4 | Wealth & Finance Private Equity and Venture Capital Awards 2024 Best Impact Investment Boutique 2024 - China Amanda Zheng, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley Hong Kong, decided in 2013 to devote her career to impact investing. After working with several impact investment organizations and building a successful track record, she identified two major challenges within the ecosystem: 1) a lack of a professional paradigm for executing genuine impact investments; and 2) an absence of a hub for passionate talents seeking a career in impact investing. In response, she founded Impact Bread to address these gaps in capital and talent, with a vision to cultivate the field of impact investing for the next generation. Later, two co-founders, Song Ye and Frank Zhang, joined the mission with a shared, simple purpose: three faith-driven individuals united in their desire to glorify God together. They believed in the power of small beginnings, trusting that even “faith of the mustard seeds can move mountains”. “When we started, impact investing was a buzzword in China. In English, ‘impact’ typically refers to social and environmental outcomes, but in Chinese context, the word was often related with media influence or popularity. We didn’t pander to preferences for fabricating ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) reporting or surface-level marketing tactics. Instead, we focused on helping capital understand the positive correlation between financial returns and social impacts embedded in the DNA of impact technologies, showcasing real-world case studies in sectors across circular economy, food and agriculture, energy innovations, and other technologies working toward carbon neutrality and public health.” In April 2024, President Xi of China introduced the concept of “Patient Capital” during the Central Committee Meetings, emphasizing the need for long-term investments to fuel China’s technological drive and economic transformation. This message aligns with what Impact Bread has believed from the beginning. Since 2019, Impact Bread has strategically focused on breakthrough innovations driving the transformation of the real economy — what is now referred to as the “new productive forces” by the Central Committee. Impact Bread sees immense potential in turning China’s agricultural and industrial waste into cost-competitive materials, greatly reducing the global reliance on fossil fuelbased products. The company has spent years building a proprietary database to validate and track the impact data of innovations that create alternative materials. At its core, everything we eat, wear, use, and live in is dependent on the materials we produce and dispose of, which accounts for 45% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — 22.1 billion tonnes of CO2e annually — according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Community engagement is a key aspect of Impact Bread’s culture and philosophy. Through partnerships across the ecosystem, the company has made impact investing accessible to the broader community. By cocreating the inaugural BEYOND Impact Awards with BEYOND Expo and developing gamified education products such as the Impact Investing Hackathon, Impact Bread has raised public awareness about sustainability and fostered behavior change in daily life. “Previously, when people heard ‘sustainability’, they immediately thought of environmental protection, assuming it was only the responsibility of the government or large corporations. Now, people are beginning to understand that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) proposed by the United Nations relate to every aspect of their daily lives, and that sustainability is a human-centered concept affecting everyone’s future. We know this mission won’t be accomplished by us alone, but it will transcend generations. Gen-Z in China is growing up in an ever-changing world, not lacking in wealth but lacking in a purpose for life. This internal drive for resilience is what will inspire the next generation to join this mission.” Impact Bread has become a harbour for future leaders to seek their careers and life purposes. Recognizing that people are at the core of ecosystem transformation, the company has developed the world’s first SDG talent pool, and provided over 300 hours of pro bono coaching to Gen-Z users during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through its Impact Investing Fellowship, Impact Breas has trained top talents from leading institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, MIT, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, NYU, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Columbia, preparing them for adventures in impact investing and related industries. Looking forward, Impact Bread aspires to cultivate more mission-driven capital, creating a legacy for future generations. Contact: Amanda Zheng Company: Impact Bread Web Address: https://impactbread.com/ Founded in 2019, Impact Bread is the 1st impact measurement boutique in China. With the vision of integrating impact investment principles into practical decision-making processes for family office, venture capital, and private equity, Impact Bread positions itself as a servant leader, transferring a cost-effective impact investing SOP (standardized operating procedure) to mission-driven capitals through fund strategy, commercial due diligence, and impact measurement services.
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