 I have the honor of bringing to the stage a woman who has 30 years of impact investing, banking, working under her belt, working primarily with tribal nations. Those of us who have been studying the history of our people know that these are not new ideas, but they have new names. So this indigenous wisdom on well-being is what our next presenter, Valerie Redhorse Moll, is all about. You all can make some noise for her coming to the stage. Yes? She is a professor at Stanford University, teaching entrepreneurship and social impact. She is the co-founder of Redhorse Financial Group and Redhorse Productions. She is a filmmaker of Cherokee heritage and she is a mother and a wife. So today, she's here and her new role is the executive director at the Investors Circle SVN, Making Social, Economic and Environmental Change. Please welcome Valerie Redhorse Moll to the SOCAP 2018 stage, y'all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Here you are. Thank you, Ashara. Thank you so much. I am really humbled and honored to be here because as she mentioned, this is a very brand new role for me. I am the brand new executive director of Investors Circle and Social Venture Network. And many of you know more about the history of the social impact space than I do. It's been a great learning curve for me and I'm just so honored to be here to be able to lead this session that is called 57 Years of Leading the Way. But I want to clarify that that 57 years is not linear years. That's combined years between Social Venture Network and Investors Circle. And so what happened for me, as Ashara mentioned, I just want to give you a little bit of history about how I come to be standing here. About two years ago, my husband and I followed our youngest daughter to Sanford and we moved from Southern California to Northern California. And as Ashara mentioned, we had been working with tribal nations around the country and what we saw in and around many reservations was some of the worst abject poverty within the US borders. And I was really hungry for sustainable long-term solutions to that poverty. And we would try to bring emergency care and what I would call band-aids to our people and we would bring food and programs and clothing. But I felt like we kept doing the same things year after year. We would weatherproof homes and put riffs on trailers. But I wanted to find something more. And when we moved to Northern California, I had the honor to meet a group of people that, like me, had this passion to make a difference for our future generations. And one thing led to another and I was asked to interview to be the executive director. The board and the staff saw fit to offer me the job and I couldn't be more excited about our bold vision moving forward from here. But what I want to do today is first back up. This entire gathering is so exciting for me to see but we all have to remember our roots. And so the social impact space started with some very enthusiastic pioneers and I want us to remember that journey. Most of you may have been there. Many of you may have been involved with Social Venture Network and Investors Circle in one way or another. But I think it's always a good exercise to take a look back. And so we're going to do that if you will bear with me. We're going to look back at the space we all find ourselves in now and kind of the early beginnings of that space. So I'm going to start and my friend Lauren in the back is going to help me with the video. We're going to start in the 1980s. And that really is when humanity started to realize that we were slowly killing ourselves. And big business was actually leading the way. So from the way we worked to the way we grew and harvested our food, the way we educated our children and waged war, the way our financial systems operated, extractive systems were in play all around us. And what they were leading to was exploitation, financial crisis, and a very negative environmental impact. And the world started to understand that if something wasn't done, we would slowly kill ourselves and our planet. So a very bright idea was born back then. The idea that what if business, not philanthropy, but what if business with a profit could actually be used as a force for good? What if business leaders came together and said that they would commit to impact and purpose as well as profit? The year was actually 1987 when Josh Mailman and Wayne Silby, our two original founders, wrote that original letter to a group of influential colleagues and friends and said, let's come together, let's convene and talk about this concept of business for good. And about 70 people came to talk about that. And that became Social Venture Network, one of the original nonprofit social impact organizations. And those people that came together committed to lead the way with business as a force for good. So over the years, Social Venture Network grew and its membership grew, but then they started to realize that there were lots and lots of specific initiatives that had to be focused upon. And so you can see that several other very important nonprofit organizations started to spin out of SVN, a sort of the parent organization. I'm gonna ask Lauren to stop the slide right there. And let's take a look at that. Most of these organizations are represented here this week at SOCAP. We have American Sustainable Business Council focused on advocacy, Bali focused on local ecosystems, Investor's Circle focused on the flow of early stage capital to impact companies, BSR focused on big business, Net Impact focused on education, Opportunity Collaboration I just returned from Mexico, focused on convening and the alleviation of poverty on a global basis, and B Corporation focused on certification and metrics. Again, very important work spinning out of the original Social Venture Network. So as we continue on in the work in the space, we realize that Social Venture Network as this sort of parent organization is a very important place for people to gather. And what started to happen is members became investors in one another's businesses, they became colleagues, mentors, coaches. And what was so exciting is the world finally started to see the outside world, not just the social impact space, that business could actually be purposeful and impactful and make a profit. And what you're going to see here, and I'm gonna ask Lauren to freeze on this for a second, these are some of the most historic companies that came through the ranks of SVN and really showed the world that you could have profit, purpose and profit. You know these companies, but let's just remember them. Calvert Investments, Ben and Jerry's, Eileen Fisher, seventh generation, Etsy, Kine, Birkenstock, Beneficial State Bank, Stonyfield Farms, The Body Shop, Clif Bar and New Resource Bank. Many of you know New Resource Bank, was recently purchased by Amalgamated Bank and Ben and Jerry's was purchased by Unilever and now is publicly traded and is a public stock on the stock exchange. So again, showing the world that we don't have to give up profit for purpose. So now I'm gonna take you to look at another entity, Investor Circle, one of those nonprofit organizations that spun out of the original social venture network. And Investor Circle spun out in the 90s with a focus on the flow and the facilitation of that early stage capital into impact companies, knowing that was the hardest capital to find. And so what Investor Circle did is they, it was originally a group of about 100 investors and now of course we've grown to be many, many more, but this group of investors came together and really pioneered what we now call impact investing. A lot of discussion this week about impact investing. So this was sort of the original pioneers of that concept. And through the years, what Investor Circle has really perfected is the safe place for pitching, for companies and entrepreneurs to come that lead with impact, for the investors to come and do due diligence together and reviews together. And one of the signature events over the years that Investor Circle is known for is the beyond the pitch. In fact, we have one coming up in about a week in New York. But what is so significant is that over the years, Investor Circle has facilitated about $220 million into over 330 early stage impact companies. And Lauren, if you would hold here for a minute, just like SVN, Investor Circle has its own sort of rock star companies where early stage capital was funded and then of course they grew. So we have Zipcar, Pigeonly, Honest Tea, United by Blue, Translope, Boston Heart Diagnostics. And again, showing the world that you do not have to give a profit when you have purpose and impact. So that's a little bit of the history, but now we find ourselves here and now at a tipping point where social impact, a lot of great work has been done by all the organizations, but now we're not this sort of side conversation, we're not a tagline, we're on the front of Barons, we're on the cover of Wall Street Journal. Every major corporation is talking about social impact. So we all realize we have so much work to be done. And what happened was in early 2018 in January, Investor Circle and Social Venture Network realized they would have more strength by coming together. So they reached a historic agreement and actually re-merged back into one entity. So Social Venture Network and Investor Circle are now one legal entity, believing in the power of collaboration and the power of teamwork. Thank you. You will see our mission that I think is also your mission. We wanna realize a global economy that is regenerative, just and prosperous for everyone, but everyone in this room wants that. So why am I up here? Why am I telling you this story? Is this just to look back so that we can smile and look at all the good work that we've done? Actually, it's a call to action. We have very bold strategic initiatives we've been working on. And as I've sat through some of the workshops today, I realize all of you have the same initiatives. We're working on entrepreneurial services, investor services, impact measuring, asset measuring, education for corporate services, digital present, how do we expand, how do we look at portfolio management as well as direct transactions? And what I realize is that we can achieve this if we work together. Yes, in the 90s, there was a need for those siloed focuses. We had to do some specific work and that work is still being done, but now there's a need to really move the needle and make an impact. I don't know if you sat through the, I think it was an 11 o'clock session and a man whose name I cannot pronounce really had an impact on a lot of us because he made it clear that if we are really going to make change, we have to look at systemic change. It's a big change that we have to make. And I agree with him, but what I think we need is we need to come together and do what we've been doing individually and do it as a team. So yes, in my introduction, she mentioned that I teach at Stanford, I have a daughter at Stanford, but I'm actually a graduate of UCLA and a very proud alum of UCLA. And I believe that UCLA produced the greatest athletic coach of all time in John Wooden. And you know what John Wooden's known for. One of his statements is the true secret and success to stardom is in the teamwork. And I believe in our team, but Investors Circle and Social Venture Network wants to work with everyone else in the space. We believe in collaboration. We don't want to be siloed anymore. And so my call to action today is to come reintroduce yourself if you've already been a member, reacquaint yourself with us, introduce yourself to me and our team. We have a lot of members in the audience here that are part of ICSBN and let's work together. In my community, we do have a philosophy that is the seven generations. We believe that everything we do today will be felt at least for seven generations by our children and their children. And I know every one of you in the room is committed to that. So if we really do want to make a difference, I invite you to come and work alongside us. Thank you so much.