Listen to Jacqueline Novogratz

The new mini-manifestos for Acumen. Art directed by johnson banks from original edits by Briteweb, with additional animation by Martin Shannon.

Jacqueline Novogratz discusses the challenges that divide and unite today’s philanthropic community. A McKinsey & Company article.

We each want to live a life of purpose, but where to start? In this luminous, wide-ranging talk, Jacqueline Novogratz introduces us to people she's met in her work in "patient capital" -- people who have immersed themselves in a cause, a community, a passion for justice. These human stories carry powerful moments of inspiration.

Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, which invests in businesses aiding the world’s poor, says, “We think about our values in pairs, and there is a tension or a balance between them.”

This interview with Jacqueline Novogratz, chief executive of the Acumen Fund, which invests in businesses aiding the world’s poor, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

The debate over foreign aid often pits those who mistrust "charity" against those who mistrust reliance on the markets. Jacqueline Novogratz proposes a middle way she calls patient capital, with promising examples of entrepreneurial innovation driving social change.

"The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions, a cross sector is now. I can only talk from my own experience. But in eight years of running Acumen fund, I've seen the power of patient capital. Not only to inspire innovation and risk taking, but to truly build systems that have created more than 25 thousand jobs and delivered tens of millions of services and products to some of the poorest people on the planet. I know it works. But I know that many other kinds of innovation also work. "

Jacqueline Novogratz tells a moving story of an encounter in a Nairobi slum with Jane, a former prostitute, whose dreams of escaping poverty, of becoming a doctor and of getting married were fulfilled in an unexpected way.

"I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean? So often, we look at dollar terms -- people making less than a dollar or two or three a day. And yet the complexity of poverty really has to look at income as only as only one variable. Because really, it's a condition about choice, and the lack of freedom. "

Jacqueline Novogratz shares stories of how "patient capital" can bring sustainable jobs, goods, services -- and dignity -- to the world's poorest.

"I look around at my siblings and my cousins -- and as I said, there are a lot of us -- and I see teachers and musicians, hedge fund managers, designers. One sister who makes other people's wishes come true. And my wish, when I see those women, I meet those farmers, and I think about all the people across this continent who are working hard every day, is that they have that sense of opportunity and possibility, and that they also can believe and get access to services so that their children too can live those lives of great purpose. It shouldn't be that difficult. But what it takes is a commitment from all of us to essentially refuse trite assumptions, get out of our ideological boxes. It takes investing in those entrepreneurs that are committed to service as well as to success. It takes opening your arms, both, wide, and expecting very little love in return, but demanding accountability, and bringing the accountability to the table as well. And most of all, most of all, it requires that all of us have the courage and the patience, whether we are rich or poor, African or non-African, local or diaspora, left or right, to really start listening to each other. Thank you."

Jacqueline Novogratz applauds the world's heightened interest in Africa and poverty, but argues persuasively for a new approach.

"I want to end just by saying that there's enormous opportunity to make poverty history. To do it right, we have to build business models that matter, that are scaleable and that work with Africans, Indians, people all over the developing world who fit in this category, to do it themselves. Because at the end of the day, it's about engagement. It's about understanding that people really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions, they want to solve their own problems, and that by engaging with them, not only do we create much more dignity for them, but for us as well. And so I urge all of you to think next time as to how to engage with this notion and this opportunity that we all have -- to make poverty history -- by really becoming part of the process and moving away from an us-and-them world, and realizing that it's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share. Thank you."

Novogratz combined her twin passions for banking and philanthropy after she left a lucrative corporate banking position to work with women's groups in microfinance, the pioneering banking strategy that won Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Her work merging market systems with development and social empowerment led her to create the Acumen Fund for entrepreneurs in developing nations, which she describes as the opposite of old-fashioned charity. Novogratz also focuses on her own developmental path as she charts her evolving views of capitalism and how she will change the world. Unfortunately, she stumbles when she strays into biographical territory, relying on clichés to bolster her professional decisions through a personal lens. The book is most interesting when it touches on the difficult decisions that Novogratz and her team must make about financial empowerment—should they charge interest on loans to poor women? can working women find acceptance in a patriarchal society?—but these dilemmas are facilely glossed, keeping the book in an uncomfortable limbo between a personal narrative and a primer on globalization.

Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.