S1, E8: Global Impact Through Local Lens – From Colombian Roots to EdTech Revolution

Ana Maria Aristizabal: [00:00:00] We were. Pioneers of the impact investing space. So I felt like every room I entered during that time, I was bringing a new message and I was waking up people to one way, a new way of doing business and a new way to bank, a new way to invest because people didn’t know what we were doing. We were like so new in like in these, in these movement of impact investors.

Georgi Enthoven: Did you know the average person will work 90, 000 hours in their lifetime? What if you could use those hours to find fulfillment? And become a disruptor for good. Welcome to the work that’s worth it podcast. I’m Georgi Enthoven, and I’m here to demonstrate that an ambitious, meaningful, and rewarding career is not just a dream it’s achievable.

Each episode, we’ll dive into conversations with global change makers who cracked the code on combining income and impact. If you’ve ever felt like you were torn between a paycheck and your purpose, or maybe you simply yearn for more purpose, you’re going to be exposed to the ambitious [00:01:00] humans who have done it themselves.

Ready to make your work worth it? Let’s get started.

Today we have a talented guest, Ana Maria Aristizabal, who seems to be continually energized to explore her ideas and build her experiences. My guess is she will be lasting way more than her 90, 000 hours because she is having such a great time at doing her work. Her career started in investment banking, but soon transformed into focusing on impact.

She was raised in Columbia in South America and later immigrated to the United States. Today, she teaches impact investing in New York city at Columbia university school of international and public affairs. along with all sorts of other things that she manages to juggle at the same time. Her finance skills she developed in the early days of her career provided a terrific foundation to build upon, and she has experience being an investor, operator, professor, and board [00:02:00] member.

EdTech has been an important part of her journey, initially at KIPP Schools in California, which is a network of public charter schools in the U. S., and more recently, she co founded the first EdTech and Future of Work investment fund in Latin America. Also, reconnecting to her Colombian and Latin American roots has been evident through her choices that you will learn about.

I’m so excited to have her. Ana, so nice to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. Hi, Georgi.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: So nice to see you. for having me. Where are you dialing in from? I am dialing from

Georgi Enthoven: Hoboken, New Jersey. Okay, great. I wanted just to jump in and ask you about the beginning of your career.

I noticed that your first job is in banking and I wanted to find out about that. I imagine you were an ambitious young student and found yourself in banking and I would like to hear about those choices and how that was for you.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yeah, thank you. And [00:03:00] I’m going to take it a few years back, even before like that, like for the job.

So I, I was born and raised in Columbia in the mountains of Columbia, which is a coffee region where like I was surrounded by so much beauty and opportunity and nature and like amazing people, but also great socioeconomic challenges and differences in the way people were actually making their lives.

Unfortunately, the region with a lot of like human trafficking, sex trafficking, like drug exposure to young students. So I could see actually very young entrepreneurship as a path for survival for many folks. And in my case, a desire and an ambition to actually do something useful with my life. which I didn’t know what it was.

I, unfortunately, I found a way to channel it through my career, going back to college and like going to my first job. I studied finance and international relations, thinking of preparing myself as a leader to do something good with my life. And I ended up in investment banking. As an intern, like just to learn and like hone my skills and then do what I was supposed to [00:04:00] be doing at the end of my college experience.

And I was very fortunate because not only I was doing investment banking in like great houses. I was first working with a Dutch bank, ABN AMRO, which was one of the leaders at the time of. Innovative finance and sustainable principles and like thinking about what we call the equator principle. So I was always, since very young age, attuned to actually doing banking and doing business and finance with kind of like an impact in mind and the impact framework.

So when I transitioned to Citibank for like my second investment banking job, I was very lucky that I connected and I clicked really well with the public sector finance team. So most of my transactions, both at the ABN and later at Citibank were Financing or structuring financial transactions for either national governments, municipalities, infrastructure clients that we’re building for people, we’re building economic infrastructure for folks.

So my career was very meaningful even when banking and, and I was very fortunate to have had that as like a foundational experience [00:05:00] before moving on to my next job. Yeah.

