Inevitable Ep 5: Sarah Kearney, Founder & Executive Director of Prime Coalition
In this episode, I interview Sarah Kearney, founder and executive director of Prime Coalition. Sarah founded Prime Coalition in 2014 to build a tribe of courageous philanthropists that believe market-driven technology innovation and deployment is critical to our fight against climate change. Prime's approach is based on her prior experience with the Chesonis Family Foundation, graduate research at MIT, and her personal drive to ensure that our children won't have to confront increased geopolitical conflict over dwindling global resources. She believes the world needs a robust marketplace of catalytic capital investment intermediaries like Prime and that she will spend her whole career trying to help build it.
We cover a number of topics, including an overview of PRIME and how the model works, why it matters for philanthropists and for the breakthrough innovation that is needed to help address climate change, and where else this model can apply beyond climate change over time. Sarah was a terrific guest, in that she is quite knowledgable, mission driven, and as high energy as they come. She’s also patient with all of my beginner questions, as “catalytic capital” was not a topic that I was very familiar with.
I hope you enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and provide suggestions for future guests or topics you'd like to see covered on the show.
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Links discussed in this episode:
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Prime Coalition: https://primecoalition.org/
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The Fink Family Foundation: http://www.thefinkfamilyfoundation.org/about-us.html
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Program Related Investments: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/private-foundations/program-related-investments
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Quidnet Energy: http://fortune.com/2015/06/16/philanthropists-back-energy-startups/
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Breakthrough Energy Ventures: http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/
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Evok Innovations: https://www.evokinnovations.com/
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Donor Advised Funds: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/donor-advised-funds
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Impact Assets & Tim Freundlich: https://www.impactassets.org/about_us/team/timothy-freundlich
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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant