Radhacal Good

In this episode, I talk with Sachi Shenoy, co-founder of Upaya Social Ventures, an organization that picks up where micro-lending leaves off by helping people who are living in poverty to build businesses and scale them to create jobs for others in their community. Nearly one billion women are completely excluded from the formal financial system. Without even a bank account in their own names, they lack the basic services like secure ways to save money, pay bills, and get credit. Microcredit--literally, providing small loans to women considered unbankable--has been a game changer for women, but it, too, has its limits. Upaya identifies early-stage entrepreneurs with the greatest potential for job creation and invests in them. Before co-founding Upaya, Sachi worked with Unitus, a microfinance accelerator, and before that, she worked at SKS Microfinance (now known as Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd.) helping to provide small loans to women living in rural slums in India. In the interview, Sachi talks about what we’ve learned about the transformative power as well as the limitations of microlending in recent years. She also talks about how living with a disability has shown her that there will always be another way to do something—we just have to be creative.

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave a rating and review! And, you can support this podcast on Spotify or Patreon. Thanks, everyone! https://www.patreon.com/RadhacalGood

Less than 2% of philanthropic funds go to organizations focused on women and girls, and less than 1% go to women of color. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for the revolution! In this episode, I share why I started this podcast after being told to, "let the men worry about the finances, honey." 

Here’s what you’ll get in this episode:

* The most powerful thing each of us can do when it comes to donating and investing

* Unpacking the myths and misconceptions that have been intentionally created to shame women around the subject of money

* Why it's so important to make women's stories more visible

In this episode, I talk with Ada Williams Prince, director of program strategy and investments at Pivotal Ventures, the private office of Melinda Gates. At Pivotal, Ada leads bold new strategies to invest in Black, Indigenous and women and girls of color. Ada has spent her career working in humanitarian aid and philanthropy, including working with the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York, Save the Children in London, the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Survivors in Brussels, and Concern Worldwide and Plan International UK. She has also worked with the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and served on the boards of PAI (a global reproductive health organization), Neighborhood House, the Refugee Women’s Alliance in Seattle, Wandsworth Women’s Aid UK, and as a partner at Social Venture Partners. And although this is a podcast and you can’t see it, she has a tattoo in Wakanda script, y’all. I’m telling you this because I want you all to have a mental image of Ada, advising Melinda Gates on how to invest in Black women, with her Wakanda tattoo as you're listening to this episode. Can you see it? Great, let’s dive in.

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave a rating and review! And, you can support this podcast on Spotify or Patreon. Thanks, everyone! https://www.patreon.com/RadhacalGood

In this episode, I talk with Tracy Gray—impact investor and self-identified “blerd.” (Black nerd) Tracy is the Founder and Managing Partner of The 22 Fund, an early growth venture capital/private equity firm with a mission of creating the clean, quality jobs of the future by intentionally targeting women and BIPOC-owned businesses. She is also an Executive-in-Residence at the LA Cleantech Incubator (LACI), a Board member of Applife Digital Solutions (a publicly-traded incubator), and she was the first Social Impact Fellow at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School’s Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership. After giving a TEDx Talk entitled, “Why It's Time for Women to Be Sexist with Investment Capital,” Tracy founded We Are Enough, a nonprofit focused on educating women on how and why to invest in with a gender lens. We talk about what’s preventing people from investing in women of color and y'all, Tracy does not hold back!

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave a rating and review! And, you can support this podcast on Spotify or Patreon. Thanks, everyone! https://www.patreon.com/RadhacalGood

Welcome to Radhacal Good, a podcast about how to change the world by investing in women and girls--especially women of color, women who are LGBTQ, and women with disabilities. In this podcast, we will explore how women are poised to lead a revolution towards equity as women's wealth and power grows. We'll talk with some powerhouse women about how we can close those wealth gaps, invest in the brilliance of women and girls, and unleash women's power like we've never seen by giving, spending and investing like it matters.