LGT Venture Philanthropy celebrates the 10th anniversary of the LGT Impact Fellowship and the arrival of the 2019 cohort
We are excited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the LGT Impact Fellowship program with you!
Over the coming weeks, we will share insights, testimonials, and main learnings of our fellowship program. One highlight is to welcome this year's new cohort of fellows Meet the 2019 LGT Impact Fellowship cohort here.
As part of LGT Venture Philanthropy’s holistic investment support to its portfolio organizations, the fellowship program was launched in 2009 to address a particular need in our portfolio organizations – the need for relevant business expertise and experience to strengthen the internal organizational capabilities. The program adds value to our portfolio organizations by connecting them with outstanding talent. Also, the fellowship offers motivated professionals an exceptional opportunity to contribute with their skills to generate societal impact. Since its inception in 2009, the program has selected more than 150 fellows to work full-time for one year with our portfolio organizations to build organizational capacity. Funding for the program comes from the foundation and our clients, who see fellows as crucial catalysts in our portfolio organizations. Our fellows are international, coming from over 30 nationalities, and bring on average six years of primarily private-sector work experience when they join the program.
Over the last ten years, the fellowship continuously demonstrated its value-add to our work and became an essential pillar of our investment support to our portfolio. It has proven successful with many fellows remaining in critical roles within the social impact space and our partners continuing to place LGT Impact Fellows within their organization. Also, 30% of fellows have stayed on with our portfolio and our organization – a testament to the value-add they bring.
I want to thank all fellows, alumni, portfolio organizations, supporters, and ambassadors. It is through the involvement of each one of them that our fellowship program has matured into an industry-wide renowned program. It is also through the contribution of our fellows that portfolio organizations have grown their impact with 5.7 million people reached in 2018.
The 10th anniversary of the fellowship program overlaps with another exciting development at LGT. When we started with LGT Venture Philanthropy in 2007, we invested in scalable solutions that have a positive social and environmental impact. The positive development of our investments in high-impact, for-profit organizations, and the growing client interest in the new impact investing investment strategy led us to launch LGT Lightstone in August 2019. LGT Lightstone is an impact investment initiative to build a multi-billion dollar global direct investing platform focused on scalable businesses that provide access to improved livelihoods, information, and services for underserved consumers around the world or promote sustainable resource utilization.
At LGT Venture Philanthropy, we seek to improve the quality of life of disadvantaged people, contribute to healthy ecosystems, and build resilient, inclusive, and prosperous communities. We deploy philanthropic growth capital to organizations with effective, innovative, and scalable solutions to social and environmental challenges, thus directly contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. We primarily support organizations in emerging markets, focusing on high-impact sectors, including education, health, and environment with a strong community focus.
Given the increasing global challenges we face, we have our work cut out for us. We need to create more impact. Looking ahead, we are excited to expand the LGT Impact Fellowship and to continue providing exciting opportunities to motivated and driven professionals and supporting portfolio organizations of LGT Lightstone and Venture Philanthropy. On a final note, we wish our 2019 LGT Impact Fellowship cohort great success for their unique experiences across the globe.
Please follow us over the next couple of months to learn more about the LGT Impact Fellowship.
With kind regards
Oliver Karius