Georgi Enthoven: Did you seek that out in banking or did it find you?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: So at the beginning I didn’t find it, like I started investment banking to actually learn the skills and like prove myself that I could do that kind of work.

And I started to connect with those type of transactions and teams over time. And so I think that I started to gravitate around it and started to look for it and intentionally made the move within Citibank to the public sector and infrastructure sector. And it happened to be the right fit for me at the time.

Georgi Enthoven: Oh, that’s amazing. And then what was your next move? And I am thinking really, how did the impact bug come and get you?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yes, as I say, like I was working in transactions that were about building the transportation systems for Bogota or designing or helping finance the city of Medellin’s infrastructure projects and so forth.

And I was very motivated by all of those transactions, not only because of [00:06:00] the thrill of actually doing business, but because of the impact. That I could have. And I started to see actually in practice through infrastructure and like all of these projects, what I, what I could do with my time. So I wanted to understand the other side.

And so coming around the financial crisis in 2008 and like here, my aging myself, I decided to go for grad school and wanted to understand the other side. So I intentionally didn’t go for an MBA, I wanted to do an MPA and I came to Columbia University to do that and focus on development. So I went , could you tell us what an MPA is?

Yes. So it’s a master’s in public administration. We, the thought that I was going to ultimately, like I wrote, I wrote in my, in my scope of work and my statement of purpose was I thought I was going to end up working with the IDB or the International Finance Corporation or like any of these development finance institutions to continue in doing what I was doing.

But with a different objective in mind, a different hat to optimize for impact, to optimize for development. And actually, I didn’t end up doing [00:07:00] that. I don’t know. Tell me about that. How, how come? Yeah, so I had a short stint at the IFC and at the UNDP. So I work at these international organizations thinking that was like the right place for me.

While I was a student, I tried the capstone internships, like all the way of actually getting real life experience and realized that that was a great path, but not in my 20s. I thought that I could wait a few years or a few decades to actually do that kind of work. And I wanted to actually get my hands.

Dirtier. I might be closer to the impact and closer to the action and the beneficiaries of the work that I was doing and magically. And fortunately I found impact investing as a nascent industry. This was like 2010 impact investing was at its very beginnings. Like the term was just coined and I say, this is it.

This is a way to do actually finance and business for good. I can actually invest money. with an intent to generate a positive return, but also with the clear intention to generate a positive outcome for the planet or for [00:08:00] society. And so I was like, this is it. I’m going to find a job in this industry was at the time was very small.

I took all of the classes, all of the courses, like I went to all of the conferences. That were available at Columbia, at Harvard, like everywhere. I just just go places to find the right people. I like to build a community of folks in that space and find a job. And I was very fortunate. Like I was a student to the late Pamela Hardigan, who I adored was my professor from Oxford, who was coming to visit at Columbia.

And she introduced me to Bambu Capital Partners, which was at the time of one of the pioneering microfinance and impact investing firms. The term was called Blue Orchard. We ended up splitting at some point, but that’s how I started my career in impact investing. I worked a lot to get that first job and now they hired me and

Georgi Enthoven: that’s how the journey began.

What role did you get into? So you just had your master’s and then what position did you take there? Just so that we understand what kind of level you can come in.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: So I started as [00:09:00] an associate at Bamboo and the ambition and the challenge was to actually set up the office in LATAM to help. BL there was like one more person in the region and I was like employee number two to build the operations, to build a team, to deploy the money and build a portfolio, manage it.

And I grew over time with the firm. I became a manager, an investment manager that became a senior investment manager and like a principal of the firm doing like managing investments. Doing the whole cycle from like sourcing opportunities to managing the opportunities to like exiting them and returning money to investors to actually thinking about new funds, raising capital, doing all of the brand awareness.

It was a really terrific time. I was with the firm throughout a lot of time. I was working, my base was Columbia, but I was between Mexico and Salvador and Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, you name it. It was an amazing opportunity for me to one. See my home region and [00:10:00] understand Latin America through the eyes of entrepreneurs and microfinance clients who were like very driven to actually get out of poverty and looking for ways to do so by either acquiring loans through microfinance institutions in which we were investors or through other.

