Episode 56: Olivia Hipkins

Join Lori and her guest, Olivia Hipkins, as they discuss the power of letting your values influence your day-to-day activities. Olivia has a lot of titles but she mainly works with companies that tend to have impact and sustainability at the core of their mission. What does it look like to incorporate philanthropy as part of actual investment decisions? Stay tuned!

• Here are the things to expect in this episode:

  • The importance of having board members who want to stay engaged in the organization.

  • Aligning the values of your business to your corporate social responsibility.

  • Being engaged in the community makes giving back more meaningful.

  • And many more!

  About Olivia Hipkins:

  Olivia is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Gaia Global Ventures, an ESG-oriented venture capital fund, and the Founder of Green Atlas Consulting, which focused on the intersection of sustainability and financial services. She works with investors and target investment companies across venture capital and private equity to integrate sustainability in capital allocation decisions, empowering investment professionals to see sustainability as an opportunity for positive impact and returns.

  Connect with Olivia!

  Gaia Global: https://gaiaglobal.io/

  Green Atlas: https://www.greenatlas.page/

  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviahipkins/

  Organizations Mentioned:

  PYXERA: https://www.pyxeraglobal.org/

Connect with Lori Kranczer!

Website: https://www.linkphilanthropic.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorikranczer/

Episode Transcript

You're listening to the Positive Impact Philanthropy podcast where we share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. Philanthropy is a personal journey and through the stories we share here, we hope that it sparks something in you, and how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host, Lori Kranczer attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy giving strategist and together we're going to share stories about what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist and make a positive impact in the world. But before you get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted on Wednesdays. So today I'm really excited because I have been so looking forward to meeting and chatting with her. This is Olivia Hipkins is with us today. She is the managing partner of Gaia Global Ventures and the principal of Green Atlas Consulting. Welcome, Olivia.

Thanks, Lori. Really excited to be here.

Okay, so there is so much that you do and we're really, I'm gonna let you take it away and tell us more about what you do.

Yeah, I guess I do a lot. I guess it's when you're when you're doing it day to day you don't really think about it as much as just part of your day to day but I guess I do do a lot. And like you mentioned I have a lot of titles but that's really just more structure around some of the things that I do. You know, I left. My background is in private equity and the asset management world. And even when I was doing that I found I liked the corporate structure, but I did find that there was some limitations and that I've always wanted to be doing more than my day to day responsibilities. So I was always getting involved in other initiatives, which tended to be towards the philanthropy component. of my day to day. So my first job out of college I, the first week, we were doing onboarding, I reached out to the head of the foundation at the company and said how can I get involved? I was able to get on the current committee my first year there and was really involved in a lot of stuff with the diversity and inclusion, women in finance. So I've always been adding on to my day-to-day but I guess now that I work for myself and for clients. It takes on a lot more titles as opposed to you're starting to put more structure on the individual work streams as opposed to the just having one title and doing it as add-ons. So right now my big focus is Gaia Global Ventures is an ESG oriented, early stage venture capital firm. We are focused on really investing in companies that are looking to make an impact in addition to creating new technologies, and they tend to have impact and sustainability at the core of their mission. Now is something that as I transitioned out of traditional private equity that I knew I wanted to focus on was having impact be part of my investing as opposed to an add-on or something I did on the side. I love philanthropy. I love corporate social responsibility, but I also think that money talks and I saw how much impact individual giving could have. And what if we included that part of that intentional giving back to the communities in our actual investment decisions? So that's part of my day to day. The other part of my day-to-day is Green Atlas Consulting, which is a consulting firm I started when I left private equity where I wanted to, again bridge this idea that being a good corporate citizen needed to be separate from the investment and private markets world and that in fact, they should actually be very aligned. And so a lot of what I do is strategy alignment with companies helping them build out their corporate social responsibility program, or their ESG program and helping them integrate that not just into their employee engagement, but into their community engagement, and then to their investment, engagement. So those are the two big things that I do on the work side. I'm also on the board of directors of a nonprofit based in Ghana, called Pegasus. They're focused on education in rural areas of Ghana. That's something that was super important to me as I left the structured corporate world was to make sure that because I wasn't going to have corporate giving, that I was going to be involved still with nonprofits with the philanthropy world. Even though I didn't necessarily have structure in my business. I wanted to make sure that I still had that opportunity. And I got on that board right after I left my last private equity job. And it was a high priority for me to make sure that I built that into my schedule and my calendar even when things get crazy.

