Christina Leijonhufvud: Benchmarking Impact Practice and Impact Performance with BlueMark

Good Future

On the show today I have Christina Leijonhufvud, she’s the CEO of BlueMark, a company founded by the impact investment consultancy Tideline. Now BlueMark has a very specific focus, and that’s to provide third-party verification of the impact investment practices and performance of the world’s leading impact practitioners. There’s a dizzying array of impact frameworks available today, and more seem to pop-up everyday. This is progress, but as impact investment pushes into the mainstream, we face the paradox of success, it’s the challenge of maintaining impact with integrity and pushing-back against impact washing. And this is where independent verification comes in. When the IFC launched the Operating Principles for Impact Management, they were well aware of this, and one of their 9 principles is actually a requirement for investors to undergo third-party verification. And so far, the large bulk of the signatories to the Impact Principles have gone to BlueMark for their impact audit. And with this rich source of impact data, Christina and her team have aggregated the results, and they’ve begun work on a Benchmark, for what the best Impact Investment methodologies look like and where there’s area for improvement. You can find all the show notes on my website at www.johntreadgold.com Enjoy