Services and products. So we started diversifying in terms of products. And so we started investing not only in microfinance, but also in energy solutions and looking into healthcare and education, and that’s what led me to my next chapter. So it

Georgi Enthoven: was so broad that you covered so many things and my listeners can’t see you, but I can see a huge smile on your face.

So this was really something that lit you up. Yes. It was a

Ana Maria Aristizabal: very exciting time.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. And also what I am hearing from you is your experience was very entrepreneurial. You didn’t go down the development bank route because you wanted more hands on experience. And I was curious with investing, how that was hands on, but it sounds like starting an office and growing it was part of that hands on experience.

And then being able to [00:11:00] ignite capital in companies that you believed in.

Ana Maria Aristizabal:  Yes. It was really fun. And we were pioneers of the impact investing space. So I felt like every room I entered during that time, I was bringing a new message and I was waking up people to one way, a new way of doing business, a new way to bank, a new way to invest because people didn’t know what we were doing.

We were like so new in like in these, in these movement of impact investors. And like, especially in these countries where like people were interested in doing something, but the philanthropy was typically the way to do. So for me, it was a great opportunity to be entrepreneurial in that way too, to build an ecosystem and to help build the space and the field of impact investing in all of these different countries where I was operating.

And not only by rhetoric, but actually by practice. We were building institutions that actually were returning money to investors and having good ROIs or like good ROEs, depending on the sector and, and delivering great outcomes [00:12:00] in different countries. So it was, it was a really fun time. I

Georgi Enthoven: really enjoyed it.

And thinking about what skills and strengths and perspectives you have that really helped you stand out for success. And there’s a few that you’ve just mentioned, and I don’t know if you would describe yourself this way, but. One as a pioneer, two as a builder, and three as patient because you’ve got to, you know, all these things take a while.

Like you plant the seed, it has to grow for a while. Like it’s, you don’t get an instant feedback loop. Yeah. Thank you. Well,

Ana Maria Aristizabal: thank you for saying that. That’s very kind. I think I’ve started to. Acknowledge that I am all of those things that you are saying, Georgi, because I was part of that movement. So it’s like, it was not only me, it was me and others, which is the beauty of like, I think that I am a builder with others.

A collaborator. And I’m a collaborator and like, that’s how I thrive. I think I like working with other people who are either like minded or like values aligned and complement my skills and we can build together. And that was the, the [00:13:00] best part of the, of the process. Yeah. I know. And I’m very, I’m very impatient.

So I’m a very impatient person who is forced to be patient for the outcomes.

Georgi Enthoven: That maybe sound like one of your challenges. Yes, it is. From that role and impact investing, where did you go next and why did you make that next decision when you were so happy with what you were doing?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: As I was saying, like I had the great opportunity to actually understand Latin America through my work and investing in these microfinance banks and social entrepreneurs building solutions for low income communities.

And what I realized is that It was going to take so much more than all of those services and solutions to actually take people out of poverty. And, and like breaking the cycle of poverty, it was not determinant on how many loans you provided people and like how entrepreneurial a lot of these folks were.

There was something missing. And for me, it was access to quality education and access to quality jobs. [00:14:00] And that if we could find a way to invest in education and like workforce development and actually find pathways to high, paying and quality jobs. We could actually address many of the challenges that I was seeing in the communities, no matter how poor or not they were.

So I started like this search to find a way how I could do more of that work. We ended up actually at Bamboo. We invested in an education finance company, which was like my first approximation to actually investing in education. We looked at a lot of models globally in education, like education chains and so forth.

We actually invested in bamboo in one of those in India, like a K 12 school network. And I was like looking for all of those in LATAM. Like I look at a few that actually currently exist, but are not necessarily funded by venture capital or private equity. And we can come back to this reflection later, but I was like, I need to find a way.

I need to understand education and workforce and jobs. differently. And [00:15:00] I took the long route, actually went deep into the education space. I got my master’s in education and I did it by becoming an operator. So I actually switch off hats. And like I said, I’m going to put my investor hat on break. And I joined a successful social enterprise in California that was building schools in low income neighborhoods and communities in the Bay Area.

