Christopher Brookfield, founder of Elevar Equity, discusses designing resilient systems for edge communities in Peru, India, and Mexico. He argues that human empowerment is the ultimate business model, drawing from decades of impact investing and field work in some of the world's poorest regions.
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And I'm thrilled to be here today with Chris Brookfield. How are you, Chris?
I'm doing great. Nice to see you this morning.
Yeah, it's great to see you and.
Thank you so much for being part of this. So I'm gonna share a bit of your bio and then we'll jump right into the convers conversation.
Okay, let's do it.
All right, so Christopher Brookfield designs networks, companies and relationships for the public good and writes about edge communities that have welcomed him. Specifically, he develops essential services in partnership with edge communities. And we'll define what that means in our conversation in a moment. Specifically, he develops essential services in partnership with edge communities. Places such as the Peruvian Highlands, rural India and Central Mexico with limited access to healthy food, housing or finance. He is a pioneering impact investor and founder of Elevar Equity, which demonstrated that services designed for the poor can also be tremendous investments and in the process, help define the potential of impact investing. He is a co founder of Salmon Nation, where he is working to weave a regenerative fabric for west coast communities in North America. Chris is convinced that human empowerment is the ultimate business model. He's the author of Field Notes from System Change and lives with his wife and daughter in Vancouver, British Columbia. Okay, so again, welcome. Thank you for being here.
Thank you, Fleet.
To start off with just kind of a personal question of what drew you to the work that you've ended up doing. The career trajectory which has been, you've been an investor and a social entrepreneur and. And really a pioneer in impact investing. You were very involved in the micro lending movement in India, and I know you spent quite a few years living in India. So maybe just tell us a little bit about that journey, how you ended up going in that direction.
My medium is largely.
Witnessing and observing human relationships with as much of an empathetic lens as possible. And I learned how to do that growing up in a pretty turbulent family when I was young. So the skills of being able to watch and think and listen and to anticipate.
Were really important skills for me to learn.
The most sort of pointed place of departure for me was I.
I dropped out of college for a year. And one of the things when I did, when I was taking that time off was.
Joined a program called Midnight.
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