The Environmental Philanthropist with Kef Kasdin

Liz Tinkham (00:17):
Hi, this is Liz Tinkham and welcome to Season Two of Third Act, a podcast about people embracing the third act of their lives with a new sense of purpose and direction. The third act begins when your script ends, but your show’s not finished. Hi, and welcome to Third Act. On today’s show I talk with Kef Kasdin, the philanthropic environmentalist. Kef is a long-time venture capital partner and founder of several renewable energy companies, well before it was fashionable to do so. When her twin daughters left for college, she decided that she needed to take the experience she had and apply it to doing good.
She launched the ARC Innovators program as part of Princeton AlumniCorps, to match experienced executives like herself, with nonprofits in need of the expertise. She also joined their board of directors and eventually became the executive director of the organization. But her work with those renewable energy companies led to a passion and commitment around climate change, so she founded Rachel’s Network, a women’s network dedicated to the education and advocacy of environmental philanthropic giving.
On today’s episode she talks about the work Rachel’s Network is doing around climate change and issues of environmental justice, as well as how you can get involved.
Hello and welcome to Third Act. Today my guest is Kef Kasdin and I’m thrilled to have you. Welcome to Third Act.

Kef Kasdin (01:46):
Great to be here.

Liz Tinkham (01:47):
So you are the first person I’ve had who is involved in climate change, as well as has found something else to do in their third act around their AlumniCorps. So very excited to get into it. Thanks for joining today.

Kef Kasdin (02:00):
Looking forward to the conversation.

Liz Tinkham (02:02):
Princeton AlumniCorps, what is it, how’d you find it, and what’s it doing today?

Kef Kasdin (02:07):
Princeton AlumniCorps is actually an over 30 year old organization that impacts nonprofit communities around the country by primarily developing nonprofit leaders. There are actually three different programs. The flagship program places recent Princeton University graduates in one-year paid fellowships in nonprofit organizations, but Princeton AlumniCorps does a lot more than just that matching. We surround the fellows with leadership development, mentoring, and other support.
Our Emerging Leaders program, which is open to anyone of any college degree or non-college degree, is a professionally facilitated leadership program, really for rising managers, relatively still young and early in their careers and while they’re still working. And then ARC Innovators, which is a program that I helped launch, matches experienced professionals with pro bono projects at nonprofits.

Liz Tinkham (03:04):
Yeah, that’s what I need. Okay.

Kef Kasdin (03:06):
If you think about it, it’s the whole arc of careers and talent development within nonprofit organizations. But yeah, happy to talk more about ARC Innovators as well as it, I think, relates to the work that you’re doing.

Liz Tinkham (03:23):
Well, how did you find it?

Kef Kasdin (03:25):
I actually found it, it’s a little bit of a funny story. I knew of the organization. I am a Princeton graduate myself, so I’d heard the organization was founded after I graduated, and I didn’t really know about all the aspects of what the organization did. And so fast forward to when my kids were going off to college. I have twin daughters and so I was really busy with my career as well as supporting and raising them. So when they went off to college I knew I’d have some more time. And I was actually really interested in figuring out how I could give my skills and experience primarily from the business world.

Liz Tinkham (04:03):
And this is while you were still working, correct?

Kef Kasdin (04:06):
I was working full-time. I was a venture capitalist doing early-stage investing and actually rolling up my sleeves and running companies, so I was quite busy but I wanted to do more. So I actually read an article in the alumni magazine for Princeton University. And it talked about this organization and how the name was changing and about some of the new initiatives, which included this program which I said, “I helped found.” But at the time I thought it existed already based on the article.
And it sounded great because that’s exactly … I thought, let me use my professional skills to give back to a nonprofit organization completely as a volunteer. But I wanted to volunteer with skills, and so I contacted them and it turned out the program hadn’t actually gotten off the ground yet. Given some of my startup experience, the executive director was very wise and she said, “Why don’t you help us start this?” And then 10 plus years later I am still very actively involved with the organization, so she was very perceptive about ways to engage volunteers.

Liz Tinkham (05:11):
If I back up a little bit, so you went to Princeton. You find the organization at Princeton. So have you always lived in Princeton, or were there some job diversions in there?

Kef Kasdin (05:20):
Yeah. I actually first moved out to the Bay Area right after my undergraduate years. I was in management consulting for a couple of years, and then I went to business school at Stanford. And then after that, I got involved in technology management in Silicon Valley, like many people who move out to the Bay Area.
Though I didn’t join a startup, I joined a company that was already pretty well established, but it was the nineties and there was a lot of growth and opportunity and I grew with the company and grew into more and more senior roles. My second-to-last role there was general manager of a billion-dollar business so it’s a pretty big responsibility and then I did a little stint as more of a staff role working with the CEO and the COO, strategic initiatives and on operational initiatives.
And then my husband got an opportunity to teach at Princeton University. He is also a Princeton alum and that was an offer he couldn’t pass up, so we moved back to Princeton then. Yeah, we had been about 15 years out in the Bay Area and we came back to Princeton and I was there for the next 21 years.

