Today’s guest is Mark Hays, Director of Sustainable & Impact Investing at Glenmede — a firm managing $48 billion with a client-to-employee ratio that keeps conversations personal and strategy focused.

Mark’s journey into finance started early — running a lemonade stand to save up for a Sega Genesis and learning about markets through a third-grade stock project that didn’t go as planned. That early curiosity eventually led to a career spanning Cambridge Associates, OMERS, Flat World, and J.P. Morgan — where he became the firm’s first U.S. sustainable investing hire.

Now at Glenmede, Mark helps clients align their portfolios with their principles — not just in theory, but through tangible investments.

Glenmede offers investment management, wealth planning, fiduciary, and advisory services to high-net-worth individuals, families, endowments, foundations, and institutional clients.

It has $48 billion in assets under management, but keeps a 4-to-1 client-to-employee ratio and promises, in Mark’s words, “the experience of a $200 million family as a $10 million individual.” That approach means every client gets tailored advice, deeper conversations, and impact reporting that goes far beyond ESG scores.

Nearly 20 percent of AUM sits in strategies that fit Glenmede’s four-category investment taxonomy (Integrated, Mandated, Thematic, High-Impact Concessionary) and span almost every asset class.

Mark’s through-line is what he calls “sustainable prosperity” — the belief that helping those with the least doesn’t take away from others, but actually creates more opportunity and value for everyone.

At Glenmede, that vision shows up not only in where the money goes but in how clients are engaged. Mark and his team don’t just plug people into products — they guide multi-generational families through deep, often difficult conversations about values, legacy, and measurable impact.

That means starting with inquiry, moving through education, assessment, and implementation, and ending with real measurement — not in vague ESG scores, but in tangible results like gallons of water saved, emissions avoided, or communities reached.

Mark knows that impact is a moving target, but he also knows how to hit it: by staying curious, staying human, and staying honest about what money can and cannot do.

Tune in to hear how he turns that approach into measurable impact.

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Additional Resources:
🔹 Mark Hays LinkedIn
🔹 E-mail: mark.hays@glenmede.com
🔹 Glenmede Website
🔹 2025 Market Outlook
🔹 As You Sow Website
🔹 See if your investments are sustainable. Use this free tool

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SRI360 interviews mentioned:

🔹Andrew Behar: Ep 27

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Books mentioned:
🔹 “Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now,” John Doerr
🔹 The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale,” Simon Clark

My guest today is Sugandhi Matta, Chief Impact Officer at ABC Impact – the largest Pan-Asian impact-dedicated private equity fund, with nearly $900 million in AUM.

Sugandhi began her career focused on growth and returns — first at Temasek, and later at Actis. But after a breast cancer diagnosis in her early thirties, she returned to work with a new question: What if she could apply her investing skills to businesses solving real problems?

That question led her to LeapFrog Investments — and eventually to ABC Impact, where she became one of the founding partners. From the ground up, she helped build a fund that integrates impact into every step of the investment process, from deal screening to reporting.

Today, ABC Impact invests across four themes:

• Climate and water solutions
• Financial and digital inclusion
• Better health and education
• Sustainable food and agriculture

Sugandhi leads the firm’s impact team. They developed a proprietary system rooted in the five dimensions of the Impact Management Project and tailored to ABC’s sectors.

The internal language centers on three Cs: consistency, comparability, and communicability. It’s a disciplined approach – built to align intention, data, and outcomes across the portfolio.

Sugandhi's goal is to hold impact to the same standard as IRR.

However, she points out that the burden of proof is often uneven. Expected returns are taken at face value. Impact is asked to justify itself at every turn. Because investors don’t yet trust its metrics the way they trust financial ones.

The double standard isn’t just about data. It’s about gender, too.

As one of the few female investment leads in Asia’s private equity ecosystem, Sugandhi has had to thread her way through what she calls the “quiet skepticism” – the unspoken assumptions around risk appetite, ambition, or expertise.

