Draft:Tracy Pun Palandjian
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Tracy Pun Palandjian currently serves as CEO of the national non-profit organization, Social Finance , which she co-founded in 2011 with Sir Ronald Cohen and David Blood.
The organization pioneered the Social Impact Bond and builds other outcomes-based funding models, many focused on enhancing opportunity through training and education. It develops results-oriented partnerships across the public, private, and non-profit sectors, using the principles of finance and data-driven approaches, with the goal of improving lives at scale.
Social Finance is also a registered investment advisor that manages so-called impact investments aimed at generating both financial return for investor-donors, and impact for people and communities. Social Finance has mobilized more than $400 million in new investments to deliver measurable outcomes in workforce and economic mobility, health, and housing.
In 2024 the organization had five offices in the US and a staff of 130.
Prior to founding Social Finance Palandjian spent more than a decade at the Parthenon Group where she established and led its nonprofit practice group. Earlier in her career she held positions at Wellington Management Company and McKinsey & Company.
Early Life and Education
Palandjian was born and raised in a traditional family in Hong Kong. Her father was an entrepreneur and businessman. Fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, Palandjian came to the US when she was 15 to attend Milton Academy. From there she attended Harvard College, graduating with a B.A. in economics in 1993. When she was a freshman in college her father passed away from a heart attack, a tragedy that led to her taking “responsibility for her two younger brothers, shepherding them into boarding school and monitoring their development through daily calls and weekend visits.” Her two younger brothers, who also attended school and worked in the United States, now reside in Hong Kong as does their mother.
After working at consulting firm McKinsey, she attended Harvard Business School from which she received an MBA, graduating as a “Baker Scholar” in 1997.
Professional Career
Palandjian held positions at McKinsey & Company and Wellington Management Company early in her career. She then spent 11 years at the Parthenon Group, where she established and led Parthenon’s non-profit practice as a Managing Director. The firm was later acquired by EY.
Impact Investing
The Rockefeller Foundation coined the term “impact investing” in 2008. Impact investments are investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. The movement is inspired by the perspective that philanthropic donations alone do not provide funding enough to address mounting societal and environmental challenges.
Palandjian is co-author of “Investing for Impact: Case Studies Across Asset Classes” which was published in 2010. Since then Palandjian has been engaged in advancing the sector through a variety of efforts. She co-founded the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance and serves as Vice Chair of its board. She is also a member of the boards of the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts and the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing, which has a membership of 40+ countries.
Social (or sustainable) finance is “a category of financial services that aims to leverage private capital to address challenges in areas of social and environmental need.”
Using that philosophy as a strategic and operational approach, Palandjian worked with fellow Harvard Business School alumni, Sir Ronald Cohen and David Blood to found Social Finance in the United States in 2011. Cohen and Blood had created Social Finance UK in 2007 with the goal of leveraging finance to “fund and scale solutions to complex and enduring social issues...that improve the lives of people and communities in the UK and globally.” As Cohen has said, “Tracy had the combination of mind and will to put impact investing on the map in the United States. The three of us created a business plan. Tracy executed it absolutely brilliantly.”
Social Finance Programs
Education, Training, Workforce Development
Examples include so-called “pay-it-forward” programs in which job seekers receive tuition support and living stipends to enroll in high quality job training programs. Students repay these “outcomes-based” loans only after they secure a good job and earn salaries above specific levels. Repayments typically carry no interest and no fees, and the repaid money goes back into the fund in order to support future participants.
Social Finance has partnered with state governments to build and manage such pay-it-forward programs. New Jersey was the first state to launch a “pay-it-forward” program. The first participants in the program graduated from Hudson County Community College in 2023 into nursing programs.
In Ohio, Social Finance supports a diesel technician training program aimed at addressing the national shortage of transportation technicians. Working with American Diesel Training Center (ADTC), tuition and wrap-around supports are provided to workers that commit to the training program and the funds are repaid by the trainees, and their employers in some cases, after they have gained employment in the field in which they’ve trained, usually at income levels doubling or tripling their previous wages. “To date, more than 1,100 learners have enrolled in the ADTC Career Impact Bond. The program graduation rate was 100% and the job placement rate was 92%." https://socialfinance.org/insight/case-studies-new-approaches-to-financing-education-and-training/
In 2022, in partnership with Google, Social Finance launched the $100M Google Career Certificates Fund, aimed at producing $1 billion in wage gains for 20,000 low-income and underemployed Americans across each of the 50 states. According to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Google, “this fund is a new kind of financing model… Social Finance will provide funding to nonprofit partners …who in turn will provide services like career coaching, living stipends and job placement support. And we’ll connect students to an employer consortium of more than 150 companies who are looking to hire workers with these skills.” Social Finance will “allocate more funds to whoever is delivering better results… It’s all about impact,” Palandjian said.
