The Vision for Impact Investing to Create Economic Equity Globally
People around the world are trying to improve their quality of life and economic outcomes, but the paths to achieving these improvements are varied and riddled with risks and unintended consequences. We believe that Social Enterprise and Impact Investing can address the major challenges to making these improvements both across the country and around the world if the solutions address 3 critical gaps in thinking around impact, scalability and profitability. This talk will highlight major challenges, suggest and approach to close these gaps and discuss the impact we believe it has on the potential for a global middle class.
Phil Dillard is a Navy veteran turned successful consultant, entrepreneur and educator. Phil is recently founded Global Minds Work Local (Global Minds), an incubator and venture studio for impact investing and social enterprises focused on solving local problems. The vision of Global Minds is to increase the number of highly scalable, highly profitable and highly impactful startups by leveraging a unique and novel approach to identify problems, develop MVPs and launch new companies. Phil also serves as an advisor, mentor and coach to startups and entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the country and internationally.
Prior to Global Minds, he worked as a principal consultant at BMNT, an innovation and advisory and execution firm that helps large bureaucratic organizations to build innovation pipelines and programs. There he helped launch and mentor students in the Hacking for Local – Oakland course at UC Berkeley and was a mentor for 2 years in Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad course at Stanford University. Prior to BMNT, Phil led training and development for Eric Ries’ Lean Startup Company, conducting Lean Startup training seminars and workshops around the world. He the founder of a strategy, innovation and project management firm (Black Ant Consulting), and Co-Founder of VETCON, the premier national conference and community for military veteran entrepreneurs. Phil has founded or led as an executive four different technology startups focused on Renewable Energy, Biomaterials, Augmented Reality and Digital Marketing. He’s successfully raised and deployed investment capital and has been an advisor for numerous startups and growth companies and held corporate leadership roles in strategy and general management, leading multiple Employee Resource Groups.
He earned a Bachelors of Science from the United States Naval Academy and later earned an MBA in Finance and Strategy from the Chicago Booth School of Business, where he was one of the founders of the Black Alumni Association.