Perspective: 20 years at Calvert Impact

Twenty years ago, Chief Products and Partnerships Officer Justin Conway joined the team at Calvert Impact. Since then, Justin has played a crucial role in making Calvert Impact a leader in the impact investing space by helping develop and scale products across our platform.

To reflect both on his own journey and the evolution of the organization, Justin sat down with Calvert Impact Capital board member Phil Kirshman to offer perspective on what the past two decades have been like for the Community Investment Note®, Calvert Impact, and the broader industry.

Phil: What brought you to Calvert Impact and to impact investing more broadly?

Justin: After working abroad on human rights issues, I realized that a lack of access to finance was the root of so many problems that people were facing. I came back to the states to figure out how to drive more interest in international development and microfinance work. That’s when I got a job at the Social Investment Forum and Green America to manage their community investing program, which married my international interest with all the exciting things happening in US community development.

While I was a newbie, I was so fortunate that the job gave me access to all the leaders in the field, and my job was to coordinate and amplify their work to a broader audience. One of those leaders and a source of many mentors was Calvert Impact, and joining the team back in 2006 was an incredible opportunity to actually get my hands dirty doing the work of directing capital to the people who need it most.

Phil: How has the Community Investment Note® changed and served as Calvert’s launchpad for innovation over the past 20 years?

Justin: I think the beauty of the Community Investment Note® is that it has done and it continues to do so many different things. When I started it was approximately $80 million, and it felt like we had eighty programs to get there - partnerships with tons of nonprofits, lots of direct targeting, and spread across so many different issues.

We began to ask – what are investors really interested in and how can we make it more accessible, that would benefit communities and the industry over time? Through that process, we were able to refocus our efforts and grow our impact.

On the investor side, we’ve always had a deep commitment to retail investing and democratization, representing 97% of our investor base by the numbers. From hundreds of faith institutions and family foundations to mutual fund companies, corporates, and more recently pension funds, the Note has attracted a wide variety of investors often looking to make some of their first impact investments. We are so fortunate to have a diversified and deeply committed investor base that supports our efforts.

The biggest piece of that has been working with financial advisors to make our products more accessible to their retail and institutional clients. We now have over 140 brokerage firms and over 800 advisors that have participated in that. That’s where I feel like we’re just scratching the surface with advisors and the wealth management channel, not just in the Community Investment Note®, but in the other products that we create and help inspire in the industry as well.

And to the second part of that question, that is the exciting part now, seeing how we continue to innovate within the portfolio, that we’re able to spin new products out from it. Really so much that we’re able to contribute comes from what we’ve learned and are still learning in the Community Investment Note® portfolio. 

Our work is still small relative to the total of the financial markets, but it’s definitely grown and we’ve now mobilized over $5 billion for impact across our products, thanks in large part to the ecosystem that Calvert Impact has been working to scale and strengthen.

Phil: Looking back on it, Justin, is there anything that you would tell your 20 year old self just arriving at Calvert Impact? What would you tell young Justin walking in the door on day one?

Justin: Umm, that’s tough, because at the time, we just had no idea what was going to happen in the field. There's our growth rate and innovation at Calvert Impact, but the entire impact industry has really built up around us, along with the more mainstream ESG parts that have really caught on.

I think I would tell myself to: listen earlier, often.

I’ve learned a lot. That’s one of the things I love about Calvert Impact. Every day we learn and we try all kinds of new things, we partner with so many organizations to grow collective impact. But if I’d made more time to listen and learn earlier, maybe I could have helped us move faster in navigating past all the barriers that exist to impact investing.

It doesn't feel like 20 years. I've worn so many hats, I've worked on so many programs with so many different folks, but it's just great to be in a place that really has that entrepreneurial ethos and pushes all of us forward. And I can't imagine doing it with more talented, amazing people.