Key Figures in Impact Investing
The pioneers, definers, and institution builders who turned scattered experiments into a global field — and where each of them stands in 2026.
The Pioneers
Before the term existed: microfinance, social business, and the social entrepreneur.
Impact investing was not invented by any single person. Its practical foundations were laid decades before the term was coined in 2007, by two figures working from opposite directions: Muhammad Yunus proved that finance could serve the very poor, while Bill Drayton built the first global system for finding and backing social entrepreneurs.
Those Who Defined the Field
The people who gave the field its name, its vocabulary, and its infrastructure.
Between roughly 2000 and 2015, five people supplied the field's core vocabulary — blended value, patient capital, and the term impact investing itself — along with its first book, its global member network, and its policy agenda.
The Institution Builders
Certification, venture philanthropy, Asian market infrastructure, and a foundation's billion-dollar pivot.
A field needs more than ideas. These figures built the certification system for companies, the template for venture philanthropy at billionaire scale, the market infrastructure for Asia and gender-lens finance, and the precedent of turning a major foundation's endowment toward mission.
The years 2025–2026 marked a generational turn: Kassoy's death, Walker's departure from Ford, Yunus's handover of power, and Emerson's return to advisory work saw the founding generation step back, as successors such as Amit Bouri and Heather Gerken carried the institutions into their next phase.