Impact investing and social entrepreneurship are reshaping the way we tackle global challenges. Christine Mahoney, professor, author, and Chief Innovation Officer at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, shares how aligning financial success with social and environmental missions creates powerful change. She breaks down the differences between impact investing, traditional philanthropy, and socially responsible investing, offering practical steps to get started. Christine also shares her journey from policy work to founding a regenerative flower farm that sequesters carbon, supports biodiversity, and provides jobs for resettled refugees. From leveraging capital markets for good to empowering the next generation of women in impact, this episode is a roadmap for turning values into action.
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How To Make Money Work: On Social Entrepreneurship & Impact Investing With Christine Mahoney, Frank Batten School Chief Innovation Officer
How do you take on systems as big and entrenched as global displacement, corporate capitalism, and government policy and still hold on to hope? You’ve got to admit, that’s hard. My guest, Christine Mahoney, does it daily. She’s a professor at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. She’s an author and the founder of her own social venture, Wayflowering. Christine has built her entire career at the intersection of scholarship and action, challenging the status quo while designing new models for change and sharing them with the next generation of social entrepreneurs.
In this episode of Women Advancing, we’re going to dive into our work with refugees, impact investing, and the delicate dance of staying idealistic without being naive. Christine doesn’t just teach social entrepreneurship. She’s actually living it, and she’s here to talk about what it takes to lead with purpose in a world that often resists it, provide so many different resources and explanations of the entire impact investing spectrum, social enterprise spectrum, and so much more. I hope you like this episode. I know you’ll learn a lot from it. Let me know what you think.
We are so fortunate to have Christine Mahoney, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, professor and author in social entrepreneurship and impact investing, and the founder of Wayflowering, with us on Women Advancing. Christine, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
From Academia To Impact: Christine Mahoney’s Journey
I have been a longtime fan of Christine for lots of reasons. One, she is one of those people who works with intention, but she’s also built a life that’s filled with intention, personally and spiritually. She has also built her own business, and she teaches with such intentionality. You’re going to hear what I’m referring to in a little bit. Christine, let’s start off. I know you’ve spent a lot of your career at that intersection of finance and justice. How did you get there? How did you get here? What was your journey? What originally drew you to impact investing and capture it?
I was originally interested in social justice and environmental justice. In my youth, I thought we achieved that through policy, government change, and advocacy. I did lots of research on that space. How do we more effectively achieve justice through those strategies? I interviewed hundreds of advocates and activists in the United States and the European Union, and wrote a book about that. It was depressing.
A lot of times, we don’t win that fight. We fight the good fight, and we don’t win it sometimes. I was interested in when the government will not reform and when we cannot achieve our goals that way, are there other strategies, rather than throwing up our hands? I got interested in social entrepreneurship models. I built a program on social entrepreneurship and impact investing here at the University of Virginia.
At the same time, I was researching refugee rights around the world. I was doing work in conflict zones. Again, still looking at, are there strategies for local advocacy, national level advocacy, global advocacy to help support these people? Over 100,000,000 people have been forced from their homes through violence and war. The result of that work was also pretty depressing. People are living in limbo. They’re not allowed to take care of themselves and their families.
Over time, the philanthropic community saw a need to develop models that are more financially resilient to the ups and downs of the economy, and aligned with the people we're trying to serve. Share on XI was starting to see interesting for-profit models, supporting refugee entrepreneurs with microfinance, creating social enterprises that were using labor models to support integrating the displaced into new communities. I thought, rather than being depressed and throwing out my hands, let’s learn a whole new world. My PhD is in Political Science. I never had a class on Impact Investing in my many years of education. I had to tool up on my own and figure out how to use these tools of capitalism in the service of justice.
Demystifying Social Entrepreneurship & Impact Investing
That makes so much sense. I know this may seem strange, but would you mind defining social entrepreneurship? I want people to understand what that means. It’s different from a nonprofit. Many people may know and think they know what it is. Also, with impact investing, there’s such a spectrum. Do you mind one-liner definitions defining impact investing versus socially responsible investing versus philanthropy, which is a whole different beast in and of itself?
I think both of them are continuums that help us understand it. Traditionally, we had philanthropy and charity. You can imagine the classic soup kitchen, where well-meaning people give money, and then some benefit is given to people in need, what we might call beneficiaries. One of the challenges with that is when the economy tanks, sometimes that money dries up. It’s hard to do that work.
