with light

Welcome bloomers! This week we take a breath from our Sunday format to welcome our interview of the month, with the phenomenal Jasmine Rashid, a financial activist who believes deeply in people power. She's supported international campaigns to shift big bank financing out of the private prison industry, and in her role as Director of Impact for Candide Group, has the privilege of helping flow millions of dollars in impact investments to women & BIPOC-led social impact companies and funds each year. Her forthcoming book will be a comprehensive, accessible, and actionable guide for financial activist strategies to reclaim power and build community wealth, no matter your familiarity with finance.
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with love & light,
​Jasmine
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​PS. If you subscribed to The Bloom (welcome!!) recently, here's last week's Sunday newsletter with our regular format 💌

What is your “official” professional role and field?
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​Director of Impact at Candide Group, a US registered investment advisor in the impact investing field.

What if your unofficial role and field?

Financial activist, storyteller, and resource flower in co-creating the just economy we deserve :)
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​How did you get to where you are today in your career?

Truthfully — I figured it out as I went (and am very much still doing that!). After graduating college with a special major in Peace and Conflict Studies, I knew that I likely wouldn’t be following a traditional career path. My entry in the impact investing field kicked off with just reaching out via email to a leader whose work I admired in the impact investing field, and offering to support in any way I could. Though I didn’t have any formal training in finance, I did have many hours under my belt of teaching myself and playing with Canva as a graphic design tool. That skillset turned into a few months of contract work, collaborating with this leader and a broader coalition on creating materials for a large-scale public divestment campaign. The seeds of those relationships were nourished by virtue of proximity: I got to be in the rooms where decision were made, ask questions, offer support and ideas, and learn more each day.

Eventually, I found myself with a real interest in impact investing, and my unique value-add became clear: though I’m not a “numbers” person, I am a stories person, and my ability to research, interview, and illuminate the impact of companies and funds in communities is critical in the due diligence process for investors who want to ensure they’re flowing capital toward real social and environmental good. My lived experience, emotional intelligence, and background in social change theory turned out to be valuable assets in complimenting others’ traditional finance expertise as a part of investing in “next economy” projects.

I wouldn’t be in the leadership position I am today without community; particularly leaning on the wisdom, experience, and advocacy of other women of color in the field. I get to now pass along their investment in my success to others who are interested in carving out their space in social impact roles. Connecting is truly my favorite part of the work.
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​Your relationship to “social impact”: has it evolved since you began your career?

My understanding of “social impact” is always deepening, but what remains the same is it’s definition: it generally refers to the effects that an action or set of actions have on a people’s quality of life and levels of equity within a society. Now, those effects and those actions can present positive, negative, or (more often than not) a mix of positive and negative, depending on the stakeholders and context. So working in social impact also means assessing social impact.

What I find endlessly interesting about my work of “social impact measurement and management” is that it’s full of nuance and requires constant loving interrogation. There are no singular perfect solutions to creating the just and sustainable communities and planet we deserve. And while knowing there’s not a quick fix can feel despairing at times, it also gives me radical hope that the opportunities to resist what doesn’t serve us, take back power, and create something better are truly limitless.

The company I work for, Candide Group, supports families, foundations, and other investors who want to flow their money to (broadly-defined) social justice-focused companies, funds, and vital organizations building a new economy. As of November 2022, there were 83 to be exact… ranging from enterprises bringing solar power/energy to Indian Country, loan funds expanding homeownership to build generational wealth, worker cooperatives creating healthy meals in urban food deserts, organizations reclaiming land for stability and healing, and so much more. In the previous year I had intentionally transitioned within our small but growing team from a communications role to the Director of Impact, in order to perform a comprehensive impact analysis of all of our client’s investments by the start of 2023.

This undertaking was an invaluable learning opportunity for me to better understand traditional and emerging impact measurement and management frameworks and practices in the field. There are a LOT of different methods out there to quantify and qualify “social impact,” and I ultimately ended up creating a customized questionnaire for all of our investees to share their social impact data and aspirations with us. It framed impact as a journey rather than a destination – embracing what emerges, rather than just settling for a goal that may have been set under an outdated context. It also resulted in an impact report that offered reflections of impact at every level of the investment relationships: founders, owners, leaders, workforce, procurement, internal policies, customers and end users, long term outcomes in community, and the additionality we provided as an intermediary.

I could talk about this bit for hours, so I’ll just share that impact report in case anyone want’s to nerd out with me!
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​Tools you regularly digest to improve your empowerment and inspiration around your social justice intersections of passion?

• ​New Economy Coalition’s Instagram: a network of 200+ orgs building an economy putting people & planet before profit.
• Center for Economic Democracy’s Economics for Emancipation free popular education course
• Lift Economy’s Next Economy Now podcast: highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, racially just, and whole-systems approach to creating the new economy.
• ​ImpactAlpha: award-winning impact investing stories, jobs, and podcast
• ​NextCity website
• Movement Generation’s Just Transition Framework and Zine: a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy

Curious to grab a virtual coffee with Jasmine Rashid and NERD OUT about social impact measurement and management, and financial activism? Join her and other phenomenal leaders in The Bloom's membership community (networking tip: make sure to ask her about her amazing dogs Jo and Smokey) 💚

Share the newsletter via email (click on the flower!) or WhatsApp with friends & allies in social impact. See you next Sunday 🌱