Capital for Good

About Capital for Good

We find ourselves at a moment of unprecedented challenge – and opportunity. While the COVID-19 health, economic, and racial crises have laid bare and exacerbated any number of structural inequalities, and global climate change remains an existential – and very urgent – threat, they also compel us to reimagine how leaders across the private, nonprofit, and public sectors can champion social and environmental change in ways that truly advance shared prosperity and a sustainable future. Presented by the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change at Columbia Business School, Capital for Good provides a window into this reimagined future: a chance to hear from corporate and civic leaders about their visions, plans, commitments, and on-the ground efforts to build a more just, inclusive, and sustainable society. Through in depth and candid conversations, we will explore and unpack solutions to some of our most urgent challenges. Can business be a force for good? What is stakeholder capitalism? What is the role of capital markets and philanthropy along the pathways to inclusive growth? How do we encourage and scale grassroots and broad-based innovation? How can public private partnerships help bring all of our resources and ingenuity to bear? About the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change The institute educates leaders to use business knowledge, entrepreneurial skills, and management tools to address social and environmental challenges. About the Host Georgia Levenson Keohane is a seasoned executive in the private and nonprofit sectors at the intersection of capital markets, responsible investing and business, and philanthropy and public policy; an award winning author; and an adjunct professor of social enterprise at Columbia Business School.

Publisher

Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change

Category

business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Jan 2021

Latest episode

16 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

55 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Jul 2026

   Julie Samuels, Tech:NYC and New York's Innovation Economy

   In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Julie Samuels, the founder, president, and CEO of Tech:NYC, a network of technology leaders dedicated to fostering a dynamic, diverse, and creative New York. Launched in 2016, Tech:NYC operates at the intersection of business, government, academia, and philanthropy, convening leaders to strengthen New York's innovation economy through policy, partnerships, and programs. We begin with some of Samuels's formative experiences at the intersection of technology and policy: a college internship at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, work as an IP lawyer and at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and her leadership of Engine, the national nonprofit focused on technology entrepreneurship and advocacy. We also discuss the context and conditions that would inform the launch of Tech:NYC: the groundwork laid by the Bloomberg Administration to foster the growth of the city's tech sector, a critical mass of tech firms in the city, and industry leaders like Fred Wilson, Kevin Ryan and Tim Armstrong who recognized that better and coordinated leadership could help shape New York's continued growth as the country (and world's) number two tech hub behind Silicon Valley. Samuels is passionate about the technology-city nexus. "Tech culture and tech zeitgeist really lend themselves to an urbanist way of seeing the world," she says. "People in tech have a systems framework, and big urban centers like New York are all about systems — think about things like public transit. This makes for natural connection between tech and urban centers." She notes that New York has been particularly successful in tech because of the diversity of its other industries: companies can apply and test technologies developed on the West Coast to other markets, from financial services and health care to real estate, hospitality, media, fashion, or wherever New York is the world's "center of gravity." According to Samuels, these dynamics underpin the sector's extraordinary growth: today technology is the city's fastest growing industry with over $30 billion in annual venture capital flowing to 25,000 startups and accounting for 300,000 jobs (64 percent growth over the last decade, 41 percent of net job growth since 2019) and nine percent of the Gross City Product. Samuels underscores the cultural reasons this growth is durable: "Tech is a creative industry," she explains. "It benefits from the creative energy of a big city… density, networks of different kinds of people, cultural institutions, night life. When I lived in San Francisco, I would meet tech people who lived in SF. Here, we have New Yorkers who work in tech." Tech:NYC's work has evolved over the last ten years, while remaining true to its mission "to ensure New York City is the best place to start and grow a tech company." For Samuels, this mission is two-fold: create the conditions for the tech industry to thrive and integrate technology into the life of the city in ways that uplift everyone. "As tech radically changes how all of us live and work," Samuels says, "Tech:NYC exists to ensure transition is as smooth as possible." As a research and policy advocacy organization, Tech:NYC focused its early years primarily on technology policy and the role of the tech sector in the city and state's larger economy. Today, Samuels notes, while Tech:NYC still works closely on tech policy — things like data privacy, broadband, or public private partnerships like Empire AI, which will provide state-of-the-art power for New York's top University researchers to develop safe, equitable, and responsible AI — it is also focused more broadly on basic "livability" issues like housing, education, and public safety that allow people to live, work and raise families in New York. Tech:NYC's work also extends to programs like Decoded Futures, a capacity-building AI initiative that equips leaders from the social sector with the tools and skills to use AI to scale their impact, and the Grid Fellowship, which connects technology leaders with New York's public sector. And since its earliest days, Tech:NYC has undertaken many initiatives in K-12 and higher education and workforce development to invest in the participation of all New Yorkers in the tech economy. We discuss the challenges of the current moment, including the advent of AI and its attending economic and political complexities. Ultimately, Samuels says, "Progress is real; we're strivers, builders, creators. Let's lean into that, and make sure growth happens with intention and with the right guardrails. New York can lead on this." Mentioned in this episode: Tech:NYC (https://www.technyc.org) Built to Lead: New York's Momentum Toward Global Leadership in Applied AI (https://www.technyc.org/accenture), (Tech:NYC and Accenture, 2025)

2. 

