The Finish Line Podcast Rachel McDonough and Wes Lyons on How Investors are Taking Down Human Trafficking (Ep. 121)
Rachel McDonough, an experienced financial advisor, was raised in a missionary family in Kenya. At a young age, Rachel had a deeply impactful encounter with poverty in Africa which led her into an unexpected calling as a financial advisor. Today, Rachel has a particular interest in impact investing and strives to help others align their hearts and finances in taking risks for Kingdom impact.
Wes Lyons, General Partner at Eagle Venture Fund, was also raised in a missionary home and felt called into financial advising. While leading a military deployment, Wes saw firsthand the evils of human trafficking and the horrific treatment of children. He now leads the Eagle Freedom Fund, a venture capital fund dedicated to investing in companies that combat human trafficking and slavery through scalable business models. This groundbreaking model is shaking up the human trafficking global network by exposing the trafficking supply chain and placing heavy market pressure on the trafficking ecosystem.
Major Topics Include:
- Connecting financial planning with the work of the Kingdom
- The purpose of stewardship
- Blurring the lines between giving and investing with a head-and-heart approach
- Break the engines of the human trafficking machine through economic pressure
- Having both great impact and a great financial return
- An achievable goal to end human trafficking
- Viewing risk and return as a faithful steward
- Rachel: “I started to realize that worship and investing could go hand-in-hand.”
- Wes: “I think sometimes when we’re living in the American Church, the evil and the darkness can feel very far away, and I just got smacked in the face with it. So that started informing how we do our impact investing.”
- Rachel: “I did nothing to deserve the position I was born into.”
- Rachel: “There is both an opportunity and a responsibility to be a Christ follower who is stewarding resources that we know rightfully belong to the King, and to do it in a way that aligns with His values, and His heart is for the poor.”
- Rachel: “Human trafficking is too big of a problem to solve without business. Business needs to be part of the solution for it.”
- Rachel: “God created us as holistic beings with a head and a heart. We get better outcomes in our giving and our investing when we take a head-and-heart approach to both.”
- Wes: “Our dream is that within 10 years we would have our first day in anybody’s lifetime when we didn’t lose the fight. And that would be the day when human trafficking started to go down.”
- Rachel: “I’m going to choose to willingly embrace risk for the sake of love and for the sake of sons, daughters, and image bearers set free.”
- Wes: “Christians should be the ones who are ready to take risks on behalf of the vulnerable.”
- Eagle Venture Fund
- Money, Possessions, and Eternity (see our interview with author Randy Alcorn)
- International Justice Mission (IJM)
- Brightlight
- Inspire Insight
- Talanton
- Sound of Freedom Movie (Angel Studios)
- Wealth Squared
- Donor Advised Fund: The Freedom & Justice Impact Fund
- The Finish Line Community Facebook Group
- The Finish Line Community LinkedIn Group
Joel 3:10 | I Am A Warrior
Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.”
Galatians 6:9 | Don’t Give Up
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
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