By Silvia Díaz de Rada
MBA Candidate, Class of 2027
At the end of last month, more than 2,000 social investors, entrepreneurs, and changemakers gathered in San Francisco for SOCAP – the largest impact investing conference in the country. Over 100 sessions explored how capital can be used more boldly and collaboratively to address global challenges. This year’s theme: The Future Is Collaborative: Taking Impact Mainstream, set the tone for conversations about shifting from isolated initiatives to shared infrastructure, collective risk- taking, and system-level change.
At the event, I focused my time on one of the five core tracks: Catalytic Capital. This track explored how philanthropy, family offices, and angel investors can deploy flexible, risk-tolerant capital while simultaneously becoming advocates of social ventures to unlock solutions that traditional investors still deem too uncertain or unproven. As a student enrolled in the Berkeley Haas’s new AI for Business graduate certificate, I was also drawn to the AI-focused sessions, where discussions centered on AI’s potential in education and workforce innovation, its role in climate solutions, and the ethical challenges around transparency, bias, governance, and equitable access.
Inside the Sessions: Catalytic Capital and Human-Centered AI
I had the opportunity to attend From Capital to Collaboration: A Gathering for Catalytic Investors, co-hosted by Toniic and the Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3) – a partnership launched by the MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Omidyar Network. The session brought together asset owners, managers, and ecosystem builders to examine the persistent financing gaps preventing early-stage impact ventures from getting the funding they need to scale. What struck me most was the shared acknowledgment that catalytic capital is not only about writing the first check – it’s a manifesto; it’s about advocating for the opportunity and staying at the table long enough to de-risk markets for others to follow.
In Be a Funding Magnet: How Mission-Aligned Partners Catalyze Mainstream Investment, speakers discussed an all-too-common reality for impact founders: early-stage solutions are often dismissed as “too risky” or “not yet investable.” This workshop brought to life the discussion about the role of catalytic funders willing to take the first leap – those who proactively materialize impact by helping prove traction, refine business models, and ultimately open doors to institutional capital.
On the second day, I joined sessions exploring the intersection of AI and impact – a recurring and thought-provoking theme. The AI Generation: A High-Impact Opportunity for Investors highlighted how emerging technologies can expand access to education, reskilling, and career navigation for Gen Z. Meanwhile, The AI Paradox: Innovation or Ethical Dilemma? split participants into small circles to debate how AI can accelerate climate solutions without reinforcing bias or exclusion. These conversations made clear that the real question is not if AI will reshape impact, but how we can ensure it does so responsibly — through human-centered design, transparency, and clear accountability.
Beyond the formal sessions, some of the most meaningful moments happened in hallway conversations — with entrepreneurs building impact-focused technologies, innovators rethinking how capital moves, and investors from around the world working across sectors from climate to education and beyond. I was also honored to be invited to join Cartier Women’s Initiative’s Founder Support Lab, a global session supporting women leading mission-driven ventures.
My Takeaways: What the Future of Impact Will Demand
- Catalytic funding can be leveraged to test new business models, reach underserved communities, and crowd in commercial capital. Its power lies in being deployed strategically: advocating and unlocking promising, high-impact solutions that require risk tolerance, community alignment, and a willingness to finance what traditional markets won’t.
- AI offers enormous potential for impact, but it also brings new risks. To ensure it serves communities, AI must be human-centered by design, built with transparency, and accompanied by sound accountability and governance schemes. Ethical and fairness- focused models, as well as emerging small language models, are early signals of where responsible AI could head. However, successful deployment requires funders, innovators, and policymakers to align on expectations and collaborate.
- Impact measurement is becoming a cornerstone of trust. Rather than a reporting burden, it should be leveraged as a shared language between entrepreneurs and investors – helping clarify purpose, prove traction in early stages, and reduce uncertainty through openness and alignment.
- Collaboration is not optional – it’s essential. True systemic change will not happen through isolated efforts. SOCAP was a powerful reminder that collaboration is, more than ever, a responsibility across sectors, geographies, and types of capital.
SOCAP was both a source of hope and a call to action. It reaffirmed the urgency for all actors in the impact ecosystem to deploy capital responsibly, align it with the future we want to shape, and work together more deliberately across sectors and stakeholders. Personally, being surrounded by people who aren’t just reimagining how capital can work—but are actively rebuilding it—was profoundly inspiring and energizing. I return to Berkeley with fresh ideas, new partnerships, and a stronger resolve to make impact not the exception, but the norm. Yet for this to happen, we must challenge persistent myths—such as the belief that impact is not compatible with market-level financial returns or that it cannot be measured in rigorous and decision-driven ways.