Also, the people giving the money, where the power is, are not the same people who are getting the benefit, and so it disconnects power from the people we are trying to serve. On the other end of the spectrum, we had this barren railroad type of capitalism, which produced a lot of good innovation, but often at the cost of workers, the environment, and the communities that were maybe part of the supply chain.
Over time, what we saw is the philanthropic community saying, “We need to develop some models that are more financially resilient to the ups and downs of the economy, and that also maybe align with the people we’re trying to serve.” At the same time, in the 1960s, we saw this whole movement of let’s make sure that our companies aren’t damaging the very planet we live on and harming our children and our workers. There was this push to have more and more corporate social responsibility and socially responsible businesses.
Until about twenty years ago, we saw this intersection in the middle. It was like we could actually build a business. Often, that can serve the very people we want to serve. That could be clean water in Africa. That could be solar lanterns in Latin America. We can create companies that support workers. We look at companies that are like bakeries, that are helping people who are coming out of incarceration or women who are coming out of abusive homes.
The more successful that company is, the more money they make, and the more they achieve their mission. Share on XHow can we actually build companies that have social and environmental missions? The more successful the company is, the more money it makes, and the more it achieves its mission. That’s what first got me interested because I was seeing these incredible entrepreneurs saying when government fails, whether that’s domestically in the United States or around the world, we can still have agency and we can still act, and we can still build models that fix problems.
Those companies at some point want to grow often, and they need capital. That’s where the world of impact investing comes in. Another continuum in that space is that people probably have heard a lot about ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governance. It has been politicized. There’s talk about how these different companies on Wall Street are some good and some bad. How are they good? How are they bad? How do we know? This whole movement started hundreds of years ago.
We can trace it back to the Quakers saying, “We’re not going to invest in the slave trade. We’re going to be thoughtful about our investments and make sure our investments align with our values.” We saw that approach scale up through the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, during the Darfur Genocide in the early 2000s. It’s this idea that we can divest our capital from industries or companies that we think are not doing good work in the world.
We also have seen that as you pull your money back from what you might think are bad stocks or bad industries, like fossil fuels, you need to put it somewhere. You could put it in any old company. Increasingly, investors who want to make sure that their money is doing good work in the world want to have some information about those companies. That was the rise of ESG investing. It came out of the United Nations and Kofi Annan, and then it led to the UN principles for responsible investing. It was like, “Let’s give investors some basic information so that they can make informed decisions.”
That has developed over the past twenty years to be much more rigorous, much more nuanced, giving a range of different investors a range of different information so that they can invest with their values. It’s been an exciting time where impact-oriented investors and entrepreneurs have said, “We’re going to keep moving the ball forward regardless of what governments are doing. There’s a place for government to support the work, but when it fails, there’s still space for us to do the work.
It's been an exciting time where impact-oriented investors and entrepreneurs have said, 'We're going to keep moving the ball forward, regardless of what governments are doing.' Share on XOften, there’s this misunderstanding or myth that it’s all fairy dust, unicorns, feel-good, and all of that. You cannot fix a problem and make money.
The Material Impact Of ESG: Beyond Feel-Good Investing
That’s what’s exciting now. There’s this whole realization of hard-nosed investors saying there is a materiality to this. When BP was not being environmentally responsible and had the Deepwater Horizon crisis, that not only hurt coastal communities and killed countless marine life, but it also had a material impact on the company, which was bad for their investors.
There were incredible fines. Their stock tanked. There were long-term economic implications. We can see that again and again, whether it’s Facebook, from a governance and responsible treatment of their customers at some point. If you think about VW and lying to their customers, it’s bad for the environment, but it was bad for customers. It was bad for their reputation. It was bad for their bottom line, and it was ultimately bad for their shareholders.
This is the thing that I never understood. The timing is right around when you were speaking twenty years ago. That was right about when I was a publisher for Fast Company. We created the Social Capitalist Awards. That’s where my eye was opened. I thought, “This is ridiculous. Why do we not operate this way? People, Planet, Profit.” Of course, if you don’t take care of the environment, that’s going to hurt your customer. Your customer will not only not buy your product, but they may not be alive.
I’m glad we’re finally making some headway. What it is is that everyone understands Gen Z and such are willing to make this sacrifice for some of the things, like convenience. It doesn’t matter. There’s human trafficking. There are people who are being treated badly. It’s filling landfills with old clothes that nobody uses. I’m heartened that people are finally understanding that and that corporations are starting to realize, “Wait. I cannot do greenwashing? I thought I could do a little sleight of hand or fudge,” and people are saying, “No.”
