Kieron Boyle: ‘It’s a really hard job – but I’m in my happy place’
The soft-spoken former civil servant has done more than perhaps anyone to shape the UK impact investing space. As he moves to a new role at LSE, Kieron Boyle tells us why there’s been a rejig at the helm of the Impact Investing Institute, what he learned in Whitehall – and what keeps him sane in the “marathon” task of rewiring our economy.
Track the rise of social and impact investing in the UK, and several names come up repeatedly. Among them is Kieron Boyle, who for well over a decade has quietly shaped the field from within government, philanthropy and advocacy.
From 2012 until 2016, Boyle was director of impact investment at the UK government’s Cabinet Office, which sits at the heart of government and works across departments. While there is no longer an impact investing team in this office, its legacy continues among others in the form of the world’s first social investment wholesaler Better Society Capital, where Boyle is still a director; the Government Outcomes Lab, a research centre; and the Impact Investing Institute, a nonprofit created in 2019 to grow the field. On leaving Whitehall, Boyle ran the 500-year-old Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation, where he began the shift of its £1bn endowment towards impact investing; in 2023 he joined the Impact Investing Institute as CEO. Lesser-known, perhaps, is Boyle’s ongoing role as chair of Long-term Investors for People’s Health, an alliance of investors with some $7tn of assets. When his latest move, to London School of Economics’ 100x Impact Accelerator, was announced earlier this year, LSE’s Professor Stephan Chambers described Boyle’s track record as a global impact leader as “outstanding”.
Boyle has not been hanging about. While at the Cabinet Office he was still in his 30s – young enough to be named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, in 2014. A decade later, aged just 43, he had scooped an OBE for services to impact investment and the impact economy. He does have a life outside of work, he tells me – involving swing dancing, surfing and “wrangling a very energetic six-year-old” – but the cause is ever-present. “The job’s the life, the life’s the job… the two merge,” he says.
Capitalism and care
Pioneers Post is meeting Boyle in September, during his final week as Impact Investing Institute CEO and just before he becomes chair. His team have suggested meeting at the Institute’s office, which is located in one of those soaring towers in the heart of the City of London. Perhaps appropriately, it is also right next to the remains of St. Elsyng Spital, founded by a London merchant in the 1300s to provide shelter and spiritual and physical care for the needy. Capitalism and care side by side: it’s this elusive combination that the Impact Investing Institute is so keen to prove can succeed.
Above: Dame Elizabeth Corley is now emerita chair of Impact Investing Institute; Kieron Boyle has taken over as chair
Boyle is early for our meeting, and escorts me up to the restaurant, where he orders a mint tea. He is soft-spoken – like many civil servants, he muses – and smiles often. He is also thoroughly self-deprecating, in that well-mannered, English way, joking about being the country’s best surfer (“Please don’t fact-check!”) and apologising when I mention having heard him on a podcast. More than once, he describes himself as lucky: a career in the impact economy is, he says, a “privilege”.
I’ve been really lucky in my career. I’ve had the opportunity to focus on this question, for a long time now
His latest career milestone, from the outside, appears rather abrupt. It was only in March 2023 that Boyle’s arrival to the Impact Investing Institute was announced, replacing founding CEO Sarah Gordon, a former Financial Times journalist. A little over a year later, in May 2024, the Institute announced a new strategy and change of leadership. Was it always the plan that roles would change rather quickly, or did something change after he arrived?
- Read: Impact Investing Institute’s Sarah Gordon steps down amid ‘fast-closing’ window of opportunity
“No, not at all. It’s rather that we kind of developed this new strategy,” he replies. “And then thought, well, what is the right configuration of skills to deliver against it, and also what’s the right long-term leadership that would enable us to do that?”
When I ask if the move to the role of chair is a step up, he slightly sidesteps the question: “It’s a different role, and it’s one I’m really excited to step into.” Then, he adds: “I’ve been really lucky in my career. I’ve had the opportunity to focus on this question, for a long time now, of: how does private action support public benefits? My anchor’s always been the public benefit bit of it, and this allows me, in the chair role, to continue that.”
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Multiplying impact 100-fold
He will be juggling that chair role, at least initially, with other board positions – at the Southbank Centre, the UK’s largest arts centre, and at Better Society Capital – and in his day job as the new boss of LSE’s 100x Impact Accelerator. Created in 2022, this aims to nurture ventures making an impact “on the scale of billions”, which it calls “social unicorns”.
