As the President and CEO of pioneering impact investment firm Calvert Impact Capital for the eleventh year and counting, Jennifer Pryce is uniquely inspiring, a luminary in a burgeoning corner of a sector in which only 18 percent of jobs are held by women.
Hearing her speak – or reading her articles as a Forbes contributor – is a moving experience in the literal sense, zooming into the technicalities of how financial instruments work, then zooming out to see how these investments are affecting the planet in real terms, zooming back in, zooming back out until the complex mechanisms of this sector settle clearly into impacts. It’s no small feat to explain the nuances of blended finance set-ups while delivering a motivating speech about landscape restoration.
One of Pryce’s strengths is her dichotomous nature, exhibit A being when she began her career by jumping from the Peace Corps in West Africa to investment management firm Neuberger Berman in Midtown Manhattan. But perhaps this is what makes her so apt for her current role: who better to help guide billions of dollars back into the Earth than someone whose feet are so firmly planted on the ground?