That’s why you see more of these certification schemes. In the beginning, there was Fair Trade Certified or Lead Certified. It was different pieces of it. Obviously, we’ve seen the growth of the B Corp Movement for over twenty years now. They were like, “Let’s give customers and then ultimately investors down the line a more holistic way and, importantly, an externally validated way to know if companies are walking the walk.”
Women & Wealth: Investing With Intention
Really legit. There has been a lot of talk about this massive wealth transfer that’s coming down the line. I’ve heard that by 2030, etc., this is going to be in the trillions. Women and younger generations are those who are set to be the greatest recipients of it. For women who want to align their money with their values, where should they even start? Are there some three key questions they want to ask or things to look for where they can sniff out friend or foe, truth or false, kind of thing?
There are some easy ways. If people have traditional-type jobs and they have traditional retirement accounts, it’s as simple as asking whether there is an ESG fund within our asset manager. I think for people, maybe with some more resources, they’re looking at diversifying who is currently managing their money. It’s looking at some of these companies that have been doing it for a long time. The Parnassus of the world. They’ve been committed to it, and they’re not just jumping on the bandwagon because it’s sexy now.
There has been so much progress made from a metric standpoint. BlackRock, one of the biggest asset managers in the world, is using an ESG measurement tool that focuses on materiality. What are these pieces of environmental responsibility data, social responsibility data, and governance data that have a material impact on shareholders’ and investors’ bottom lines?
These significant investors are using those types of scorecards, like MSCI, etc., and Morningstar has a rating. Those are pretty reliable. There are a million of them out there, but if you use the biggest ones that are well tracked, that’s a good place to start. For people who are inheriting wealth, and they might have a family office, one thing is that they think about their philanthropy often in one pocket, you might say.
One of our UVA alumni wrote a book about how there are at least two pocket thinking, “You make your money and you give your money from one pocket, but you invest in another and you think of them as quite divorced from each other.” The younger generation recognizes that it’s not necessary, so it’s more natural for them. They need to be pushing asset managers who were used to working with the previous generation. It’s like, “What are the funds that are available to us?”
Creatively, especially family offices, which can be a lot more thoughtful with their philanthropy, can be doing things like program-related investments, mission-related investments. In a program-related investment, instead of giving $50,000 to a soup kitchen, you could give $50,000 to a culinary social enterprise that’s helping reeducate people coming out of incarceration so that they don’t need the soup kitchen. You can lose it because it’s risky, but you were going to get 0% ROI on it anyway, or you might not, and then you might get it back, and then you can give again. You’ve had this super sustainable impact in the world.
I love that thinking because it is it’s a better way of making your money work for the money, but also for everyone else around you. I know that women are increasingly, or some of them at least, starting to get into the investing space. They are still underrepresented. What myths about women and money would you love to get rid of, like, once and for all, stop it?
One is that they’re not interested. I see that in the university a lot. It’s a real soft discriminatory thing. “We thought you weren’t interested. We didn’t invite you.” Guess what? They are interested. You and I are seeing that here in Charlottesville, where all of these women in different Angel investment groups or even philanthropists are coming together and doing peer-to-peer education.
What we’re seeing in some of the bigger markets is women-oriented Angel investing groups. Also, providing boot camps to each other so that they can learn what they might not have learned if they majored in anything other than finance when they were in college or in their graduate work. I think that they are interested. They’re doing a great job on peer-to-peer. For those who may be in a market that isn’t quite there yet and that doesn’t have the networks, there is a lot available online.
You’ve been involved with SOCAP, and I always direct my students to SOCAP. There’s such incredible virtual content to start dipping your toe in the water. Global Impact Investment Network also has a ton of resources available. They’re nice because you can be busy and out and about in your day and listen to twenty minutes of an incredible panel that maybe happened last year, but the content is still super fresh. It can be a little bit more dynamic than reading a big finance textbook.
Wayflowering: A Social Enterprise Success Story
A big tone that can get a little bit dense. I’m so glad because in the beginning, when I was running SOCAP, I can remember everybody was so concerned. We have to come on-site to see it, etc., then COVID hit, and it’s like, “We’re going to have a much broader impact if we open it up to a lot of people, and we should house it.” I’m so glad that people are starting to take advantage of that, too. That’s all nice and fine. Now it was time for you to walk the talk. Christine has created Wayflowering. I have yet to be there, but I know it’s beautiful because if you go to the site, you’ll see it’s beautiful. Tell everyone a little bit about the Wayflowering and what inspired you to build it?