Even now, she’s often the only woman in the room with GPs or LPs. She doesn’t lead with gender, but she’s aware of how it plays out. The skepticism is often unspoken, but present.

Over time, she’s learned not to internalize it. Instead, she focuses on the work, knowing that – fairly or not – being a woman in this space can mean having to prove yourself just a little more.

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Connect with SRI360°:
Sign up for the free weekly email update
Visit the SRI360° PODCAST
Visit the SRI360° WEBSITE
Follow SRI360° on X
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Additional Resources:

ABC Impact website

ABC Impact LinkedIn

Sugandhi Matta LinkedIn

ABC’s 2020 Impact Report

ABC’s 2024 Impact Report

Insights from Dalberg and ABC Impact’s User-Centered Study

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SRI360 interviews mentioned:

💎 Stewart Langdon: Ep 17

💎 Eliza Foo: Ep 71

💎 Sharon Vosmek: Ep 07

💎 Tara Bishop: Ep 70

💎 4 Women-Led Funds: 4-in-1 Ep 86

💎 Sir Ronald Cohen: Ep 73

My guest today is Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter, Co-Founder of IMPAQTO and General Partner at IMPAQTO Capital. Michelle is a human rights lawyer by training, a fund builder by calling, and one of the most compelling system-reimaginers I’ve ever had on the show.

Michelle’s journey has taken her from a small apartment in Quito to the halls of Oxford and the UN — and back again. What she learned along the way is that real change doesn’t come from reports or elite institutions. It comes from being close to the problem — and the people.

Back in Quito, Michelle started where many great entrepreneurial stories begin — with no office, no plan, just an instinct that something better could exist. Over a hundred coffees with local founders, she kept hearing the same themes: isolation, lack of support, funding that didn’t fit.

In response, she created IMPAQTO, Ecuador’s first coworking space for social ventures, not because she had a real estate vision, but because people needed a place to belong. “They weren’t paying for square meters,” she said. “They were paying to not be alone.”

From there, IMPAQTO grew — into an accelerator, a research platform, a voice in policy. But the biggest problem persisted: no capital. Or rather, the wrong kind of capital.

Local businesses needed $10K–$500K. They didn’t want to sell equity. They wanted to grow on their own terms. Too big for microfinance, too small for venture. “That’s the missing middle,” Michelle said. “That’s where we live.”

So in 2021, she launched IMPAQTO Capital, a revenue-based investment fund designed not to chase unicorns but to nourish sustainable growth. Michelle described it not as alternative capital, but as capital that’s appropriate for the context they’re operating in.

Rather than chasing foreign LPs, her team went local. They raised over half their first close from Ecuadorian and Andean-region families — people with lived experience inside the very systems the fund aims to change. “Our investors aren’t impact tourists,” she said. “They’re system insiders.”

What Michelle is building isn’t just a capital vehicle. It’s an ecosystem intervention — a cultural shift that treats belonging as a precondition for growth, and care as critical infrastructure. She’s also a co-founder of CLIIQ, a regional research and advocacy platform focused on unlocking catalytic capital for women-led businesses.

At IMPAQTO Capital, every deal is evaluated not just on returns, but on whether it preserves the dignity and agency of the founder. Every exit includes a “cap party” — a ritual of closure and celebration that says: You did it. You paid us back. We’re done. And we’re proud.

There’s a lot to learn from Michelle. About capital. About leading with trust and care. About staying rooted in a place and still seeing the whole system.

But mostly, about how change happens — not from the top down, but from the inside out. Slowly. With proximity. And with people who never forgot where they started.

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About the SRI 360° Podcast: The SRI 360° Podcast is focused exclusively on sustainable & responsible investing.

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Connect with SRI360°:
Sign up for the free weekly email update
Visit the SRI360° PODCAST
Visit the SRI360° WEBSITE
Follow SRI360° on X
Follow SRI360° on FACEBOOK

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Additional Resources:

IMPAQTO Capital website

IMPAQTO Ecosystem Builder

Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter website

Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter LinkedIn