Boosting economic mobility of low-income Americans through social capital investments

A conversation with Aaron Seybert, managing director, Social Investment Practice, Kresge Foundation

December 21, 2021

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In this episode of Work in Progress, recorded at the Milken Institute Global Conference, I sit down with Aaron Seybert, Managing Director of the Social Investment Practice at the Kresge Foundation.

Kresge’s overall mission is to boost the economic mobility of low-income Americans and has seven program teams dedicated to improving “the quality of life in America’s cities by addressing barriers to capital.” Seybert’s Social Investment Practice works across all the Kresge programs to identify opportunities to provide communities and their local organizations with access to that capital.

Those investments are varied and are tailored to the community and its specific needs. They could include venture capital investments, direct investments in technology companies, real estate investments, and social impact bonds used to scale up social enterprises or human service interventions.

“What we specialize in is highly, highly impactful investing that disproportionately benefits low-income people of color,” he explains. Detroit is an example of a city where Kresge’s investments have made a difference.

“Detroit went through the largest municipal bankruptcy in the country’s history. We helped fund a lot of emergency needs, police, fire, sewer, sanitation, that kind of very basic public infrastructure at the time that the city was not able to provide those kind of services to residents. We’ve seen Detroit come out of the bankruptcy as a much stronger city and the resurgence of the public sector.”

Seybert explains that Kresge also provided capital to revitalize and develop downtown public spaces to make the city accessible to its residents and says the organization is now pushing out into other neighborhoods. “We’re all about building the capacity of residents-led organizations to (let them) determine their own destiny. We wrap capital tools around those organizations so that they can scale up their work.”

In the podcast, Seybert and I talk about some of the projects and how they are helping improve residents’ lives in Detroit and other cities they serve, including Memphis, New Orleans, and Fresno, California.

And the conversation also turns personal. I ask Seybert what lead him the Kresge Foundation after working at JPMorgan Chase for many years. He calls it a happy accident, one that gives him a sense of alignment between his values and the work he gets to do.

“While I admire the people in finance who move lots of money, I need that feeling of alignment. The world is not good enough for my kids right now, so, I’ve got to do something about that. And it’s definitely not good enough for the people I’m trying to serve. So, it’s a little bit of selfish reward that I get that feedback loop, but also I just can’t fathom doing anything else. It’s the best work in the world.”

You can listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 212: Aaron Seybert, Managing Director, Social Investment Practice, Kresge Foundation
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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Dana Beth Ardi

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Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.