My last book was on how to use impact investing to support the world’s over 100,000,000 refugees and forcibly displaced people. I was attending summits. We were standing up the first global nonprofit that was connecting investors with refugee entrepreneurs and refugee businesses. It was called the Refugee Investment Network. While we were doing that work, we were traveling the world. When COVID hit and the stay-at-home orders hit, we had to stay here. The question was, how do we continue doing this work when everybody and everything seems frozen?
We have a small farm outside of Charlottesville. I had worked with all these creative social enterprise models that were rehabilitating tobacco fields to grow organic indigo to supply Patagonia, lavender models that are rehabilitating my former mine land in Appalachia to grow lavender and create jobs for people coming out of incarceration. I knew all of these creative models that were out there that were having an environmental impact and a social impact. I was like, “Maybe we can do that right here.”
I worked in the greenhouses for my work study job when I was in college, and I’ve always loved flowers. I decided I’m going to start a regenerative flower farm. I’m going to sequester carbon. We’re going to support pollinators, support biodiversity to have the environmental side, and create jobs for resettled refugees. I was on the board of the International Rescue Committee here in Charlottesville. We have traditionally, historically been a big reception city.
That was the idea. We know there are challenges when people are getting resettled. They might not have transportation. They might not have English language skills yet. They might need a lot of flexibility for childcare and things like that. That was the beginning of it all. We did it, and we learned a lot, and we’re still learning a lot. We’re in our fourth year now. We’ve had workers from Congo and Rwanda, Latin America, and the Middle East. It’s been cool. We’re sequestering about 66 metric tons of carbon a year now between our stewardship and our no-till models. I think that’s what’s powerful about social entrepreneurship and impact investing. As I mentioned, when governments fail, we can still act.
Even during COVID, when it felt like what can anyone little person do, it felt like the problems were so huge. It was a strategy where I could at least do this. I can at least sequester this carbon. My husband has our sister company called Thistlerock Mead Company. It’s the first net-zero Mead Company in the country. We’re all in electric, so electric vehicles. Very dramatically, we are reducing energy usage while also sequestering through our regenerative ag practices.
It’s been a cool learning journey because I’ve been surprised by how much impact we can actually have. We’re not Patagonia yet. I don’t know if we will be, because the whole goal is about local and about creating carbon from the local strategy. I think as people do more of this and they create companies in their communities that are creating alternative strategies, in my case, instead of shipping in flowers from halfway around the world that have been flown on a plane, that have been sprayed with horrible pesticides, that may have had bad labor practices where it was coming from, you know that you can get a clean, beautiful, local, carbon-free product right here in your own community. I think it helps me teach better as well.
Bridging Theory & Practice: Teaching With Lived Experience
How is this impacting? All of a sudden, you can say, “I’ve got a great case study for you?”
I think there are two big ways, maybe three. As a professor of social entrepreneurship, I can now teach even more effectively because I know what it means to have enough cashflow to run your payroll and make sure you’re paying your taxes and all of that piece. That’s one piece. As a professor, impact investing helps me understand the entrepreneurs that are pitching even better, and why it’s so important for them to understand their business, understand their numbers, and understand their costs, and why investors want to see that in an entrepreneur they’re investing in.
Third, I teach at a School of Leadership and Public Policy. A lot of our students have been Government Affairs majors, or maybe Environmental Sciences majors, or maybe Criminal Justice Reform. They’ve majored in the things that they care about and the problems that they care about. Private sector regulation is often a piece of the solution when it comes to government. Yet many policy students have never had any real experience in the private sector or in a business. It highlighted for me that if you want to be a policy maker and go to a policy school, you ought to spend some time deeply understanding the private sector if you hope to regulate it.
If you want to be a policymaker and go to a policy school, you really ought to spend some time deeply understanding the private sector, if you hope to regulate it. Share on XEven just by looking at how challenging the regulations were to stand up a small metery, which is essentially a small winery. It took two years. I do work on impact investing in Appalachia. When you talk about economic development in some areas that are so hard and people don’t have the friends and family capital to put layers and layers of barriers in front of them to get anything off the ground, it’s crazy. That has been one of the bigger eye-opening learnings for me.
