The Criterion Institute Podcast
How do we disrupt the entrenched power dynamics in finance to advance a more equitable future? Join us for the Criterion Institute Podcast as Joy Anderson, a global thought leader in business and social change, leads us through a series of discussions, interviews, frameworks, rants, and re-frames that will help you better understand how to use finance as a tool for transformative systems change. Learn more by visiting us at www.criterioninstitute.org.
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#91: Beyond the Shiny Product: Designing Capital for Local Markets
<p>In this episode, Joy challenges the financial sector’s fixation on the next “shiny” financial product. Drawing on Criterion Institute’s experience designing investment vehicles across markets, she argues that the problem is often not a lack of financial innovation but a mismatch between capital structures and the markets they are intended to serve. From instruments and fund domiciles to risk assessments and investor requirements, Joy asks what changes when we design investment processes and structures around local realities rather than imported expectations. How might we shift from asking whether communities are investment-ready to whether capital itself is context-appropriate?</p><p>Joy...
#90: RedHat Impact: Fix the Capital, Not the Company, in Practice
<p>What does “fix the capital, not the company” look like in practice? In this episode, Joy Anderson sits down with Cameron Neil, David Carbines, and Paul Howorth, the three founders of Red Hat Impact, to look back on ten years of experimenting with ways to help impact enterprises access capital without giving up unnecessary ownership or control. Their story begins small, with relationships, their own money, and a willingness to learn by doing, and grows into experiments with non-dilutive debt, trade finance, crowdlending and investor syndication.</p><p>The conversation explores why the innovative finance needs may not always be a...
#89: What the Task List Misses: Infrastructure, Care, and the Practice of Puttering
<p>In this episode, Joy Anderson explores puttering as a practice of grace, strategy, and organizational maintenance, arguing that some of the most important work in systems change happens outside formal plans, task lists, and deliverables.</p><p></p><p>Many organizations prize productivity, efficiency, and execution. But what happens when the plan itself becomes too authoritative? Drawing from her own practice of reserving Fridays for what she calls "puttering," Joy reflects on the value of creating space to notice, repair, reconnect, reorganize, and follow the next natural thing rather than the next scheduled task. She distinguishes puttering from procrastination...
#88: The Politics of Time in Investing: Exit Horizons, Runways, and the Futures We Finance
<p>When investors evaluate opportunities, conversations usually focus on money: risk, return, liquidity, valuation, and performance. But underneath every financial decision sits another variable that is often treated as technical rather than political: time. In this episode, Joy Anderson explores how time appears throughout investing, from discount rates and exit horizons to repayment schedules, liquidity, and fund structures. These choices may seem neutral, but they determine who gets time to build, adapt, and grow, and who is forced to move at someone else's pace.</p><p> </p><p>Drawing on Criterion's work inside investment structures and financial systems, Joy examines...
#87: Thank You for Naming It: The Early Days of Gender Lens Investing
<p>In this episode, Joy Anderson sits down with longtime collaborator Jackie VanderBrug to revisit the origins of gender lens investing and the work of building a field before most people believed it existed. Drawing on their years together at Criterion Institute, they reflect on the early efforts to identify, map, and connect investors, researchers, philanthropists, and practitioners who were already incorporating gender into financial decision-making but lacked a shared language or framework.</p><p> </p><p>The conversation explores the importance of naming, the challenges of making gender visible within emerging impact investing conversations, and the tension between simplicity...
#86: A Tale of Two NAPs: National Action Plans and Much-Needed Naps
<p>For the past several months, Criterion Institute has been wrestling with a deceptively simple question: how do you finance a National Action Plan (NAP) to end gender-based violence? Most NAPs contain detailed commitments, timelines, settings, and responsibilities, yet many remain chronically underfunded. In this episode, Joy takes listeners inside Criterion's thinking process as the team tried to translate these plans into pathways for finance. Along the way, they discovered that many of the frameworks they relied on for years were excellent at describing landscapes and systems, but less useful when reading a plan line-by-line and asking where money could...
#85: Changing Your Frame Not Your Mind: Ensuring Your Actions Follow What You See
<p>A colleague recently asked Joy Anderson where she'd changed her mind—the kind of question you ask to find out whether someone is actually learning, or just defending old positions with better language. Her honest answer surprised her, and it probably won't be the one you're expecting. Because over 25 years, the changes that mattered most weren't reversals at all. They were quieter than that, harder to name, and they rearranged how she works, what she'll own, and where she draws the line. </p><p>Next, Joy walks through a handful of moments where nothing about the facts changed—same room...
#84: Narratives, Local, and the Stories That Shape Finance
<p>What stories shape what we believe is possible in finance? In this episode, Joy Anderson sits down with Joanna Levitt Cea, Founder and Principal of Valiente Capital Design and co-lead of the Beloved Economies Collaborative for Narrative Infrastructure, to explore the role of narratives in creating economic and systems change. Together, they unpack the difference between stories, communications strategies, and narratives themselves, examining how underlying cultural assumptions influence the ways we understand ownership, investment, opportunity, and power. The conversation explores why narrative change is not simply about finding the right message, but about collective action, organizing, and reshaping the...
#83: Trust as Infrastructure: Trade Lenda and the Power of Informal Markets
<p>What happens when finance starts with trust instead of control? In this conversation, Joy Anderson and Adeshina Adewumi explore how Trade Lenda has built financial infrastructure around the realities of informal markets across Nigeria. Rather than treating informality as a problem to be fixed, Trade Lenda recognizes existing systems of trust, accountability, and economic participation and designs financial products that work within them. The discussion traces the full supply chain, from farmers and aggregators to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, and examines why supporting the entire value chain creates stronger, more resilient markets.</p><p>The conversation also explores how...
#82: How Staying in Paradox Can Sustain Hope and Drive Systemic Change
<p>In this episode, Joy Anderson responds to some listener questions, naming six paradoxes she encounters when working to shift financial systems toward gender justice and social change. Joy frames paradox as a discipline: holding two seemingly incompatible truths at once such as movement and field-building, urgency and patience, collaboration and competition and resisting the urge to resolve them prematurely.</p><p>Across themes ranging from pluralism in knowledge to the risks of public experimentation, Joy explores how finance simultaneously enables and constrains transformation. She emphasizes that these tensions are signals rather than problems, helping us see where systems are...