Which company was that? So I joined KIPP, K I P P, which is one of the largest, and I would say best quality charter networks in the United States. I did that through a program that was a pro residency that was meant to actually bring in people like me from the private sector to the education system in the United States.

So I immigrated. I was at the time in Latam. I immigrated to California. I joined my husband as a partner at Stanford. And while he was doing his studies, I was like, okay, this is my chance to do my switch. And I did this. I did my master’s. I [00:16:00] started working for KIPP to understand K 12 education to start.

And I stayed for five years opening schools.

Georgi Enthoven: Okay. So you did a, your master’s is not the time you were at KIPP. It’s, you did a master’s in education and at KIPP.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: So it was an amazing program. It was a master’s in education while I was working. So it was a residency. I think about like a hospital residency.

I was an education resident. So I was getting my training and doing like my master’s for two years while working and applying everything that I was learning to the school system I was working with. And I had a fantastic experience. Oh, it was amazing. And everyone who was doing it was doing in a similar, in a similar experience of transitioning from the private sector to doing work in either a social enterprise like mine or a state department of education or like a school district or so forth.

Georgi Enthoven: What program was that? Cause I have worked with a lot of teachers looking to earn higher income and interested in what their pathways [00:17:00] are. What was the program and where did you study?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yes. So it’s called the Broad Residency. It was a standalone program supported by the Broad Foundation, and now it lives in Yale.

So it’s now a program that is within Yale University under the Broad Center. So it’s still existent, and yes, I highly recommend that it’s one of the most transformative programs that I’ve ever done. Experience, yeah. And so at KIPP, did you stay on longer than the program? Yes, I did. I joined KEP as the Associate Director of Growth and Advocacy, which I had very little idea what advocacy was.

And six months into the job, the person who hired me and who I adore left to pursue her own career, and I had to fill in for her. So I quickly had to grow up and like go promoted and like had more responsibilities. And my job was about opening schools, defining where to open schools, opening the schools, getting them renewed in all of these different communities, working on a strategic [00:18:00] plan for the organization.

Certainly I had energy for more than two years. And there was work for more than that. So I stayed for almost five years, really deep into this work. I had the fortune of opening, renewing and like getting around 15 schools approved over this time. So it was a great impact certainly in the work that I was doing.

And I could see it, I could talking about like seeing the impact and being close to the beneficiaries where I was close to the kids and the families almost every week, which was very fulfilling and certainly like a great way for me to actually materialize. The work I was doing.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. I have a question about, you’re from Columbia, right?

Mm-hmm . Was it hard to be working in building schools in the US when you know the need for impact in Columbia? Like how did you deal with that conflict? Or maybe it wasn’t a conflict?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yeah, it’s a really, really great question. And the answer is actually pretty simple. There was no conflict. It [00:19:00] was actually, for me, such an amazing opportunity to see how poverty is pervasive and opportunity is not, and talent is everywhere.

And like great kids and families live here and there. So no, I was like, just very motivated by the impact that we could have. And second, it just struck me how similar the communities I was working with were to how I grew up or like the families around which I grew up. So I wasn’t very much, very involved, particularly in the Stockton, in the Central Valley, in Stockton city.

And it just reminded me of my home city of Pereira every other day. Of course, with like racial diversity and all of that, but in terms of the challenges and the opportunities were just so similar. And it was actually for me, it’s very hard to swallow that we were so close to so much wealth in the Bay Area.

And like we were dealing with the very same issues and realities that I have back home. When actually in Colombia, we have a very different economic output as [00:20:00] a country. So it was actually, I was probably more resolved. I was like, we need to find a way to solve this. And if we solve this and we find a way, maybe we can extend some of the learnings to other regions.

So no, I, it was an easy conflict to address, but I was very inspired every day.

Georgi Enthoven: It sounds like also from what you’re saying, you had a longer term view. This was a stepping stone you needed to understand. And the skills you were learning would translate to other places. And the knowledge. And so that’s just where you were and you took advantage of the opportunities you had.

