Jenn Kenning is a trailblazer, collaborator and change-maker who has quickly risen to become one of the most recognized voices in impact investing. Having begun her career in traditional wealth management, Jenn became increasingly troubled by the disparity between the wealth she managed during the day and the lack of access to capital and opportunity that affect so many.
Jenn recognized that many of our society’s biggest challenges – from climate change to homelessness to unequal access to quality healthcare to racial inequity – were enduring, and that creating lasting solutions that could close the gap between abundance and scarcity would take more than philanthropic dollars and good intentions.
Jenn asked herself the question – “How can I apply my investing acumen and my passion to create a more equitable, just world?” The answer was Align Impact.
In 2014, Jenn co-founded Align Impact, a woman-founded, owned, led, and majority-staffed, SEC-registered independent advisor and certified B Corporation with $2.2 billion of assets under advisement. Jenn created Align on the conviction that we need to align the wealth management process with our values to optimize our financial system, and to do this we needed to get all of the actors across the financial spectrum working together to improve outcomes.
A 2021 B Corp Best of the World company and the leading independent advisor working in impact investing today, Align specializes in co-creating and implementing impact investing strategies with a variety of clients including individuals, families, foundations, institutions, and advisors. Align is regarded for its expertise in creating customized impact portfolios that can deliver the same risk adjusted returns as best-in-class, globally diversified asset management strategies while enabling capital to flow to companies and funds working to address the world’s greatest challenges.
Her Game Changing Idea:
The world should work for all of humanity’s 7.8 billion people and the planet.
Sometimes the biggest ideas come from seeing the world clearly and simply. Jenn’s breakthrough was in seeing that the way we work towards this goal is by transforming how we invest, give, live, and raise our voices.
Jenn also realized that every steward of capital is at their own unique place in terms of how they want to deploy their capital to address our challenges, and they need investment solutions that marry their own return objectives with their values/intentions. So Align begins each engagement by posing the simple question “What is Your Why?” which is intended to lead the investor through an exploration of the issues they really want to move the needle on with their capital.
Align has developed a truly differentiated approach to wealth management that blends a highly sophisticated understanding of wealth management with deep insights into the drivers that create real systems change, all in the service of integrating impact and ESG investments into the broader overall wealth strategy for the client.
Now that’s systems change.
Why Her Work Matters:
We have no time to lose. As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear, it’s now or never if we want to avoid our planet’s overheating to the point of disaster. So many of our other challenges require a moonshot as well. By creating investment solutions that align investors’ financial goals with their values/intentions, Align Impact is building the pathways for institutional capital to crowd into impact investing and change the way our world operates – for the better. What will you move the needle on?