Impact CEE Empowering Impact Investments

Blog by Elemér Eszter, President of Impact CEE Whenever I read articles like Harvard Business School’s recent piece, Why ESG’s Past Returns May Not Predict Its Future, I find myself returning—mentally, and thankfully also physically—to our regular Monday meetings at Impact Ventures. The HBS article highlights an important and uncomfortable finding. Between 2012 and 2023, institutional investors and asset managers shifted roughly $3 trillion toward ESG-oriented investments. ESG-tilted funds...

Nikolaus Hutter, partner at Relevant based in Vienna, joins Field Notes to talk about caliber over scale. He makes the case for character and capability as the real measure of success, why raising modest capital in underserved markets can be a bigger achievement than raising millions where cash is easy to find, and why friction and resistance are what actually drive growth. Listen to the Podcast HERE

BLOG Series by Erzsébet Ábrám Caring is costly, but so is waiting. This is my journey of opting out of “impact later.” Ten months ago, I came to Columbia looking for answers. What I found instead was a new way of questioning – understanding how systems are built, who shapes them, and where my own agency fits within them. Graduation made these questions louder. Nothing felt certain anymore: my identity, my path, my future. For the first time, I didn’t know what the next step should be. All...