Yeah. Post KIPP, where did you go

Ana Maria Aristizabal: next? So post KIPP, so towards the end of my time at KIPP, we were doing a lot of the school design and doing high school design. And I was very important in those conversations because my job was to sell my school’s visions to the districts that were going to authorize or not the schools that I wanted to open.

So I was very involved in that and I was really fortunate to work very close to educators in this journey. And one of the things that we talked a lot about was the need to think about like student [00:21:00] success post graduation. So high school was a pathway to hopefully college or careers or like depending on what the students chose.

And so it led me to a lot of thinking around, how are we thinking about higher education? How are we thinking about integrating? The job market with the K 12 experience, and I started just to connect more with the topic of high grade workforce development, and I coincided, I moved to New York and moved back from California to the New York area and was approached by the team at JFF, Jobs for the Future, that is solely focused on workforce development, and they’ve been doing that for 40 years.

And they had a fund that was incubated for a few years and they wanted to expand and grow. So I was, I was asked to help with that process. I joined the JFF team to support the deployment of one of the funds that they had and to manage some of the investments and to fill in leadership capacity, but also to start to think about.

The future of Jeff Ventures that is now Jeff [00:22:00] Ventures. And we work very closely with the team on creating a new vehicle structure, what it is right now. So I spent a good amount of my time thinking about workforce development solutions and capital and how to build a fund that will support innovation in tech for workforce development and future of work solutions with the same type of user in mind.

At the end, it’s like thinking about my students at CAB. Now, as growing young adults that are going to go through careers and life, and now we were designing and investing in solutions that will solve their needs throughout that journey above 18 years old.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. You’re back to being a pioneer and a builder again, within a larger framework.

What struck me about what you just said is empathy. We talk a lot about empathy and people who want to do good in the world and compassion, but it seems like you really were able to get to know students and understand the issues they were facing and hold [00:23:00] that in your business decisions. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yes. Thank you. And I don’t do well with compliments, but thank you. We’ll have to change that. Appreciate it. And I do teach a lot of my students about that. In one of my lectures, I talked to them that a lot of business and investments is very rational and like we’d make a lot of decisions sitting on our desk and like doing a lot of reasoning, but at the end is empathy what actually makes good investments in impact investing and in social investing because we need to find a way to make sure that whatever product or solution that we are supporting, endorsing, buying, investing in is actually addressing the needs and the desires and aspirations of whomever we are working for.

And I think that that comes from an empathy point of view. And so I think I see empathy, of course, as a feeling and as a way to connect with others, but I also think I would just see the utilitarian purpose of empathy is like, is the only way to actually make things work for the people you are working with.

Like if you don’t have empathy, you’re likely to fail. It’s your secret [00:24:00] sauce.

Georgi Enthoven: Like it’s the assumption you’ve got to be able to make a good investment and understand the financial terms. But the secret sauce is really connecting to how it’s going to change lives.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yes.

Georgi Enthoven: You mentioned that you’re already a teacher and we’ve probably got some steps to get there, but I just wanted to fill my audience in.

Where are you teaching?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: I teach at Columbia University. It’s an impact investing course, like the first ever that was existing at SIPA, the School of International Public Affairs. And I’ve been teaching for almost seven years and I’ve had like 450 amazing alums. Some of which I met at SOCAP last week and I was so proud of everything that they are doing.

Georgi Enthoven: Oh, that’s amazing. So you keep in touch with a lot of your students.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yes.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. Okay. So JFF, was there something in between that and teaching or what comes next?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: No. So I started teaching at the same time that I started at KEP. In fact, it was interesting because I started working in K 12 at KEP. At the same time that I joined Higher Education through Columbia, [00:25:00] it kept my pulse in the impact investing scene.

So I didn’t feel disconnected even during those years that I was an operator working in education. I was teaching and like downloading all of my learnings with my students and being connected with the practitioners. So yes, it’s been a great journey. I think I just finished teaching my 14th cohort of students and yeah, off to the next one.

Georgi Enthoven: Wow. That’s amazing. Not all students get to go to Columbia. If there were three pieces of wisdom you can impart with my listeners on how to have a career with income and impact, what would your three most important nuggets be?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: It’s

Georgi Enthoven: a great

Ana Maria Aristizabal: question. I think one is understand your reality, where you are at the point that you are making, asking this yourself, this question.

