We're kicking off this season with the former founder of an impact investment, Laura Kimes. Laura shares how she first heard of impact investing and ended up co-founding Greenprint Partners, a project developer of green stormwater infrastructure in at-risk communities. She has since exited the firm and is moving onto new and exciting projects, including building out an ESG program for a PE-backed cleantech company.
We're kicking off this season with the former founder of an impact investment, Laura Kimes. Laura shares how she first heard of impact investing and ended up co-founding Greenprint Partners, a project developer of green stormwater infrastructure in at-risk communities. She has since exited the firm and is moving onto new and exciting projects, including building out an ESG program for a PE-backed cleantech company.
Linda Rogers: [00:00:00] My name is Linda Rogers, and this is Investing Forward.
Linda Rogers: [00:00:21] Welcome to Season 2 of the Investing Forward Podcast. I'm your host, Linda Rogers, coming to you from Atsugi, Japan. We're kicking off this season with the former founder of an impact investment, Laura Kimes. I connected with Laura a couple of years ago and we had plans to get coffee in San Diego, but COVID got in the way, of course. We still haven't had a chance to meet in person, but we've stayed in touch via email and LinkedIn and I'm excited to have her on the podcast.
Linda Rogers: [00:00:46] Laura co-founded Greenprint Partners, a green infrastructure delivery partner that helps cities achieve high-impact, community-driven, stormwater solutions at scale. There are stories about a few projects on their website, and there's one in Peoria, IL called "The Well Farm" that Laura will touch on in her interview. Peoria has a combined sewer system and it regularly overflows sending polluted stormwater and untreated sewage into the Illinois River. Greenprint, in coordination with the community, identified opportunities to develop green infrastructure solutions, which included 100 raised garden beds, flowering bioswales, and more. Laura has since left Greenprint Partners and is moving on to other exciting projects in the impact investing space, so I asked her to share her story with us. Let's take a listen.
Linda Rogers: [00:01:36] Thank you for joining me. Please introduce yourself.
Laura Kimes: [00:01:40] Great. Yeah, so my name is Laura Kimes, and I'm a former founder of a company called Greenprint Partners, which is a B Corp social enterprise. We fundraised from many different impact investors, spanning from foundations with PRI to family offices to individual angels. And prior to that, I spent about 10 years working with electric and gas utilities in the cleantech space. A lot of that work was around regulatory policy and what type of policy it took to make new markets for an, at the time, emerging industry of renewables and energy efficiency. And right now, I'm building the ESG program for a private equity-backed cleantech company and doing some special projects on the side. So I'm sure we'll get to talk more about that as we dive in.
Linda Rogers: [00:02:47] Great. You're busy. So what led you to become interested in impact investing?
Laura Kimes: [00:02:54] When, OK, so I think the story probably goes back to when I was a student at Kellogg. I actually started my program there thinking I was going to work with non-profits or be in nonprofit management directly myself. But I had the good fortune of taking this course in impact investing that was taught by Dave Chen, who is a founder of a firm called Equilibrium Capital. And Dave had this great format to his course, where he brought in all sorts of outside speakers, kind of like a course podcast, I guess. And I heard this executive director of a nonprofit talk about how he had taken this linear approach to fundraising his whole career, where he would fundraise and then go out and plant an acre of trees and fundraise again and then do it again. And it was just so linear. And then he took a step back and caught the impact investing bug himself. And from there built a credit market and attracted impact investors who then helped him scale this program that allowed him to really amp up his efforts and that intrigued me so much because that was the space that I had been intending to go into. And also in that course, I met two friends who later became my co-founders, and we developed the idea of this fund that would tackle the problem of blighted land in the so-called Rust Belt in the U.S. and we applied for and won the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge in 2014 with that idea. And then had to once we decided that we were going to pursue that as a company, then had to kind of make that work, and several iterations later rebranded the company to something called Greenprint Partners. And the company today is a project developer of green stormwater infrastructure in at-risk communities. So a lot of similarities to that initial vision, but also some practical changes that we had to make.
Linda Rogers: [00:05:31] What are you most proud of when reflecting back on your work at Greenprint Partners?