Liz Tinkham (06:30):
Yeah. So is that where you find Battelle Ventures?

Kef Kasdin (06:34):
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, so I had moved back to Princeton and I was doing some part-time consulting work, and I met a couple of guys who had a small venture capital fund in Princeton. I joined them first as a venture partner, and then we had the opportunity to start a new venture capital fund with funding from a company called the Battelle Memorial Institute. It is actually a nonprofit as well, and Battelle manages some of the Department of Energy national laboratories, as well as doing its own research.
So the idea was to leverage all of that government funded research to create startup companies. There were four of us who became the founding general partners of that venture fund in 2003, 2004. And then we did a lot of very different kinds of things from your typical venture capital fund for the next 10, 15 years.

Liz Tinkham (07:35):
Is this where you start to get an interest in renewable energy?

Kef Kasdin (07:39):
Yeah. So as I mentioned, Battelle Memorial Institute ran or managed a few of the national labs for the Department of Energy. And by definition, there was a lot of energy research going on in those labs. There was other kinds of research as well, so we didn’t only do renewable energy, but I gravitated to those types of technologies and investments.
I think I’d always had an interest. I didn’t necessarily have the technical background, so I definitely found others who helped me evaluate those technologies. We were getting started really at the ground floor, literally walking the hallways of these labs, talking to researchers about technologies that were still very much on the lab bench and then figuring out which of those could have potential to create companies – and I even ran some of them. So we were so early that there was no management team. So I even started as a CEO of one of those companies and actually stuck with that for several years.

Liz Tinkham (08:38):
Of the things that you looked at back then in the early 2000s, I mean, renewable energy was coming along, but not like it is today. What do you remember that’s still around? Or does something stand out like a cool thing you saw that’s now more mainline?

Kef Kasdin (08:52):
So yes, you were right, that was early days. Certainly, in fact the term clean tech had just started or was just starting to be even recognized as an area of venture capital investing. It was actually a really collegial time for the venture-capital folks who were working in that space, but then it really just grew tremendously.
I invested in a variety of different technologies – solar batteries, biofields, energy efficiency, a traffic management company that we argued was also about energy efficiency, because it was really about moving traffic more smoothly through traffic lights, which does have implications for emissions and for fuel efficiency. So there was a lot that fell under that umbrella.
In terms of what I saw that other people were investing in, yeah, it’s hard to know. I mean, I guess what I have seen of late is that a lot of the technology’s still actually older technology, not necessarily some of the really revolutionary breakthrough stuff we tried to get going and so that’s why a lot of the stuff we invested in didn’t turn out. That’s just the nature of the beast when you do early stage investing.
It also became harder. The venture-capital community really moved away from those risky technologies, a variety of factors. That was when the current companies that are so successful in Silicon Valley were really getting their start and so a lot of the VC funding gravitated towards those technologies. The Obama Administration in particular was really supportive of renewable energy, and so there was government funding but then that dried up as well, unfortunately, and you really need all of that.
I think one of the things I became convinced of is venture capital isn’t maybe the best or only way to promote these technologies. But as to what survived from my work, there were a couple of the investments we made that then turned into companies and then were acquired by other companies that are still around. And the one in the battery space and one in the traffic management space that I talked about and that was actually of my work, the most successful outcome from a financial exit perspective. But we seeded a lot of other stuff that I do still see out there in different forms, so maybe I was just a little ahead of my time.

Liz Tinkham (11:11):
Now did this then spark your passion for the climate change situation, or had you been thinking about that, knowing about it, before that?

Kef Kasdin (11:21):
I think it was in the background of my thinking for quite a while. I read a lot. I try to stay up on current events and news. And so I certainly think that the groundswell around the need to solve this huge societal problem around climate change was really building pretty dramatically in that period of time when I was doing these investments.
I came to realize over time that my passion for these investments was really this passion around trying to make a difference in this climate change, huge issue that we have and that’s why I focused on these. My thesis was these breakthrough technologies would really significantly move the needle, but I also knew that a lot of them wouldn’t survive to be able to do that but it was worth trying.
I think I’ve learned since then, there are all sorts of other approaches and you’ve got to look at it really much more comprehensively. But yeah, as I learn more about why I was doing the things I was doing, I realized I was really just much more mission-driven. I wasn’t necessarily looking to build wealth through my venture capital investing, I was really looking to change the world.
I know that sounds cliche, but that’s actually what I started to realize was important to me, literally changed the world in this case with climate change. And as I learned that about myself, I realized I really needed to be doing something different, and that venture capital wasn’t necessarily the way to fulfill that part of me.

Liz Tinkham (12:59):
Now back to the alumni courses, that when you decided to spend more time doing that. Because eventually you end up leaving the venture capital world and leaving your CEO spot and doing the AlumniCorps full time. Is that correct?