I think people’s financial situations, personal situation is very different. And I think that the risks that you can take and the bets that you can make are going to change [00:26:00] throughout your career. And I think it’s important that, you know, What that is a level of risk that you are willing to take either on the financial side or on the impact side at every point that you ask yourself that question.

And I say that to my students all the time because I don’t want to guide them to a place of like out of there’s no guilt and there’s no guilt and judgment. Yeah, exactly. No guilt or judgment. So that’s the first one. The second one is. Like when you have gone through the exercise of like knowing what are your greatest assets and gifts and talents and what are those unique skills that you can offer to the world are and if you can reconcile those with areas where the world needs you and whether it’s in a sector or in a type of company or with a different type of community or a geography and if you can combine those two I think that you can have great impact and actually have a fulfilling career.

In my case, it was finance. Like I was a finance person and a business person, as you [00:27:00] say, with a lot of drive and, and a desire to build with a great desire to actually have an impact in communities, initially low income communities, and later like very focused on students and learners and workers. And that’s how I found my magic.

I would say like, that’s probably, those are the three suggestions I will have. Yeah. I love that. Maybe the third. Maybe the third. There’s a third. Sorry. Yeah. Build a strong tribe of people around you. And you were saying about like, yes, not all students get to go to Columbia, but you can meet great people in conferences and events.

I met some of my best friends and colleagues and professionals throughout conference like this one that we just attended at Soka, but at the social enterprise conference at Harvard, or like many of these events that happen to put together great minds and great hearts. And if you can build a community of people that are interested in the same things that you are, opportunities will start to come up.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. I [00:28:00] love that third one because. One of the earlier things you talked about is collaboration, and in the space of impact, it seems like people are so much more willing to collaborate because it’s not a scarcity. There are an abundance of problems and abundance of possibilities, and helping each other solve them is invigorating and energy giving.

And so I really like the idea of your tribe. I would love to know about your inner circle. How has that helped you be able to do what you need to do?

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yeah, specifically my inner circle. Yeah. It’s a really good point. And I was reflecting on, on that, on that, also on that saying about like how the five people that you surround yourself end up defining who you are.

And I think it’s very true. And ultimately like that inner circle is so important to cultivate. In my case, my inner circle is actually not that small. I’ve been very lucky that I have, I have few inner circles in the different industries and spaces that I’ve navigated [00:29:00] because they’re very different. I feel like I have very dear friends.

From my impact investing, pure days, I have very dear friends and inner circle in my education circle. And now I am building a very close circle in like my board venture capital days, which we haven’t talked about that chapter. And he’s, for me, it’s been absolutely a joy and a privilege to have access to individuals who I admired as, as people and who are great individuals with very strong values that align to mine, as I mean, thinking is always the same, but.

Values and who have either shown me the path have saved me so much time who have offered resources, who have challenged my ideas in respectful ways, who have really shown me things that maybe were not so obvious to me. And I think of my inner circle as kind of like my board. And I think I probably, since I have had multiple endeavors and enterprises around my life, I have these different [00:30:00] boards.

So that’s, that’s how I think about them.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. You’ve definitely summarized a growth mindset where the people you’re surrounded by are people that you’re always open to learning from them and hearing how you can do better and shift small things maybe to make big differences.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Absolutely. Yes.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. You mentioned one other aspect of your career, which you’ve had such a long, fascinating career.

So I just want to make sure we cover that too. Did you mention that? Um,

Ana Maria Aristizabal: yes, yes. So no, it’s actually the loop closing of my journey when I left Bamboo. So I shared with you that I spent a good amount of time this past few years helping build Jeff adventures, which I did until last year, last year at the beginning of 2023, I decided to actually become an entrepreneur, like not a full intro, but actually own the title of entrepreneur.

Cause I decided to build my own investment firm and build a fund to actually close the gap and to fill this blank space that I have was seen in LATAM. So I [00:31:00] decided to create an education, workforce development, a future of work fund for Latin America. So I did that very intensely for almost two years and raised capital, building investment thesis, raised capital, brought a team like qualities people around my vision and mission.