 Okay, so there was a lot here that we want to talk about now. So let's start with the board service because you just mentioned that, that was the last part but so how did you identify where you wanted to focus your philanthropy on?

Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of global issues that have always been something that really engaged me. You know, I guess taking a step back. What has always inspired me, I grew up with, you know, four grandparents. Who were all very global citizens, global corporate, giving citizens, actually not even corporate citizens, but two of my grandparents were missionaries. They spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia in the 70s. And the 80s and my other two grandparents were both involved in more religious-oriented community work. And so I grew up with this mindset that giving back to the community was really important. And particularly those who are less fortunate, and particularly those who are perhaps in less fortunate situations that they were just born into. And when I was at my first company out of school, I was given the opportunity to do pro bono consulting work through an organization called Pyxera. That works pretty, pretty globally. Uh, one of the big corporate pro bono programs they had was in Ghana. I did that program for a month. I loved it. I loved working with, we were working with nonprofits in Ghana that were focused on the health sector. And the project I was working on was technology oriented. But it was so fascinating to see how much the Ghanaians wanted to give back to their communities, even when they did not themselves have that much. And coming from a position of, I was living in New York. I was single in the city and just the dichotomy of my life and giving this one month and these people who, they don't have nearly as much as I do, and giving that time to their community and philanthropy themselves. That was really impactful for me. So when I chose to look for a board seat, looking for an organization that was in Ghana or had programs in Ghana because I had that on the ground experience was really important to me, just so that I felt more engaged. And I had something to, I had a personal experience with how much these programs can impact people on the ground. And so that was really important for me ensuring that my passion for the programs that we were working with was aligned with what the actual board seat was going to be oriented towards and I think that's really important in philanthropy especially when it's not your day to day responsibility is finding something that you're not only passionate about, but you can bring something to the table and because I spent time in Ghana doing pro bono work with nonprofits. I thought that that was a good alignment in terms of skill set, I can actually bring to the table. 

Thank you for sharing that because it's a really important thing to talk about that board service is so important for nonprofits but the right fit is also crucial for both sides. It doesn't serve anyone. The board member or the nonprofit to have a mismatch and board governance is a true thing, it actually exists and for people who think that yeah, that they're gonna sit on the board and maybe just write a check or go to a gala. That's not all it is and you really need to bring something and, and boards, nonprofits that are looking to fill their boards should look at not only the time and and potentially funds that someone can put into the nonprofit, but also what they're bringing to the board, what skills, connections, all of that I think is really important. So thanks for talking about that.

 Yeah, and I think just to add on to that, I think that there's certainly board seats that can be filled by those who just want to, you know, participate financially, who want to serve as a leader or part of the brand. I think that's totally fine. For larger organizations. The organization I work with is quite small. Budget is smaller than the budget I managed at my last private equity firm as part of our corporate giving and I think that they're, each board member needs to have incremental value because it is so much smaller and you need to have those skill sets that you can't have at the actual organization you need to have that at the board level. And, you know, we've had some ups and downs during COVID Because it's been much harder to get together to implement things we weren't able to go to Ghana for two years. And obviously, there were disruptions in programming, having board members who want to stay engaged and are able to even if it's every three months able to check-in. You know, that's really critical, I think.

