CASE Chat with Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer at Acumen

February 2016

Ahead of our annual Advisory Council meeting held at the Fuqua School of Business, this month’s CASE Chat features one of our CASE i3 council members Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer at Acumen.

Sasha has been a leader in social entrepreneurship and impact investing for many years and offers his insights on a number of topics ranging from the evolution of impact investing to what investors want to how to measure impact.

On what investors want:

“By and large, investors are much more comfortable talking about the financial and operational, and holding people accountable for their financial and operational first. And it’s challenging, because what we know is if you mess up on the financial and operational, you have no impact.”

On measuring impact:

“We can measure impact in a way that is directly creating value for customers and for entrepreneurs.  And it feels like that’s the bar that we need to hit because those are the stakeholders that matter in this equation more than the investors and the providers of capital and so we’re trying to measure impact in a way that creates value for the people that are doing the work.”

Want to hear more from Sasha? Watch the full CASE Chat now:

About Sasha Dichter:

As Acumen’s Chief Innovation Officer, Sasha is responsible for growing the impact of Acumen’s work through investment in leaders and the spread of ideas. This includes the Acumen Fellows Program and +Acumen; work in knowledge, metrics, and policy; and resource mobilization. In his previous role as Director of Business Development, Sasha led global capital raising for Acumen, executing a successful $100M capital raise, serving as the point person for Acumen’s Partner community, and heading up global partnerships for Acumen including global expansion.

Sasha is also a noted speaker and blogger, the author of the Manifesto for Nonprofit CEOs, and the creator of Generosity Day. His talks have been featured on TED.com “Best of the Web” and he has been recognized as an Innovation Agent by Fast Company magazine and as a top 10 Business Bloggers by Say 100 Media. Before Acumen, Sasha worked as Global Manager of Corporate Citizenship at GE Money and as a Senior Program Manager at IBM.

About Acumen:

Acumen is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of poverty.  Its aim is to help build financially sustainable organizations that deliver affordable goods and services that improve the lives of the poor. As of 2014, Acumen had approved $88 million in investments in Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. It has invested in 82 enterprises since inception, helping over 100 million people and creating 60,000 jobs. Learn more about Acumen here.

About CASE Chats:

The CASE Chats video series features the movers and shakers in the field of social entrepreneurship sharing their insights on tri-sector leadership, impact investing, social ventures, and more.  View the all the CASE Chats here.