Laura Kimes: [00:05:36] Yeah, a couple of things. One, from the very beginning, we've really made a strong commitment and did bake mission and impact into our DNA. I know that's easy to say, but it was fascinating being there on the ground and seeing what actually the decision points were to operationalize that. And I'm really proud of us for, you know, for doing that. And we got B Corp certified early on and are still certified and also certified as a woman-owned business. And I think related to all that, I led this retreat where we built our 'theory of change' a few years in which sort of did all of the work to finalize and refine it once we got our fit with our market. And then from that 'theory of change', built out a bunch of and we worked with our investors at the time to build out what our KPIs should be. And there was this interesting balance between aspiration and practicality. And again, I'm really proud of us for, you know, walking the talk in that regard. So I think that really comes to the top for me. We also - just to paint a picture of the type of projects that we work on. One of the coolest actual installations of green infrastructure that we built was a project called the Well Farm at Voris Field that was in Peoria, Illinois, and we installed basically trees and an urban farm that managed stormwater where it falls, which keeps water out of the stormwater system for the city meaning there is less sewage overflow back into their water into the river, which has all sorts of environmental benefits, of course, and environmental justice benefits for the people of the community, and it was just a really gratifying project, too, because we worked with all sorts of local community organizations. And yeah, it was really fun to work on.
Linda Rogers: [00:08:14] Had you ever gotten around to doing an impact report?
Laura Kimes: [00:08:18] Yeah, yeah. That was a big part of something that we did both quarterly and annually, and we reported out on these KPIs that ultimately rolled up to support the vision and the 'theory of change' that we had as an organization. 'The theory of change' is something that I wasn't familiar with until we worked with, we got investment from the Kresge Foundation and my co-founder from the nonprofit sector sort of shared with us the background that that 'theory of change' is really, you know, typical to the nonprofit sector. I don't know of many businesses that have one, but it had it was so helpful in kind of becoming our North Star. And yeah, the 'theory of change' or the excuse me, the annual impact report is basically an impact report that reports out on our progress to that, that 'theory of change', that vision.
Linda Rogers: [00:09:23] What was the hardest lesson you learned with regards to starting and exiting an impact investment?
Laura Kimes: [00:09:29] Yeah, I think one of the - there's sort of two things that come to mind with that. One is that - this is something that I appreciate so much more now that I am able to look back at it as I'm no longer involved in the day-to-day - but I think I realize the importance of having investor partners and how just incredibly important to implementing our work and our mission and our strategy and vision and all of that. And to really kind of grow alongside each other as this industry for us, it's a new green, infrastructure, at least green stormwater infrastructure is kind of niche, to say the least. So having investors that understand that and are willing to get into the weeds with us on that has been so important. And then on the personal side, I think one of the things as I've I've realized as I myself have gone through the founder life cycle recently, meaning I co-founded the company was involved in the day to day for seven years, basically seven years and then now for the last year have been off doing other new things. One thing that I realized is that year in that transition time, it's both a very typical normal experience that a lot of founders go through in figuring out what's next. And there's just a big personal journey that comes with that and a lot of personal growth that comes with that. But it's also something that there's not a lot of resources for, not a lot of content or even just storytelling. There's yeah, it's sort of a black box. And so, yeah, that's something that I have been paying attention to and I have some ideas about that. Yeah, I hope I can tell you about that in a bit.
Linda Rogers: [00:11:52] Good. So what projects are you working on now?
Laura Kimes: [00:11:56] Oh, yes, OK, so I'll maybe segue into my teaser there. So one thing is that I'm thinking about a project, a writing project on my blog that highlights some of the stories of former founders. And I'm kind of gathering those stories now, maybe anonymous, to put on the blog and to really with the idea of sharing the stories of this journey to help women, people of color, LGBTQ, non-traditional founders who might otherwise not have the network, the support network at every stage of their journey. And ideally, that can enable them to be repeat founders too and not sort of walk away and onto the next thing. So that's a fun, creative project. But kind of my day to day main role that I'm working on now is building out an ESG program for a PE-backed cleantech company looking at things like materiality assessments, strategic planning around ESG, governance structure, impact measurement and also, I hope that I'll be able to put together the first annual impact report for the company. And I think it's also really interesting to be doing this with a company similar to Greenprint where, because it's a cleantech company, they're sort of both part of the solution, but also there's always work to be done. And yeah, I just there's so many interesting questions that come up around that and conversations with the team and all the stakeholders. So I'm finding that really exciting, too. And then I guess the last thing is just building out my knowledge as an impact investor, myself, aspiring impact investor and thinking of gaps in my knowledge and identifying them and finding ways to learn more and talk more to people.
Linda Rogers: [00:14:27] That's great. And I'm wondering with the cleantech company, what led them to reach out to you? Did they have - do they have leaders that just understand the importance of building an ESG framework? Do they have investors that are pressuring them to be more transparent and organized with their ESG data?
