Chicago asset management firm Impact Engine has raised $31.5 million for a new private-equity fund, complementing its current venture capital investing.
The firm, which is owned and led by women, plans to invest 60 percent of its capital in private-equity funds focused on investing in middle-market companies “driving a positive impact,” the firm said in a statement. The other 40 percent will be directly invested in growth-stage middle-market companies with the same bent.
In pursuit of its goal, the new fund run by Impact Engine will focus on investments that “drive improvements in economic empowerment, education, environmental sustainability and health,” the statement said. Impact Engine is led by CEO Jessica Droste Yagan.
Managing Partner Priya Parrish will lead the new fund and hopes it will influence in an industry that has been slow to gravitate to investments that can be both profitable and positive for society, she said. “We can create this multiplier effect and we can change this system,” Parrish said in an interview. “I want to change the whole industry and in my own small way, I’m doing that.”
Parrish, 36, was previously the chief investment officer at Schwartz Capital Group, a Chicago-based investment arm for Chicago entrepreneur Ted Schwartz. She left that firm for Impact Engine in 2018, and has been working on creating the new fund ever since.
So far, the fund has deployed about 10 percent of its capital, making two direct investments: in Chicago-based Insight Regroup Holdings and in sustainable packaging company Footprint. In addition, it has placed money with Chicago private-equity firm Vistria Group, as well as Lumos Capital Group.
Parrish said she sees a “huge opportunity” for capitalizing on impact investments in the middle-market arena because other firms haven't targeted the area. “The PE community has been not as quick to understand and make impact investments,” she said.
Investors in the new fund include the Surdna Foundation in New York, and the Chicago-based Libra Foundation and William Harris Investors.
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October 19, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Chicago asset manager Impact Engine adds private equity - Crain's Chicago Business
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