How to shift power in systems of finance.
Joy Anderson is a prominent national leader at the intersection of business and social change, whose insights and experience have helped shaped hundreds of ventures as well as the movements of impact investing and gender lens investing. She is founder and president of Criterion Institute, the leading think tank on using finance as a tool for social change, which demonstrates new possibilities through its groundbreaking research, innovative trainings, convenings and institutional engagement. In recognition of her leadership, Anderson was listed in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business.
Joy was co-founder of Good Capital with Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones in 2006. She formerly served as faculty on leading social innovation award programs, including Unreasonable Institute and Echoing Green, advising the next generation of leaders in impact investing. As chair of the board of directors of Village Capital and through involvement in Investor’s Circle, she was actively involved in shaping early stage social investments. And through her role in developing and leading Structure Lab© workshops she has helped over 300 organizations think through their legal and financial structures.
Joy has appeared on Bloomberg and CNN, and her thought leadership has been published in ImpactAlpha and Conscious Company, among other outlets. She is the author of “A Blueprint for Women’s Funds on Using Finance as a Tool for Social Change,” published in 2017 in partnership with Global Fund for Women and Ms. Foundation, following the 2015 publication of “Gender Lens Investing in Asia,” jointly released with USAID, and Criterion’s “The State of the Field of Gender Lens Investing.”
Joy’s intellectual interests draw on her research for her Ph.D. in American History from New York University. Her dissertation examined prison reform in the 1830s and how individuals and organizations in democracies claim expertise in order to shape public institutions.
She currently lives with her husband and daughter in a Connecticut apple orchard, and can be found in the fall pressing cider and boiling apple syrup.