And talk a little bit more about Corporate Social Responsibility since you had a place with that and you're doing that now. A lot of people that were you know, looking at philanthropy are looking at personally and not even thinking about their business and aligning the values that they have personally also and the values and the brand of their business. Whatever that looks like for their business. It could be a small, small business or could be quite large. How do you see it working the best way to incorporate those values that you've seen working with the clients that you've had?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think value alignment. And, you know, I think particularly for smaller businesses, and midsize businesses, in my experience, they tend to have a little bit more direction and focus in their business, meaning sitting down and dialing in on what are kind of the values that drive your actual business. I think that usually is a helpful way of starting the conversation around how you want to structure any potential corporate giving. Corporate giving can just from, taking a step back on corporate giving. I think corporate giving can be beneficial for both sides, both the giver and the receiver. I think there's often this perception that corporate giving and I actually don't like using the word corporate giving, I think corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibilities. It's actually much better because there's a lot that you can take from engagement with your community with the communities you work with, and as business being able to have that additional linkage to the communities that you're either working with day to day, or are part of your business model, I think actually brings you closer and and allows you to make better business decisions. So it's not just a unilateral relationship where you're just giving money and you're not receiving anything. I think there is a lot that you can you can get out of that. Um, in terms of value alignment, I think that my goal has always been to identify the parts of your business that inspire you, that drive you to do the work that you're doing. So if you're doing Gosh, I'm trying to think of well, I'll use the example of the private equity firm I have restructured their corporate giving. We dialed into what as investors they were focused on which tended to be situations where there was distress, whether that was in the industry they were working in or the situation that they were coming into and we took that and we tried to align their corporate social responsibility oriented towards distress. So we re-evaluated the partners from a giving perspective and we tried to align both , not just the giving portion, the monetary giving, but the volunteering with organizations that were handling distress. So we partnered with a firm that was working with burn victims in the local area that the offices were and we also partnered with a meal prep organization that was sending meals to distressed households in the US, but also distressed households in some of the areas that we were investing in, so in parts of Africa, in disaster zones. I think that alignment was really important because the employees, they're in that mindset, all day, every day. And to be able to say, here's the philanthropy program that is aligned with those missions that you're going out and investing in everyday, I think it makes it a lot easier for your employees to get involved. And it also makes for a better story, which for a lot of companies that's part of what Corporate Social Responsibility is.

Absolutely, it's their, it's their narrative and it's important and I always feel that it's a disconnect when I've seen some businesses have their philanthropy that doesn't align with what they're doing. It just feels off. And I wondered the decision-making that went into what that, what they're supporting, whether it's

Probably not that thoughtful. A lot of and I think that it's still really valuable as long as you as long as you're giving if you're a small company, I think particularly at the beginning there's always this temptation to have it be founder focused or you know, senior management, kind of aligning what they give to personally with what they're getting to as a business. I think that's fine, particularly when you're a small business and I often encourage small businesses, that's better than not giving at all. But I do think that they're, particularly when you're thinking about the engagement you can get in terms of volunteering, in terms of employee engagement, in terms of community engagement. I think those are incremental values that you can get from a corporate social responsibility program. And once you get to a point where you start wanting that, it's good to take a step back, maybe think about restructuring and oftentimes if that means you need to dial back certain relationships that you've developed over the years, maybe it just needs to pivot. Maybe you can still maintain that relationship, but you can change the way you're giving or the way you're working with them.

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned going back to basically inspiration to give which came from your grandparents, obviously, and so many people they think back at it came from some point in their life, their childhood, family members. Talk a little bit more about that, like your inspiration to start giving back which certainly when you went into your professional life, you also saw a moment to ask to be in part of the foundation and on the grants committee. Talk a little about that, about your journey and also maybe how others can help identify within themselves how they can see that and take a similar journey.

