The Editors’ Post: The impact finance boss who isn’t afraid to get political

This week we bring you our interview with Philippe Zaouati, founder of asset management firm Mirova. Our colleague Laura was keen to feature him in our series of Pioneer Interviews (reserved for the most influential changemakers) because he’s not only grown Mirova – which focuses on impact and sustainable investments – tenfold in the past decade, but he has also advised French and European policymakers and written a dozen books, including novels and philosophical dialogues.

This makes for a refreshing conversation, says Laura. What sets Zaouati apart from many others in the impact ecosystem is that he’s not afraid to say that he’s not feeling terribly optimistic right now – check out the interview here.  

Also important is the insight we bring you from three practitioners about how to scale social businesses without letting go of the values we’ve learned from feminism. Their experience from working on projects in Africa is invaluable – and, of course, it’s much more than applying a label to an approach, but ensuring that complex societal problems are genuinely tackled and that decisions are made by the people who really matter. Read How to: scale up your impact with a feminist edge.

Our managing editor, Anna Patton, is exploring social impact in South Africa this week with BMW. As an off-gridder myself, I’m delighted to see that car batteries are being repurposed to store solar-generated power to help schools combat the all too frequent power cuts. Check out Anna’s posts on X, and we’ll have more on our website soon.

Finally, our reporter, Estelle Uba, will be at ImpactFest in The Hague next week. If you’re there too, do say hello!

This week’s top stories:

Philippe Zaouati: 'We need a new narrative – or we are going to the wall'

How to: scale up your impact with a feminist edge

Opinion: We've been providing enteprise grants – and the early results are compelling

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