Voices from the Field: Tracy Gray, The 22 Fund
For our ‘Voices from the Field’ series, we speak to Tracy Gray, Founder of The 22 Fund, about her biggest influences, how equity and justice are in her DNA, and why she believes investment capital has the power to change lives.
How has applying an integrated climate and gender lens helped you achieve a greater impact on climate?
I’m an engineer and was a math major so this is just math - if I only focused on climate I’d have 1 area of impact. If I only focused on gender I’d again have 1 area of impact. Climate (1) + Gender (1) = 2. 2 >1 Q.E.D People make everything so complicated because I don’t really think they want to do this. It’s super simple.
How is climate and gender integration showing up in your fund?
Climate and gender IS our fund, along with BIPOC and creating clean, quality, jobs of the future. As my ½ French business partner, Monica Dodi, says - “c’est notre raison d’être”.
In your own words, what opportunities does investing at the climate-gender nexus provide to investors?
It creates high returns and creates high impact. Why would you want to choose between the two?
How did you get to where you are — what inspired the interest and commitment to climate and gender strategies?
Equity and justice are in my DNA - passed down from my mother and father and passed down from their ancestors from being African-American in the Deep South of Mississippi. They saw so much injustice. Then I saw similar inequities when I entered venture capital over 20 years ago. Now I’m also influenced by my partner Monica whose parents were immigrants who came over with nothing and became entrepreneurs and my other partner, Rajan Kasetty, who grew up poor in rural India and co-founded a tech company that went public and is still in business today with ~ 30K employees.
We can leverage investment capital to change lives, not just extract value from the planet, people, animals and minerals.
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