That's a great question. The second part in particular, um, you know, for me, the inspiration, like I said, it came from my grandparents which obviously filtered through my parents, who both my parents have been very active in seeking out opportunities to give back to the community. My parents have volunteered sporadically with organizations throughout my life that also kind of reflected on me in terms of how I wanted to focus my time. I think it can be really overwhelming when you're trying to narrow in on what you want to give your time to, because that's an equally important thing that you can give is not just money but time, particularly once you're super busy. And to be honest, some of it was a little trial and error. There are there are lots of things that I'm really passionate about that I love. I love art. I have a dog, I'm passionate about animals. I'm passionate about the environment. But it's not always that what you're passionate about which you want to give time to. So I think that can be really challenging. Sometimes it is, I know people who love pets and love working with humane societies. I think that's great if that's an easy alignment if you grew up with pets, and you just love being around dogs or cats and I think that's a really easy place to start. And not being afraid to recognize that it's not a fit. I think that's confidence in itself to say to yourself. This isn't working. I need to try something else. And it's I think that would be one of my big suggestions to people is just start putting yourself out there. Start volunteering, start seeing, maybe it's working at a food kitchen, maybe it's you know, working for Habitat for Humanity and building houses, getting dirty. A lot of people feel that they can give in ways that they don't actually work in day to day, and I think that that can be super valuable. But I do think that a lot of it can stem from finding in yourself or in your personal history and your personal, family relationships. Finding something there that drives you to want to give back so for me it was I was lucky that I had grandparents who really valued giving back to their communities, sometimes even at the debt to the detriment of their self and their personal relationships. And I think that that is inspirational but it also taught me a lot in terms of balance and finding the right ways of giving without necessarily putting that mission above my personal relationships. There are people who do that and I applaud them. I can't do that. I think I value my personal relationships. too highly. But I do think that that's something that we can recognize in ourselves and recognize what you can give and how you want to give that and I do think that families, engaging with your kids, engaging with your siblings, your parents I think that can be a really good way of holding each other accountable, but also holding yourself accountable, talking to your family, getting your kids involved early, doing activities where it feels like an activity but you're also giving back I think once you start engaging with the community, it becomes a much more natural, wants to give more.

Yeah, and I'm so glad that you said all of that which is so important but also in particular that it's okay if it's not the right fit for you. I'm glad people feel like they have to do everything or they have so many things they are passionate about but you can pick one thing and it may not work out and you may decide to pivot and do something else and that's okay.

Yeah, I mean, it's like anything else in life. You know, we have to be able to recognize if something's not working, if you're on a board and you're dreading every time you have to sit in on the board meeting. That's not working. It's not helpful for you and it's certainly not helpful for the board. And I think that's being able to recognize that you're kind of at the end of the road with trying something is that's the best thing you can do at that point is recognize that it's not the right fit, and it doesn't mean you're not going to find the right fit. And it may also be that our lives change over time and the way we want to engage changes. Maybe you want to sit on a board for three years and at the end of the three years you feel you've given what you can and they need somebody else to take that seat to direct the organization in a new way. And sometimes that's equally important to recognize,

Right, absolutely. So, Olivia, you're doing so much amazing work. I do want to ask you, what do you consider your legacy to be?

I hope my legacy will be that you know, I do do so much but I really hope that people take the passion that I've tried to show in my day to day I'm pursuing what drives me personally and the values that I have in my life and taking that and committing to that in my day to day but also the activities and the way I choose to spend my time. I hope that that inspires people. I hope it inspires my grandchildren, for sure down the line to really identify what's important to you and continue to pursue it even when people tell you it's not valuable or you're never gonna get paid for it or you'll never get promoted because you're spending too much time doing other things. Those are transitory things, and I would I hope that people take inspiration from the fact that you can, you can still care and be a corporate citizen or a global citizen without sacrificing other parts of your life.

Thank you. I love that. Okay, so um, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for joining us today. Where can people find out more about you? 

Yeah, well, because I do so many things. There are a couple ways to find me. Both my companies have websites. GaiaGlobal.io. is for my ESG fund. And my consulting firm can be found at GreenAtlas.page. I'm also on LinkedIn. I love connecting with people who are doing similar things in the impact space in the philanthropy space. Always looking to connect. I also try to post topics on philanthropy every once in a while, particularly on Pegasus the organization I work with, you can find me on LinkedIn under Olivia Hipkins.

Great, thank you. Alright so everyone, go check Olivia out, Olivia thank you again for joining us. It was a pleasure to have you, and sharing your journey. For everyone listening. Thanks for joining us. We hope we provide some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. See you next time. Thank you for joining us. I hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week on Wednesdays when new episodes are dropped. We'd love to hear your feedback. So leave a comment and a rating about what you liked and what you'd like to hear more about. And if you liked the episode today, make sure to share it to raise awareness about the story to inspire other women to take action. I'm Lori Kranczer And until next time, you can make a positive impact through philanthropy every day. Thanks for listening.