And it was a really fun ride. To actually do that around the need and the opportunity to invest in education, innovation in LATAM. And I did it through a venture capital fund, Impact Investing Venture Fund, which we did, and it’s. It’s, it’s now out in the world and it’s going to continue to exist. It’s like I did that and I did that in between like, I would say like the end of 2022 to the beginning of this year.

And I’m really proud of that, of that chapter is going to be working on its own. And one of the greatest conclusions that I’ve had of that exercise is that that type of capital is very important. Like venture is. Very important, very needed to drive innovation, but also Venture is going to be only funding [00:32:00] a very small number of companies and a small percentage of companies.

So I am now exploring what’s next for me and, and facilitating and supporting people who want to invest creatively and innovatively in these sectors with other types of capital. So I’m actually going back to the whiteboard about what’s next for me. Okay.

Georgi Enthoven: So it’s. Not only investing in the region that you really care about, but it’s bringing along new investors, even if that’s beyond your fund, but investing in the region you care about.

Exactly. Yeah. So many wonderful and useful tidbits that you have shared. I was wondering if you have any go to resources on Ed tech or future of work or impact investing that you tell your students to read or listen to or follow? If there’s anything that comes to mind, if you could share.

Ana Maria Aristizabal: Yes, absolutely.

So one, and I’m, I’m gonna be a bit of, uh, pretty advertising ’cause we are, [00:33:00] haven’t finished yet. So I am working right now with a foundation and, and McKinsey and Company on a study on EdTech and future of work in latam. And it’s going to be released next year. So stay tuned next year. There’s going to be a great report about opportunities to invest in these sectors coming up to your question.

It really depends. Like if you’re geographically focused or like, if you are not geographically focused, there are great studies and reports. In Latin, like the Inter American Development Bank has produced a great report on the topic of ed tech education in collaboration with Holland IQ and others. As I say here in the U.

S., institutes like Jobs for the Future have published a great amount of research and publications around everything that has to do with workforce development. And there are awesome conferences in these spaces like ASU GSB in April in California. That happens to be a great place to connect with people.

So I’m typically very present in these spaces regarding impact [00:34:00] investing. There are honestly, fortunately, there are so many more resources nowadays than when I started the industry. And I think it’s an industry that it’s, it just keeps flourishing. My suggestion would be to look at articles and books from practitioners.

I think it’s probably like an advice instead of like guiding to one resource. Like the GIN, like the Global Impact Investing Network, has like a library of resources and there are many good ones. But I really enjoy reading people like me who are practitioners, who’ve done it, who’ve seen it, who Can reflect on what’s worked, but also on what failures talking about failures.

Actually, I really enjoy for instance, reading the acumen failure report, and I would love to see more investors doing that kind of reporting, reflecting on what’s not working. Cause it doesn’t always work.

Georgi Enthoven: Such interesting insight and I’ll link to those in the show notes, but I just really want to thank you for your time and sharing so much about your journey and letting us go with you chronologically to learn about all the different steps you’ve taken and how they all tie in [00:35:00] together.

So thank you so much for sharing your story. Georgi. Nice to see you. You too. Take care. As you can see, in talking to Ana, she already has had so many micro careers in her overall career. I really admire that she has circled back to her roots in Colombia and Latin America, and taken her expertise developed in the U.

S., where she gained lots of opportunity back to that region through her various investments. Also, part of her success is her charm and positivity. She sees the best in others. And you can’t help but be drawn to her wanting to collaborate. Her colleagues have become friends. As she says, a joy and a privilege to work with.

And it’s really so inspiring. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Work That’s Worth It. Remember, every conversation we share is designed to empower you to build a career that’s truly worth your time and energy. There are future disruptors out there just like you who would appreciate the [00:36:00] conversations in this podcast.

Please support me by spreading the word and sharing this episode with a friend or two or visit my website at georgienthoven. com. That’s spelled G E O R G I E N T H O V E N. com. Until next time, ask yourself, What problems am I solving, and are they worth my valuable time? Your intentional choices today can lead to exponential impact tomorrow.

Thanks for listening!