- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Acumen CEO Jacqueline Novogratz.
- The big story: The “Trump Slump” has arrived.
- The markets: Global equities selloff triggered by U.S. market reaction to Trump’s new tariffs on China.
- Analyst notes from Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Wedbush, Saxo, and Convera — on Nvidia, tariffs, and Amazon’s Ocelot quantum chip.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. There’s a phrase that Jacqueline Novogratz uses that has inspired me: “Entrepreneurship grounded in moral imagination.” Novogratz is CEO of Acumen, which she founded in 2001 as a platform for investing philanthropic “patient” capital in entrepreneurs tackling tough issues like healthcare, education, and clean energy. She’s an astute thinker on the role of business in alleviating poverty while driving economic growth.
I met with Novogratz recently at her brightly colored lower Manhattan headquarters. The dissolution of USAID makes groups like Acumen all the more vital. Her success is also a reminder of the power that can be unleashed when you invest in people. Acumen has invested $260 million in 215 portfolio companies, impacting 648 million lives. That’s a fraction of the $68 billion in U.S. foreign aid in 2023 but nonetheless a staggering return on investment.
One example is EthioChicken, which helped create a for-profit chicken industry in Ethiopia about a decade ago and now enables farmers to sell about five billion eggs a year. “The North Star that got me into this in the first place is that, as human beings, we want the dignity to run our own lives, to have choice and opportunity. So many of our systems create the opposite,” says Novogratz. “We sometimes go frontally at a problem like job creation, and we throw a lot of money at [job] creation, rather than focusing on electrification or building resilient healthcare systems or education systems that ultimately create a lot of jobs.”
Infrastructure challenges can also enable transformative innovations like Kenya’s M-Pesa payment app, which has spawned a generation of entrepreneurs. Fifty-nine percent of Kenya’s GDP now flows through M-Pesa. “If we sat around a table with the people who were being impacted to understand not just the problem, but the potential solution, I think we could create real opportunities,” Novogratz says. With the next generation of consumers growing fastest in the global south, the incentive for businesses to focus on addressing issues like connectivity, electricity, and skills development is compelling.
There is, of course, still a need for giving. The MacArthur Foundation said this week it will increase its giving in light of federal cuts. Novogratz is worried about the swift dismantling of USAID but hopeful that global communities of business, philanthropy, and entrepreneurs can come together to do more.
“We’re deeply pragmatic, but we hold on to this idealism that we can change the system, that we don’t just have to tweak it.”
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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, LinkedIn.