Policy & Private Sector: The Regulatory Roadblocks
That’s what I was going to ask, essentially. What was the biggest surprise? It sounds like it is an uphill lift, but some of these aspects that are supposed to be so helpful end up being hidden obstacles.
There’s a book out on the market, Abundance. You may have heard of it. It’s from this guy, Ezra Klein. I’ve been reading that, and it’s resonating with me because I’ve seen so many policies that have been put in place by smart, well-intentioned people. The result is outcomes they absolutely do not want to see. We have to get better at this.
It goes back to what you’ve been learning, because now you’re walking the talk. You’re living and breathing all of it. That’s the thing. Not that Ezra parachuted in because he’s been in the realm for quite a while, but still, you cannot take away the importance of real lived experience, because everything then is all theory. “It should go like this.” Little did you know that there are some reasons either in the process or the distribution channel, or something. There’s a hiccup and unwinding that thread to get back to the origin of the problem. If you could write a memo to the next generation of women in impact, may you be many, what would the subject line say?
I think something along the lines of the problems facing us as a species is so huge that we need the power of capital markets to tackle them. I’ve met so many well-meaning people who think philanthropy will be sufficient or even regulation, and it’s not the case. We need to steer the capital markets and private sector companies toward deeply integrating environmental and social responsibility into their work.
We cannot fix the problems that have been created with these philanthropic band aids, and we have seen that regulation is not sufficient. Even in the past, when we’ve had huge budgets and what some people would argue are big governments, they’re almost completely incapable of policing through regulation. That isn’t the best way to do it. It’s better to consider the costs of a private sector company and allow them to grow and succeed and deliver value to customers in a way that is good for our species and the planet.
Why Corporations Resist: The Citizen Vs. Consumer Dilemma
Why has it been so hard for these companies to do this? Is it because of the sacrifice of profit? On the one hand, you’ve got Ed Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory, all of that, but then consumers are saying, “We want these companies to do this. By the way, we invest in them, so we don’t want to suffer any shift or delta in the firms that we get.” Does it mean that everybody in the circle needs to say, “Hand in, I’m down. If I’m going to fall short by 10% or 15%, you’re going to deliver less, but I’m going to close the inequity gap.” It means we’re going to have those carbon issues. I’m good with that.
It’s a big question. I remember I was interviewing a lobbyist one time when I was working in Brussels, and he was saying that there’s a difference between citizens and consumers. When you ask the citizen what they want, they might want good regulations, they might want well-behaved companies, and they might want ethically produced products. When they’re the customer and they go to the store, they want the cheapest product available.
There’s a step back from that, especially in the United States, undergirding that, which is that we have massive poverty in this country. The median household income is very low. We have incredible income inequality. As long as companies aren’t paying workers enough to make the informed choice, the enlightened choice, the educated choice. They might want to, but they cannot.
There’s probably a category of people who could but don’t. If there’s a way bigger category, like in the communities I work in in Appalachia, a $12 box of organic strawberries is not on the table. It’s not available, but even if it were available, that wouldn’t be a choice. It’s not a choice. We have this deep income inequality problem that needs to be solved before it’s easier for companies to make that choice.
Empowering The Next Generation: Advice For Women In Impact
It’s all sides of the equation. I have to take a moment and do some deep thinking and then make some definite shifts. In closing, Christine has an amazing daughter. It’s even in preparation for her and setting the world up, you and John setting the world up for her. Knowing what now, what advice would you give your younger self?
Other than taking a Finance class, maybe take an Accounting class? I think they’re helpful. No matter what you do, whether you go into the nonprofit space or the entrepreneurial space, I think those are helpful. Also, learning that you have agency in the world because we’ve seen all of the research out of psychology. Feeling like you have purpose and agency is a pathway to a more contented life.
I feel like now more than ever, but it always feels like that. I’m sure in the ‘60s and I’m sure in the 1920s, I’m sure there were all these periods in the past where it felt like the world was on fire. It feels particularly on fire now because of the way that our society has changed. Everything feels big and complicated. I see it in a lot of university students. I feel like people feel a little frozen. How do we tackle partisanship? How do we tackle the climate crisis? The problem seems so big.
What starting Wayflowering has shown me, and in the other types of work that I’ve done in my career, is that at least we can do this, or at least I can do this. A good question, hopefully for my daughter, the other kids in her class, and kids across the country and around the world is, “What can I do to leave the world better off than I found it?” I think that if all 8 billion of us, or however many of us there are, if that’s the guiding principle, then hopefully we can leave the world much better off. It’s just in a generation.
