VANCOUVER— The new chief investment officer for B.C.’s $500-million strategic investment fund is eager to prove that startups that want to make a positive environmental, economic or social impact can also generate a financial return for investors.

“I think there’s this notion that folks subscribe to that there has to be a trade-off,” Leah Nguyen told The Logic last week in her first media interview since starting as the InBC Investment Corporation’s CIO. “I think that’s part of the myth that we need to dispel for folks, is that doing good does not equate to not making money.”

The government of British Columbia created InBC, an independent $500-million strategic investment fund, in September 2020 to help local companies scale up—a frequently cited issue with the province’s innovation economy—while also generating financial, environmental, economic and social returns for the population. The organization calls it a triple-bottom-line approach, focusing on profit, planet and people. For the planet, it wants to help transition to a low-carbon economy. For people, its focuses include diversity, job creation and Indigenous reconciliation.

InBC hired Nguyen from Telus, where she was the investment director for the Telus Pollinator Fund for Good, a $100-million impact fund that is just over a year old. She said it was a tough decision to leave the Telus fund, especially so early in its lifespan, but she was drawn to the opportunity of once again building something from the ground up.

She also admired InBC’s leadership—namely Jill Earthy, who joined as CEO in mid-December—and the fund’s triple-bottom-line approach. “It’s not a granting body or philanthropic piece, and so it is meant to drive financial returns,” she said of the financial-return prong. While the Telus fund may not have used the same triple-bottom-line language, Nguyen said its mantra was similar. “The fact that I can do it again and do it at [a] bigger scale and drive impact for British Columbians … really drew me to the mission.”

Days into the new job, her first priority is to finalize an investment-policy statement (IPS), which will outline how the fund plans to deploy capital, including how it will measure impact. “I would say the IPS is definitely the overarching piece,” she said. Earthy started working on it prior to Nguyen’s arrival, and a draft exists. It took into account “some sounding sessions” conducted with the community and board. Now, Nguyen is going through the assumptions—such as the fund’s lifespan—and validating them. She expects InBC will make its approach public by the end of June. One thing is clear, though. InBC intends to be “additive capital,” Nguyen said, rather than the sole backer of a company or fund.

Nguyen is also hiring the first members of her investment team. InBC recently closed applications for two postings: a principal and an associate. The positions received over 80 and 250 applications, respectively—an “overwhelming response,” she said.

She’s also focused on building out a pipeline of possible investments—a process made easier by an influx of inbound interest since InBC announced her appointment in late February. “There is a long queue of folks that want to speak with us and learn more about what we’re doing and see if we’re a fit to be an investor.”

Companies and investment funds have been in touch, and Nguyen hasn’t ruled out investing in other funds. The size of her team means InBC won’t be able to invest in every opportunity in the province itself. Investing in funds, she explained, can help it scale and bring more private capital into the space. If InBC becomes part of a fund’s base, “we can help to potentially attract other funders to the table with them, as well.”

The IPS, she said, will hopefully help those seeking investment better understand what the fund is looking for, both in terms of an expected financial return and the minimum amount of impact from each investment. Measuring good is more complicated than financial returns, but Nguyen said learning how to do that was one of her biggest lessons from her time with the Pollinator fund. Often “it’s a case-by-case basis,” she said. In the due-diligence phase, she hones in on a company’s business model, the impact it’s trying to make and how the two align. She incorporates existing accepted practices to see if companies “have the receipts to prove” their claims of doing good.

One example is the Impact Management Project’s five dimensions of impact, which measure whether the change would happen regardless and the scale, depth and duration. The IMP worked with partners, including KPMG, PwC, B Lab and branches of the United Nations, to come to an agreement on how to measure and report social and environmental impact.

With that in mind, Nguyen’s set an ambitious timeline for placing the fund’s first bets: “By fall, I think we’ll have investments.”