In 2021, Social Finance began working with Dream.us with the goal of providing graduate school loans to so-called Dreamers with either Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protective Status (TPS). These Dreamers arrived in the US as children with their parents. With a goal of raising $100 million in impact investment capital, the program provides loans to Dreamers wishing to pursue professional degrees who do not have access to federally subsidized student loans because they are not US citizens. The loans are offered at similar interest rates as what American citizens can access from federal student loan programs, without co-signer requirements. In addition, applicants do not need FICO scores to receive funding.
Criminal Justice
In California, recidivism has “remained stubbornly high, averaging around 50 percent over the past decade.” Working with Ventura County Government and Interface Children & Family Services, Social Finance raised funding from impact investors for a Social Impact Bond to support operational improvements in the role probation officers play in the process. The data are analyzed by independent researchers at UCLA. Interface reports that “over 50% of participants had no new arrests. "Investors’ 'motivation is part philanthropy, part a push for government accountability,’ {Palandjian} said.”
Homelessness and Housing
In Anchorage Alaska, Social Finance partnered with the city government and 20 local non-profits in 2020 to develop a supportive housing program called Home for Good. Private philanthropic funds were raised to support a one-year pilot program aimed at reducing the number of unhoused citizens, and the City agreed to fund two additional years if performance goals were achieved. The results are determined by an independent evaluator. The program has resulted in a 76% reduction in shelter stays in Anchorage.
Impact Investing at Social Finance
In 2019 Social Finance began to focus on Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), public charities into which donors can contribute capital, invest that capital, and receive tax deductions immediately. DAFs allow donors’ invested funds intended for charitable use to grow tax free, thus increasing the amount of donation money available overtime.
DAFs have become somewhat controversial because funds are often held in investment accounts without timely disbursement to non-profit organizations despite the donors having taken tax deductions at the time of their contributions. At the same time, investment firms receive management fees even though the funds are not being put to charitable use. Federal legislation was proposed by Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Angus King (I-ME) in June 2021 to tighten the rules on DAFs but failed to win passage.
Social Finance conducted a market survey of donor attitudes toward impact investing funded by the Rockefeller Foundation The surveys found that more than 70% of DAF donors were interested in impact investing. however, there are no readily accessible options with which DAF donors can engage to guide their charitable investment strategy.
In an effort to unlock some of the $243 billion (as of 2021) held in DAFs, Social Finance developed the Social Finance Impact First Fund in 2023 to provide a holistic, diversified portfolio of impact-first investments for individuals and institutions looking for a straightforward and efficient way to pursue impact investing. The Fund announced their first investments with Blackstar Stability Distressed Debt Fund, a black-owned real estate fund focused on building home ownership for low and moderate income families, and the Afterglow Climate Justice Fund, a private debt fund investing in marginalized communities who are disproportionately likely to experience the negative impacts of climate change.
Social Finance partnered with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the Jewish Community Federation & Endowment“to curate…impact-first investment opportunities that allow donors to invest their donor-advised fund (DAF) assets to equitably support communities that have faced historical disinvestment.”
Other Civic and Community Work
Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, 2012-18,
Havard Corporation, President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2022-
Harvard presidential search committee, 2017-18, 2022
Board Member, The Boston Foundation
Board Member, Surdna Foundation
Board Member, Barr Foundation
Former board member, Mass General Brigham, Facing History and Ourselves, RFK Human Rights and Milton Academy
Honors and Recognition
HBS Alumni Achievement Award – Palandjian was one of the 2019 recipients of the HBS Alumni Achievement Award, the school’s highest honor
Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps Embracing the Legacy Award
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022)
Elected to the American Philosophical Society (2022) https://www.amphilsoc.org/blog/american-philosophical-society-welcomes-new-members-2022
Harvard Controversy
In the months since, members of the Harvard Corporation have been criticized for their secrecy and urged by many to operate in a more transparent manner.
In late December 2023, Palandjian and fellow corporation member Paul Finnegan met with faculty members who lead the Council on Academic Freedom, which had been critical of both the University’s and the Corporation’s responses to events on campus in the preceding months.
The Corporation has faced pressure from alumni that have been significant donors to the university.
Palandjian served on the search committees for former Harvard presidents Lawrence Bacow and Claudine Gay, first as a member of the university’s Board of Overseers and then as a member of the Harvard Corporation.
Family and Personal Life
Palandjian is married to Leon A. Palandjian M.D. They met at Harvard as undergrads living in Eliot House. They live in Belmont, MA and have three daughters.