   2 Jul 2026

   Antony Bugg-Levine: Investing in America

   In this Episode of Capital for Good we speak with Antony Bugg-Levine, a global leader in economic development, policy, and responsible business and investment. Twenty years ago, Bugg-Levine convened the meeting that coined the phrase "impact investing;" he would go on to co-found the Global Impact Investing Network, write a definitive book on the subject, lead the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and shape the ways capital flows to important economic, social and environmental challenges — giving more people access to fair finance, and opportunity. His new book, Investing in America, is as much a window into the inspiring work of "practical problem solvers" as it is a personal chronicle: in Bugg-Levine's words "one grateful immigrant's 250th birthday gift to the country that has given my family and me so much." In this wide ranging conversation, we discuss the formative experiences that animate Bugg-Levine's life-long commitment to expanding opportunity: his childhood in South Africa during apartheid and his later work in the country when the new Constitution afforded political rights that were challenging to achieve in the face of entrenched economic inequality; his experience in the US as an immigrant for whom the "American Dream" was both inspiration and reality — often because of access to "fair finance" like college loans and a 30-year mortgage; the recognition that these kinds of opportunities are increasingly elusive for many Americans. Bugg-Levine, who is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, explains how "Investing in America" has a long and foundational history, citing the example of Ben Franklin, who rewrote his will in 1789 to create revolving loan funds for workers in Boston and Philadelphia to start their own businesses. The youngest son in a family of seventeen siblings, Franklin worked for his brother in a print shop, and only through a loan arranged by a friend was able to start his own small business that would change the trajectory of his life and make possible his contributions to community and country. Franklin's "core insight," Bugg-Levine notes, is that "hard work, grit, and determination are necessary, but not sufficient;" they often need to be linked to access to fair finance to translate opportunity into progress. Investing in America shows Franklin's legacy is alive and relevant, covering 70 case studies across 42 states and a broad range of topics that most Americans agree are national priorities: among them worker well-being and good jobs; housing and homeownership; clean, affordable, and resilient energy; education; health care; technology; natural resource protection; and direct access to capital. We discuss several. While clear eyed about many of the challenges Americans face, Bugg-Levine is also optimistic that solutions to these challenges often enjoy bipartisan support. He also believes that all of us have a role to play and cites tangible ways — from banking locally to voting for candidates who advance these solutions — everyone can participate. "Investing in America is not a spectator sport," Bugg-Levine says. "We as a people can be part of the project of making the ideas of the American Dream a reality for everyone." Mentioned in this episode: Investing in America (http://www.investinginamerica.us), (Antony Bugg-Levine, 2026)

3. 

   18 Jun 2026

   New York Media Matters – and Leaders: Christy Tanner '99 and Carroll Bogert

   In this episode of Capital for Good, we speak with two extraordinary media leaders — Christy Tanner '99, the president and CEO of New York Public Radio, an iconic and 100-year-old center for local and global media, and Carroll Bogert, the CEO of The City Reporter, the independent newsroom founded in 2019 to cover breaking news, investigative, and service journalism in New York City. In this wide-ranging conversation, we hear from these industry veterans about their early callings as reporters, their respective careers as pioneers — one using journalism to hold power to account, one forging new business models in the face of technological transformation — and their thoughts about the challenges, and opportunities, of the current moment in New York and around the world. We start with Tanner and Bogert's gravitational pulls to journalism and the formative experiences as reporters that would shape their careers in media. Tanner explains how as a young girl, inspired by the likes of Nancy Drew and Nellie Bly, the ability to "ask questions, investigate things, find out what's going on," and the creative process of writing "captured my imagination." Her first jobs at the AP and in local newsrooms in South Carolina and Tennessee taught her how investigative reporting could have tangible impact, prompting changes in government policies. For Bogert, a member of the generation of idealists who grew up on "Woodward and Bernstein and All the President's Men," journalism was "something noble… and world changing:" a way to "uncover abuse at the top and change history." As a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, she would chronicle the Tiananmen Square crackdown and the fall of the Soviet Union. As the industry evolved, so too did their respective paths. Bogert would go on to leadership roles at Human Rights Watch and as the founding president of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice in the United States. "The though line," she says, is that "challenging the abuse of power is the essential role of journalism. Power requires constant vigilance because it will trend towards abuse if it's not watched." Tanner, whose experiences included hosting a kind of proto-podcast in the mid-1990s, saw early on that "the internet was going to change media forever." Back in New York, she had a "front row seat to the invention of streaming as we know it" — newspapers, magazines, television, audio — and would become a leader in the digital transformation of legacy media companies like The Washington Post, Reed Elsevier, TV Guide, and CBS. While both new in their current seats, Tanner and Bogert bring their expertise as seasoned industry leaders — and New Yorkers – to the roles. Tanner notes that while NYPR has grown into a multiplatform organization with radio (WNYC, WQXR), digital news, and podcasts with significant national and global reach, its local resonance with New Yorkers is remarkably strong. Bogert explains that at "this historical moment," when investigative newsrooms are disappearing, "local media is where it's at." She believes that the independence of nonprofit media organizations gives them "a particularly special role" to hold political leaders accountable and to rebuild trust in media. While acknowledging any number of challenges — in the industry, in a fraught political environment — Tanner and Bogert are optimistic: about the opportunities for organizations like theirs to collaborate, to "share best practices," to develop more sustainable business models, and to cultivate greater understanding of the need of philanthropy to support media as a critical pillar of our civic infrastructure. Mentioned in this episode: New York Public Radio (https://nypublicradio.org/) The City Reporter (https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/)

Who has been a guest on Capital for Good

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Emma Bloomberg
• Kevin Ryan
• Maria Teresa Kumar
• Greg Shell
• Anna-Lisa Miller

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 28 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

25

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

77

Contact Capital for Good

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.