How Can Youth Make a Difference Through Social Investing? Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder of Fast Forward Fund [VIDEO]

Katrina of envisionGood.tv met up with Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Fund, in New York City following Clinton Global Initiative. In this video interview, Diana shares her passion for social entrepreneurship and tells us about her youth-led organization that lets youth take action and make a difference through smart investments. Diana also shares insights and advice with social entrepreneurs and people of all ages: “we hold in our hand a compass so we can write our own maps – so go write your own map, and follow your compass.” Thank you Diana!

The Full Transcript

KATRINA: So here I am with Diana of Fast Forward Fund. Diana you’ve been to Clinton Global Initiative this past week representing Fast Forward Fund. Can you tell us about your organization and your role?

DIANA: Well, I’m the founder and CEO of Fast Forward Fund which is building a pipeline of next generation social investors. So we’re very excited to be transforming philanthropy into social investment for the next generation of people who want to make a difference and can make a difference through their financial transactions. So we’re doing that through training programs, advisory services, peer-to-peer investor events and developing diversified, leveraged, aggregated social investment portfolios.

So we’re creating a social portfolio movement through our organization in partnership with pipeline partners, which is our deal sourcing model. So all of Fast Forward Fund investment opportunities are youth-led, addressing global issues and diversified across for-profit, non-profit and hybrid social ventures: all pre-vetted and nominated by our pipeline partners which include the leading incubators of social entrepreneurship.

So one of our pipeline partners, Clinton Global Initiative, also served as our launch partner when we began just six months ago, which I can hardly believe, in February 2009 in Austin, Texas at the Clinton Global Initiative University. We were very privileged to launch Fast Forward not only as an outstanding commitment of action, but featured in a press conference with the president. So this last week at CGI was an exciting opportunity for us to check in on our first six month milestone and get context of the larger CGI community.

KATRINA: Fantastic. And can you share:

Why are you targeted specifically at youth? What is it about youth that attracted you to form this organization?

DIANA: Well, I believe that investing in this next generation of leaders is the best investment we can make and we’re going to yield the best social return on our investment by focusing on emerging leaders, ages 18 to 29 years old, who are at that critical inflection point where they’re forging their financial identity, their adulthood as global citizens. And we want to ensure that at that juncture they are embedding philanthropy as a social investment into their financial literacy, identity, and experience.

So, from the get-go as young adults are approached to and taught and learn about how to earn hopefully, and how to consume and build debt, and then manage and pay off debt hopefully and invest and save, the missing piece is philanthropy and we want to offer that missing piece. Not only because we feel that young adults have a lot to offer and are an under tapped resource for short-term social capital but that they will become lifelong long-term investors if mobilized at this critical age in their development.

We also see unprecedented demand from this generation to be engaged, to make a difference, and to be strategic with their efforts. While they are frequently and increasingly told “be an entrepreneur and start something, become a volunteer and serve, or join the social sector as a profession” – and I’ve done all three so I can speak to how great those ways are to make a difference – but not all people are cut out to do those things. We want to provide another option for making a difference and believe that investment is action. So by focusing on young adults as investors now we’re countering that other response to “I want to make a difference, what do I do?” to “Well, come back in twenty years when you can write a big check.” No, we need all hands on deck right now, we don’t have twenty years to wait.

KATRINA: Fantastic.

So, what would be some examples of how you help young people make socially responsible investments?

Do you have a portfolio or is it in promoting fair trade products?

DIANA: So we have a portfolio that we are developing. We are early-stage start-ups so we are happy that we have selected by our young student portfolio directors, four pilot projects for our portfolio as a diversified investment opportunity. They include for-profit, not-for-profit, and hybrid social ventures nominated by Clinton Global Initiative, Global Engagement Summit, New York Young Women Social Entrepreneurs and Teach For America’s Social Entrepreneurship Institute. And that presents one way how we help young investors, emerging investors make good decisions with whatever their resources are.

We also piloted our training program last spring through partnership with Bard College’s Globalization & International Affairs program. We worked with 13 competitively selected students from 6 different countries, teaching best practices in social investment and culminating in an investor pitch session that was the first ever youth-to-youth, young adult-to-young adult investor pitch session in New York City and their selections for the portfolio pilot project. We’re now looking to adapt that training to take our program to scale and reach next-gen investors wherever they are to become investors.

KATRINA: Fantastic, wonderful. And Diana, off-camera you shared with me the source of this beautiful scarf that you’re wearing from Nepal and you mentioned that you had a transformational life experience when you bought this beautiful scarf.

DIANA: I did.

KATRINA: Can you tell us about that story?

DIANA: I’d like to think it was the scarf, but it might have had more to do with looking out at the foothills of the Himalayas. So my background is international human rights law and I had a wonderful peripatetic life living in different countries and cities and working with the UN and academia and international organizations – great places, Human Rights Watch, Penn … And married with two children. And I was with my husband, having left our two children behind, and I looked out at the foothills of the Himalayas and I thought of them back home in Brooklyn, and said to myself, “I want to leave the city, and I want to leave my wonderful job with Penn, which I loved, directing free expression, working with writers all over the world, and work for myself, and I want to have a third child. Just like that, looking out at the Himalayas! And a year later I was pregnant in the country, working for myself, writing my first book called “A Global Agenda”, which was looking at the UN’s performance over the past year and laying out priorities for the next year.
Fast forward to 2009 a couple years later and I’m now thinking a lot about how Fast Forward Fund advances the human agenda and moves beyond the global agenda of nation-state-countries in the UN to the human agenda in the global community and how each of us have a role to play.
KATRINA: Fantastic. And what can you share with young people out there who do want to make a difference? You’ve mentioned several ways that people can take action: volunteering, joining the professional sector, or through investing.

Are there any other insights that you can share with young students, young aspiring social entrepreneurs?

DIANA: Well, I think that it’s a fairly universal drive and impulse that you want to make a difference and it comes to this perfect storm moment in young adulthood where you still have that youthful vision and powerful energy and drive and yet you’re old enough that you have some skills and some capacity to actually do something about it. So, trust where you are and that you can make a difference right now.

I also would say that while we all want to make a difference, many people get overwhelmed and think, “but what can I do?” and the fact is that we all do make a differece – by design or by default – every single day. And most of us make a difference by default. So what I hope with Fast Forward Fund is that we are offering a vehicle for people to make a difference with design and intention. And that effective action requires three things, in my opinion: intention, integrity, and impact. And if you have those three elements: intention, integrity, and impact, your action will make a difference. And the fourth and sort of magic ingredient is inspiration.

So when you feel that spark, trust that, and go with that. And finally, I want to share a quote from one of the speakers from Nigeria who I heard this last week at Clinton Global Initiative. He said the most beautiful thing for a young adult wanting to make a difference or for anyone at any stage – in fact my 7-year-old son said “that’s beautiful, mommy”. And that’s that:

“We hold in our hand a compass so that we can write our own map. So write your own map. And look at your compass.”

KATRINA: Thank you so much Diana.

DIANA: My pleasure.

KATRINA: I will defintitely look at my own compass.

DIANA: Do, do! I look forward to seeing your map.

KATRINA: Thank you so much, and best wishes with Fast Forward Fund. It’s been a delight to talk with you.

DIANA: Thank you.

Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Fund:

About: Fast Forward Fund transforms young people in their twenties into social investors for life by mobilizing this generation’s financial resources, passion, energy, and drive to advance global sustainability & human dignity. Website: FastForwardFund.org