%
Impact America Fund makes early stage venture investments in high-growth, tech-enabled companies that are capturing billion-dollar opportunities and advancing economic agency for low- and moderate-income communities of color in the U.S.
Impact America Fund makes early stage venture investments in high-growth, tech-enabled companies that are advancing economic agency for low- and moderate-income communities of color in the U.S. We believe that a strong, sustainable future for the U.S. requires the equitable participation of all people. However, there is a widening wealth gap that continues to do significant generational harm to communities of color. These systemic inequities are centuries old, but continue to manifest in new forms and technologies. We invest in founders who have the lived experience to recognize the tremendous value that exists among workers, consumers, and communities of color and who are realizing that value by deploying business models that are inclusive, equitable, and sustainable. Our aim is a scalable blueprint that demonstrates the role of catalytic capital in allowing mission-driven founders to capture billion-dollar opportunities, while creating lasting systems change.
IAF is a Black woman-led firm with a team comprised of 100% people of color and women. Our deep cultural competence, extensive network, business experience, and tech expertise gives us the insight to support companies addressing the needs of the new “minority majority”, a population that has been historically ill-served by the tech and financial sectors. Our firm is focused on providing a scalable blueprint for deploying capital into under-resourced communities of color in a way that creates economic agency and new frameworks of opportunity for those who have been economically disenfranchised. We invest in companies whose business models have “inherent impact”, where financial success can be directly linked to the companies impact drivers, and focus on equity-related investments that bridge the transition from Seed to Series A.
Investment Example
CareAcademy is a learning, compliance, and workforce management platform that drives quality education and skill development for home care workers, and provides critical operational infrastructure to the 45,000 SMBs and enterprises that hire them. The platform addresses the calamitous mismatch between consumer demand for a home health workforce and the current size of that workforce, by providing an upskilling hub that supports direct care workers and caregivers in advancing their careers, and reduces turnover for their employers. CareAcademy serves 1218 home health agencies—up from 457 when we first invested in 2019—and has issued 305K certificates to caregivers in the first half of 2021. Adding to their impact, the company has recently partnered with Southern New Hampshire University to provide college credits for CareAcademy courses.
Leadership and Team
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Kesha Cash – Founder & General Partner More Info
Kesha is passionate about helping the next generation of founders navigate the challenges that inevitably arise when building a business—even when the idea is great, the model is strong, or funding is abundant. She was recently named one of Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business" and is the subject of a Stanford Graduate School of Business case study on forming a successful impact venture capital firm. She has nearly a decade of experience in impact investing; at Jalia Ventures, a $5 million fund that she co-founded with Josh Mailman, she made seed investments in mission-driven companies including Red Rabbit, Schoolzilla, and ConnXus. |
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Kaiton Williams – Cultural Technologist More Info
Kaiton is a Silicon Valley engineer turned Human-Computer Interaction researcher. He joined IAF in 2018 with a particular interest in the challenges of connecting community-oriented research and design with scalable technology production and investment. Previously, Kaiton held senior engineering and architecture roles at Microsoft for over a decade, where he helped build and manage early web applications for billions of users. He then went on to earn his Ph.D. in Information Science from Cornell University, where his ethnographic research focused on the experiences of tech entrepreneurs building products for and from communities outside of Silicon Valley’s "normal." |
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Yusill Scribner – Head of Business Operations & Strategy More Info
Yui is a strategy and ops professional whose experience spans tech, media, investing, government, and the law. She joined IAF in 2019 to manage the firm’s operations and strategic initiatives and is particularly interested in the convergence of people, products, and policy to advance the common good. Previously, she was VP of Strategy & Business Development at Nickelodeon/Viacom, where she focused on strategic planning and innovation for the multibillion-dollar business. She also worked in business development at Palantir Technologies, where she oversaw growth for an enterprise healthcare customer. |
Financial Performance
Impact Performance
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Percentage of Total Assets Under
Management that are Impact Investments: |
100%
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IAF was founded to advance economic agency and opportunity for low-income communities of color, and, as such, our firm only invests in impact-oriented companies that are furthering that mission. We do not make traditional investments and our deal sourcing and diligence process reflects that. Our scorecard for advancing companies through diligence puts high priority on finding companies founded by those with lived experience in the communities or sectors their product offerings address (which necessitates cultivating a diverse pipeline of founders who don't always pattern-match with traditional founders). The bulk of our impact-oriented diligence process is focused on understanding the connection between impact levers and financial drivers, and ensuring that the founding team's experience (and the company's projected outcomes and impacts) is thoroughly validated through deep interviews with our community- and sector-based contacts, who have on-the-ground experience with the communities and issues that the company will impact.
IAF's impact thesis is focused on furthering economic agency and opportunity for moderate- to low-income communities of color. While we are focused on these impacts at the community-level, we know that they cannot occur without the expertise and insights of those who have a deep understanding and connection to those communities. Consequently, when sourcing deals and performing due diligence, we not only note each company's employee diversity statistics, but also look at 1.) how the company is engaging the communities they impact when it comes to product and service design, 2.) the company's hiring pipelines and 3. ) the aforementioned "lived experience" of the founders and senior management.
Impact Tracking and Monitoring
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2323 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612, USA
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