How to actually do this is what Boyle calls “the vital exam question” at 100x, which will draw on LSE’s top-notch research capabilities to try to answer it. We have a good sense of what helps purely commercial companies to grow rapidly, he says, “but on the impact side, the questions are so much more colourful, and to my mind, important”.
On the impact side, the questions are so much more colourful, and important
Nor is there a single formula, he says. “One hundred times your impact might be about scaling the business. It might not be. It might be about the government adopting the idea. It might be about shrinking the size of the problem. It might be about sharing and replicating, and others taking what you do and building on it.”
Venture building is not as an unusual career choice as it may seem for someone previously focused on the large-scale moving of money: Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation also ran an urban health initiative that backed new ventures. And for Boyle, working on the two together – the broader systems, and the “grounded new ideas that are charting the path of what better looks like” – is his “happy place”. As 100x approaches its third year of operation, Boyle will be focused on two key ambitions: reaching more ventures on the cusp of rapid growth, and expanding into new locations outside its current base in London. Shortly after our interview, 100x announces the launch of operations in south-east Asia.
Whitehall and the “wrong-pockets” problem
It is the day after the Labour party conference in Liverpool when we meet. Like many others, Boyle sees the recent change of government in the UK as a big opportunity. But it’s complicated. There are many good reasons that the government should be engaging with what he calls “private capital interested in public outcomes”. This has become a “pretty big industrial segment” of the economy; leveraging private capital and private business is one way to help a country that feels desperately short of cash to fulfil its promises. And yet the government is “not really organised at the moment to see it that way”, he says.
Things looked very different back in the 2010s. Labour leader Gordon Brown had been “very engaged” in social enterprise and supported preventative activity, social investment and outcomes contracts. From 2010, the Conservative-led coalition government wanted a bigger role for social investment, including a more ambitious social investment wholesaler in particular. In hindsight, says Boyle, the years following were both an exciting and difficult time. In a period of austerity, there was a willingness to think creatively and do things differently – but also a risk that the public would see the new approach as a cynical move to pass responsibility on to something other than the government, even if that was not the intention.
From 2012 until 2016, Boyle was director of impact investment at the UK government’s Cabinet Office, which sits at the heart of government and works across departments
But a central unit that could coordinate across governmental departments was undoubtedly a powerful lever. Much of the impact economy sits “in the structural fault lines, where the current system just doesn’t work”, says Boyle. Even when those issues become clear to policymakers, they may be blocked by organisational structure – for example, you might agree that improving conditions at work helps people’s health outcomes, but the department for health doesn’t have the budget or remit to act on this. A central pot of money – like the £80m Life Chances Fund, focused on outcomes funding and created in 2016 – avoids that, solving what Boyle calls the “wrong pockets problem”.
- Read our Impact 101: What is an outcomes fund?
One of the most tangible achievements of that golden age was the creation, in 2012, of Better Society Capital, which has helped the UK social investment market grow to £10bn as of 2023. Boyle was behind its creation, along with Nick Hurd, formerly UK minister for civil society and now chair of the global body, GSG Impact. Sir Ronald Cohen, who was Better Society Capital’s founding chair, says: “Kieron was responsible for the more detailed work and the follow-through. He put a huge amount of intellect, time and commitment to bringing it to successful establishment.”
BSC’s success tells “a powerful story of how you can crowd in money to social challenges in really clear ways that improve things for the better,” Boyle says. Housing is one of the many examples. “There are some very successful funds that have been invested in [better homes]. They’ve really shifted things, improved lives, saved the taxpayer money.”
Ten years on, work by BSC and its partners have provided examples of things that worked and that didn’t work – but also “of things that worked, but we probably think that they didn’t”, Boyle says. Outcomes funds, for instance, at first prompted much excitement, but also scepticism. Some point out that opinions are still divided, even after a decade of gathering evidence. But for Boyle, “the super-interesting thing” is that outcomes partnerships, which enable government bodies to engage in innovative work to address social problems, seem to stick: the vast majority of the 90 or so partnerships initiated in the past decade have been recommissioned. “I think it tells us something – that the nature of the partnership is perhaps where the value’s being created as well. We didn’t know that 10 years ago, but I think we do now.”
This area is definitely on the government’s priority list. My fear is that you can be on the top 10 list, but my experience in new governments is that we tend to focus on numbers one and two
So why, after all this, is the current government not set up to accommodate the impact economy?
