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In Case You Missed It: Must-Hear Impact Highlights From May 2025 (#093)
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In May, I spoke with four leaders who are reshaping what finance can do – and who it can serve.
In this compilation episode, I’ve pulled together the most powerful ideas, turning points, and takeaways from those conversations. If something resonates, you can dive deeper – the links to each full episode are below.
Here's the list of featured guests:
Nasir Qadree, Founder and Managing Partner of Zeal Capital Partners
Nasir launched Zeal in early 2020 – right as the pandemic began. For many, it seemed like the worst possible timing. For him, it was exactly the right moment.
He saw a market that wasn’t working for most entrepreneurs – and a venture ecosystem that kept recycling capital into the same places, the same profiles, and the same narrow definitions of potential.
Zeal’s model is built around what Nasir calls “inclusive investing” – a five-part framework designed to widen the lens on where and how capital gets deployed.
Hadewych Kuiper, Managing Director at Triodos Investment Management
Hadewych joined Triodos right as the 2008 financial crisis hit. While other banks were collapsing under the weight of financial engineering, Triodos kept growing – because they weren’t in the business of making money with money. Their investments were grounded in the real economy, and that made all the difference.
Today, Hadewych leads the firm’s €6 billion portfolio across what they call five transition themes: food, resources, energy, society, and well-being.
Her mission is bigger than impact investing. It’s about transforming the financial sector itself.
Romina Reversi, Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Investment Banking Americas at Crédit Agricole CIB
Romina started her career in equity derivatives at J.P. Morgan – a role she calls foundational for everything that came next. But in 2015, she pivoted into a niche team focused on green bonds. She was one of the earliest hires in J.P. Morgan’s ESG debt capital markets group, helping to shape the playbook as they went.
Now at Crédit Agricole, she leads sustainable investment banking for the Americas – overseeing ESG advisory, green and sustainability-linked financing, and supply chain solutions.
Her team helped launch the first U.S. corporate green bond tied to nuclear energy, and structured the world’s first sovereign bond with a step-up/step-down coupon tied to emissions and biodiversity targets.
Michele Giddens, Co-Founder and CEO of Bridges Fund Management
Michele was asked to advise the UK Treasury’s Social Investment Task Force, chaired by Sir Ronald Cohen. That experience led directly to the founding of Bridges, with a white sheet of paper and £10 million in catalytic government funding. The idea: to show that financial returns and social impact didn’t have to be at odds.
Today, Bridges has over £2 billion in assets under management across private equity, real estate, and outcomes contracts. Every investment aligns with one of two goals: building a more inclusive economy or a more sustainable planet. Their theory of change is simple – use financial capital to tackle systemic challenges, and value creation will follow.
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Chapters
1. Intro (00:00:00)
2. Starting Zeal Capital in the 2020 pandemic (00:05:33)
3. Zeal’s mission: equitable access to capital (00:09:31)
4. Zeal’s three investment verticals (00:18:56)
5. Five-pronged inclusive investing framework (00:23:32)
6. Challenges and support for overlooked founders (00:26:43)
7. Importance of post-investment support (00:31:18)
8. Triodos Investment Management – high-level overview (00:33:51)
9. Triodos’ theory of change (00:38:12)
10. Five transitions guiding all investments (00:47:05)
11. Changing finance beyond direct investments (00:51:30)
12. Joining JP Morgan’s ESG team in 2015 (00:54:25)
13. Challenges of building green bond frameworks from scratch (00:56:26)
14. What green and sustainability-linked bonds actually are (00:57:59)
15. Scope of sustainable banking at Crédit Agricole (01:01:04)
16. Uruguay’s step-up/step-down bond structure (01:07:13)
17. Including nuclear in Crédit Agricole’s green bond framework (01:11:35)
18. Romina’s future vision for sustainable finance (01:22:19)
19. Founding Bridges Fund Management with Sir Ronald Cohen (01:27:00)
20. Early skepticism and securing catalytic capital (01:31:22)
21. Bridges’ dual mission: inclusion and sustainability (01:35:08)
22. The Spectrum of Capital and its global impact (01:38:17)
23. Linking climate and social equity through just transition (01:41:03)
24. Debunking the returns vs. impact myth (01:50:02)
25. The future of impact investing (02:00:10)
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