Laura Kimes: [00:14:49] Yeah. Well, I think it's the answer is both perhaps. I, this is somebody that I've worked with before. I know well. And yeah, the investors because of I'm sure - nobody said this directly - but I imagine that because of the upcoming anticipated SEC ruling around ESG disclosure. First for climate and perhaps later for others other topics. And then also what's happening in Europe. I think that there's a lot of interest in taking stock of what portfolios look like and who better to start with than the cleantech company in the portfolio or any company that is contributing in that way. So I think that's part of it. And. Yeah, I think I think there's also. Uh, a lot of. This is probably typical for most companies, I would say in this in the clean tech space, there's like a lot of good things happening, but maybe there hasn't been the ESG wrapper brought around all of those topics and sort of looked at in an organized way and prioritized, you know, all of these efforts may be not prioritized in an organized way. So, for example, efforts around diversity and inclusion may be happening in a silo to board recruitment and why not bring those together - just a single example.
Linda Rogers: [00:16:36] Good. So what are you most excited about at the moment in the world of impact investing?
Laura Kimes: [00:16:41] Yeah, I think that the upcoming SEC ruling will be the thing that pushes impact investing broadly more into the mainstream. I know that there's been a lot happening already and but I think that there's - I can see all of the movement happening behind the scenes waiting for that. And it is very exciting to me to even imagine and anticipate what will happen when it's actually out. So yeah, that to me is fascinating to watch. And I think the other thing too is just coming from the startup, fundraising, founders side of things and now kind of regaining my attention to the impact investor side of things, just how much attention there is to inclusion is also really, really exciting.
Linda Rogers: [00:17:46] Ok, so what's your favorite impact investing resource? By that, I mean, it could be a blog, a book, a podcast, really anything that is either your must-read, must listen, etc. I would love to hear that.
Laura Kimes: [00:18:00] Yeah. Ok, so Impact Alpha for me is daily go-to and yeah, find that really helpful. There's another, I guess I'll call it a blog. It's called Climate Tech VC and for all things related to climate, I find that to be so, so helpful. And also it's also it's just fun to read and very fresh. Podcast - I've been from the ESG angle I've been really loving I think it's called even ESG. It's by S&P Global and it's a podcast. And I've yeah, that's been really great. And oh, yeah, I guess the last thing this isn't. You didn't list this off, but I'll be flexible maybe here, it's there's a course on Coursera that I've found helpful of all places and it's put out by Duke and the i3 CASE group at Duke, and it's about impact investing and particularly measurement and management in impact investing. And they have so many really good resources, and it's all tied in through the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal reporting, but it could be applied for any reporting framework. And anyway, I learned a ton just by listening in to that, I found that to be super helpful too.
Linda Rogers: [00:19:44] Wonderful, I love hearing all of these and I am going to check out that course. Is there anything else that you want to share before I let you go?
Laura Kimes: [00:19:53] No, I'm just I'm really grateful to be chatting today and excited to hear - stay tuned and hear more other people featured on the podcast.
Linda Rogers: [00:20:06] And what's the best way for people to stay in touch with you?
Laura Kimes: [00:20:10] Yeah, so I've been blogging. If that founder project sounds interesting, or if you people want to hear more about the personal journey of a former founder, you can go to LauraKimes.com and I have a link to my blog there or on LinkedIn. I'm Laura Brenner Kimes or Twitter is @LauraKimes and my email is LKimes@gmail.com.
Linda Rogers: [00:20:38] Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us.
Laura Kimes: [00:20:41] Really appreciate it.
Linda Rogers: [00:20:42] The SEC ruling Laura mentioned a couple of times is the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed climate change disclosure rule, which is not out yet, but it is expected soon, and it's expected to require public companies to disclose data to investors about emissions and how they're managing their climate risks. There are voluntary frameworks in place, such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures or TCFD, but this proposed ruling would make certain climate information mandatory to report - the goal being to provide investors with enough data in a consistently organized framework to be able to accurately assess and manage risk in their portfolio.
Linda Rogers: [00:21:23] Links to Laura's favorite impact investing podcast, blog, and the course that she mentioned will be listed on the InvestingForwardPodcast.com Website. Thank you for joining me. See you next time.
Linda Rogers: [00:21:36] My name is Linda Rogers. You were listening to Investing Forward. If you liked what you heard, leave us a rating, subscribe, and stay tuned for next time. Linda Rogers is the owner of Planning Within Reach, a registered investment advisor, Planning Within Reach produces the podcast and makes it available on its website and through other distribution channels. Linda Rogers and any guest on the podcast are providing their own views and opinions and are not necessarily the views and opinions of planning within reach. Nothing on the podcast should be construed as a solicitation or offer or recommendation to buy or sell any security investment. Advisory services are only provided to investors who become planning within reach clients pursuant to a written investment management agreement. Clients of planning within reach may hold positions in securities discussed in this podcast. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk and may lose money. The Investing Forward podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on for any investment decisions. Consult with a financial advisor, accountant, attorney, or conduct your own due diligence.