“I wish I had a single answer to that. One is that governments organise in certain ways, and I guess with anything new, sometimes it’s a challenge to reorganise yourself,” he says, before rephrasing slightly. “I mean, everything we’re talking about has been around for decades, but it’s new-ish.” Then, perhaps with a touch of civil servant-esque diplomacy, he continues: “On the flip side, we’re still learning about the models that are most effective for articulating the power of the impact economy… that’s a way of saying that there’s innovation, energy needed on both sides of that equation.”
- Read more from Nick Temple: Social enterprises must be bolder and sharper to convince Keir Starmer’s government of their worth
As to whether things will significantly change under Labour, Boyle says: “My sense is that this area is definitely on the government’s priority list. That’s what I did get from conversations in Liverpool. My fear is that you can be on the top 10 list, but my experience of working in new governments is that we tend to focus on numbers one and two.”
But overall – though he acknowledges the real difficulties facing social sector organisations right now – he is optimistic. With good reason, it turns out: just a couple of weeks later, the UK Treasury makes a splashy announcement that suggests impact investing is, at least, back in fashion, if not yet top of its list. This is followed swiftly by promising, if a little vague, pledges in the autumn Budget.
Music and marathons
For someone of such influence, Boyle is not a big personality, and he seems to keep his personal life rather separate from his professional one.
He grew up in Cornwall – hence his surfing prowess (or not). His mother is Kenyan-Indian; his British father was an Air Force pilot. After studying social and political sciences and then international relations at Cambridge University, he worked as a strategy consultant for Boston Consulting Group in New York, before an opportunity arose to return to the UK – working with No.10 Downing Street, the department for business, the foreign office, and the prime minister’s strategy unit before joining the Cabinet Office.
Today he lives in Bath, south west England, with his wife (pictured) and son. Home life involves “a lot of music, a lot of dance”: his wife teaches music, and they met while swing dancing, which Boyle himself used to teach. In 2023 he also found time to train for and run the London Marathon, in aid of two children’s medical charities.
Sarah Teacher, Boyle’s colleague and now co-CEO at the Impact Investing Institute, describes him as a “massive brain”: a perceptive thinker and sharp communicator. He is also a very strong manager who makes an impact in the less flashy things.
“He helped us set up systems that will ultimately enable the organisation to grow,” she says, “very back-officey stuff”, but vital in a 12-person nonprofit that wants to double the global impact investing market by 2029.
And he can be “deeply silly”, Teacher says, mentioning musical theatre-themed awards for staff, and a challenge to make up a rap-based presentation on impact investing using AI.
Support system
How would Boyle describe his own strengths and weaknesses as a leader? “There’s more in the not-so-good-at camp,” he replies instantly, although the only weakness he comes up with is that he’s “terrible at naming things”. On his strengths, he describes role-modelling “a combination of ‘ands’”. One of these is staying focused, while remaining open-minded, “because often what you think is exactly wrong. That was my experience of government in particular: you go into things thinking, ‘Oh, this is obvious. This is the answer.’ Then you come to understand better and think, ‘Oh no, we’re doing this totally the wrong way around’”.
- Listen to more leadership insights in Pioneers Post’s Good Leaders podcast
Other combinations are “hustle” – in the sense of constantly seeking out opportunities – and long-term thinking; and humility alongside ambition. “Humility, because in the social change space everything is done in partnership, everything’s done in collaboration, and often those who work on issues are also the furthest away from them as well. But ambition at the same time, to say that this is important and we shouldn’t hide away from the importance of it.” It is an ethos that appears to have made an impression. Sir Ronald Cohen, who credits Boyle as “a major force” in the field of UK impact investing, describes him as “extremely bright, humble, articulate and dynamic” and with “a real sense of mission about improving lives and our planet through impact investment and impact economies”.
It’s a really hard job. You’re trying to change things that are resilient to changing
I ask what he would advise to those starting out on a similar career path. “Go for it, I mean, really – do it,” he says, not least because he foresees many more opportunities in the impact economy in the future. But he also offers a warning. “It’s a really hard job. You’re trying to change things that are resilient to changing, and so [you need] to build the networks of support, and the things in life that keep you at it.”
While Boyle has been working in this space “long enough to see that things actually do change”, it can often feel like they’re not changing, or even going backwards. “It’s the very definition of a marathon. So what’s the support system that’s going to enable you to [continue]? Put that in place in advance,” he advises.
His own support system is simple. “I am blessed,” he says quietly. “Dancing, surfing and a healthy family: those three things, that’s all I need.”
Top photo: Maria Moore/LSE; other photos supplied by Impact Investing Institute.