It would have to be. Christine, thank you so much for joining. Thank you for everything that you’re doing on every single level in the classroom, out in the field, out on the speaking circuit, out on the authorship circle. We got so many pearls. I cannot wait to see you out in the fields.
You’ve got to come on a visit. Thank you so much.
Thanks. Until next time.
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Key Takeaways: Agency, Impact, & Action
What do you think? Amazing, right? Christine Mahoney is seriously one of the most intentional people I’ve ever met. I have great respect and regard for her as a result of that. KB’s key takeaways. One, you can fix problems and make money through social entrepreneurship. I think there’s a little bit of patience that’s required. When you look at the other alternative, it makes a pretty easy choice in my mind.
Secondly is the notion of citizen versus consumer. With that being said, it’s going to require that we realize, “I want to keep and help do my part in minimizing and making that equity gap smaller and smaller.” That doesn’t mean that I will suffer. It means I will thrive, as will others. Pretty much a duh in my mind. Investing alone is not going to do it. Philanthropy alone is not going to do it. Regulation alone is not going to do it. Policy alone isn’t going to do it. All of the aspects are.
As potential investors and potential consumers, we can vote with our wallets and drive real change. At the end of the day, we’ve got to get the private sector involved. We’ve got to get corporations to understand because that’s where the breadth of the employees, the inequities, and also the money is. If we can shift that, such an easy lift happens. It was interesting. She was talking a bit about how those who are going into government policy often understand their aspect incentives and such, but they have limited experience within the private sector.
As in anything, and those of you who are in sales know this. You always have to think from the customer’s aspect or from the customer’s side. For those of you who are looking to get more involved in government policy, dive in and have a much better understanding of the private sector. Anyone who is doing anything, know your numbers, especially for social entrepreneurs, it’s important. It’s hard enough for those who are cold, hard for profit. For those social entrepreneurs, you ought to know those numbers even better, and you will from a much deeper level.
I think the last thing was the question we should be asking ourselves. With all that’s going on in the world, it’s so easy to get frozen and overwhelmed. What can I do? What can I do in my realm? It doesn’t always have to be so big and monumental, the best this, the best that. It doesn’t have to be. What’s one thing that I could do that could leave the world better off than the way it is now? I tell you what. If we each do that and you do the math, there’ll be a whole lot of improvement going on. I look forward to hearing from you, and let me know what you think. Until our next conversation, thanks for tuning in.
Important Links
- Christine Mahoney
- Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
- Wayflowering
- Refugee Investment Network.
- International Rescue Committee
- Thistlerock Mead Company
- Abundance
- The University of Virginia
- Failure and Hope
- Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union (American Governance and Public Policy series)
- Stakeholder Theory
About Christine Mahoney
Christine Mahoney is Chief Innovation Officer, and a Professor of Public Policy and Politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. She studies social entrepreneurship and impact investing. She launched and led Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia from 2011-2021. She has secured $37.7 million in funding for programs to research, teach and support innovative solutions to social and environmental challenges.
She is currently leading a project on Appalachian Resilience and completing a new book on Refugee Entrepreneurship. Her first book Brussels vs. the Beltway (Georgetown University Press) explored how advocates shape public policy in two of the most powerful political systems on the planet: the US and the EU. She conducted fieldwork in 7 conflict zones in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America for her second book Failure and Hope: Fighting for the Rights of the Forcibly Displaced (Cambridge University Press). The book argues we need to advance social entrepreneurship for the over 100 million people displaced by violent conflict worldwide. More at: www.failureandhope.org
She co-founded the Refugee Investment Network, where she serves as fellow and advisor. The Refugee Investment Network (RIN) is the first impact investing and blended finance collaborative dedicated to creating durable solutions to global forced migration. More at: www.refugeeinvestments.org
She also founded Wayflowering, a regenerative agriculture social enterprise to create jobs for refugees, while also supporting pollinators, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. More at www.wayflowering.com
She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and the Director of the Center for European Studies and the Maxwell European Union Center. She has been a Fulbright Fellow, Visiting Scholar at Oxford, a National Science Foundation grant recipient, recipient of the Emerging Scholar award from the American Political Science Association and she regularly comments in the media including appearances in: the National Journal, Quartz, Impact Alpha, Triple Pundit, Politico, the Virginia Pilot, the Daily Progress, Charlottesville Tomorrow, Next Billion, BBC, and NPR, CBS, and NBC affiliates.