Today we’d like to introduce you to Eva Yazhari.
Eva, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in New York City, the daughter of artist parents. I became interested in art very early on — a passion I continue to this day — and was also inspired by my family’s legacy of public service. In the 1950s, my grandfather moved his entire family to Tanzania to open and operate a health clinic. That type of mission and dedication inform what I do today.
After attending Barnard College to study mathematics, I entered a career on Wall Street, where I worked in investment banking and private equity. After nine years in the financial industry and meeting and marrying my husband, we found our true calling: using our backgrounds and networks to affect real change in the world. Together, we founded Beyond Capital to increase the quality of life for individuals living below the poverty line in the world’s poorest regions: East Africa and India.
Has it been a smooth road?
By drawing upon our collective experience, skill sets and networks, we have been able to organically grow Beyond Capital into what it is today: eight investments that impact 2.6 million people by implementing revolutionary ways — both large and small — to affect change in the communities in which they operate. We have found that when we seek out and surround ourselves with people — whether it’s the entrepreneurs we work with or the board members we select — who share our mission of poverty alleviation, great things are bound to happen.
Of course, there have been challenges — working with seed-stage enterprises brings risk, especially when those startups are operating with limited staff in remote areas in untested markets. However, we have found that the rewards far outweigh the risks.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Beyond Capital story. Tell us more about the business.
Beyond Capital is an impact investment fund that seeks out and invests in seed-stage, for-profit social enterprises that serve impoverished communities throughout East Africa and India. We very closely align ourselves with entrepreneurs who are finding inventive ways to affect real change, such as our investment Frontier Markets, which provides solar energy products to homes in rural India to help eliminate dangerous kerosene lighting and cooking methods that kill millions of people every year — most of which are children.
We are proud of the partnerships we have forged with these social entrepreneurs. We regularly visit our investments in East Africa and India — meeting the people who run and are most affected by their products and services. It is during these visits where we get to experience first hand the power of combining ingenuity, commitment, and hard work.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Impact investing — selecting investments based on the company’s work to solve a particular social issue — will only continue to gain prominence as people choose to put their money into efforts that sync up with their values and beliefs. We are seeing this shift happen as millennials start to wield their growing financial power and banks and investment funds sit up and take notice. As society moves towards integrating social causes as a driving factor in everything they do — including where they invest — more and more impact investment opportunities will arise.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.beyondcapitalfund.org
- Email: info@beyondcapitalfund.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondcap/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/beyondcapital
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCelkLrXGYQZotzIWCXMQAMg
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