Kef Kasdin (13:12):
Yeah, that’s correct. I mean the order of events was we wrapped up the venture fund in 2015, but I had started back in 2010, 2011 was when I first got involved with AlumniCorps. So yeah, I think part of me saw that writing on the wall, saw that need to do something that filled a different part of me.
I had the opportunity to join the board, and then yes, post my venture fund I applied to be president of the organization, which was just a volunteer role. It’s a complicated structure. And then in 2017, the executive director, which is a paid staff position. The previous executive director decided to take a new, exciting position and that position became vacant and I decided to jump in with both feet and apply for that job. And so I took the helm as the executive director in the mid-2017 and did that until we moved to California last summer.

Liz Tinkham (14:13):
What was it like going from being a VC partner and also managing the startup companies, to being the executive director of a, I guess, not-for-profit right?

Kef Kasdin (14:26):
Yes. Yes. AlumniCorps is firmly a not-for-profit. It’s different but the same, I guess is the way I would put it. And part of what my philosophy is about, folks who work in the nonprofit sector or volunteer in the nonprofit sector with their skills and experience, is that there’s a lot that is transferable from any kind of leadership role. Running a nonprofit is still leading and it’s still, especially what AlumniCorps does, it’s all about leadership development, both in terms of the internal staff as well as our program participants.
So in my mind leadership is leadership. There are clearly nuances. It’s a different type of leadership, mission-driven, again, going back to that word. And that does mean you have folks working in nonprofits who are as skilled and as amazing as people who work in the business world, but they’re coming at it with a different mindset and value system.
It’s hard work and it does take all the same kinds of leadership development and support that is more typical in especially larger businesses. I know I got a lot of that when I worked in Silicon Valley, but it’s less prevalent. Unfortunately, the funders of nonprofits don’t necessarily recognize that.
And so people get excited about programs or what nonprofits do in communities and all the impact that they have. But sometimes they forget it’s still people who have to implement those programs and envision them and interact with communities. And that hard work is, yes, it’s very personally rewarding, but you also need the leadership skills and you need to be financially rewarded as well. So the challenge, I think, is that some of those pieces aren’t there and you have to create them as a nonprofit leader, or find the resources to do that and that’s what makes it different, but people are people at the end of the day.

Liz Tinkham (16:30):
I know because this podcast is about people in their third act and people thinking about doing something new. I mean, if you had to offer up a piece of advice about that transition from the for-profit world to the non-profit world, anything come to mind in terms of if you’re thinking about becoming an E.D.? Because I know people are like, “I think I’m going to retire and I’m going to go run a not-for-profit.” And I’m a board chair of a for-profit, and I’m like it’s so different. I’m not sure that that is always the most natural progression. So what would your thinking be if you were giving advice on this?

Kef Kasdin (17:03):
Listen, listen, listen, first of all, really don’t come in with any preconceived assumptions. Listen to the people who are the experts and the practitioners on the ground doing that hard work, and approach it with humility. And understand that yes, there are definitely parallels and ways to tie in your experience, but take the time to learn and listen, and then figure out how to best map those skills to the non-profit. So that would be my first and foremost piece of advice.
I think the other is to recognize that if you’re coming from a bottom-line driven type of background or your prior lives in companies, that part is different. So many nonprofits still today, really start over every year. They need to raise their money from their donors or from wherever way they generate income but that income is tied to their mission and tied to their programs and I mean they’re not-for-profits. They’re not meant to have a surplus, but it’s a fine line, right?
So in other words, best case is you break even. You bring in enough money, and then you start over every year. Now that model is changing and I’m happy to talk about that some more but to just recognize that P&L, I mean, it looks different because this is not-for-profit. Yeah, and think about how those sources of revenue don’t necessarily have anything to do with the programs you’re delivering and that’s figuring out how to best match that.
Fundraising is important for every single executive director, becomes a key part of their job but that’s about relationships. I think bottom line, it gets back to people and to listening, right? It’s about understanding that the way to raise money is to develop relationships and find people who want to support your mission. Yeah.

Liz Tinkham (19:03):
As you look back on it, what’s your proudest moment?

Kef Kasdin (19:06):
Yeah. I mean, I think it was so many different smaller things, but I would say overall it’s the impact we continue to have in the nonprofit community. Overall, we’ve built a network of our program participants, our volunteers, our donors, that really is self-supporting in a way. It feeds on itself, it allows for new opportunities to bring this leadership development to more people.
Seeing the folks we have developed and worked with earlier in their careers, continue to have impact or grow in their roles. So, just being proud of our role in helping them achieve their goals and ambitions in life. I would say, yeah, there isn’t any one particular thing, it’s really just continuing to build that momentum. I would say developing my own staff when I was executive director.
There’s a lot of turnover in the nonprofit sector. It comes from all the things I talked about earlier, and so I am proud that we actually have a fairly stable team which I helped to grow. Some of those folks were hired by my predecessor so I can’t take all the credit, but to really see them grow in their roles.
The person who took over from me as executive director when I left last summer, has now been in the organization for seven, going on eight years and has been promoted into that now executive director role, and I like seeing that we were able to promote from within. So in a way we were drinking our own Kool-Aid, right. It’s about developing our own staff and giving them the opportunities to blossom in their careers, so I’m proud to have left that as well. So those are some of the things that I would point to.

Liz Tinkham (20:44):
As I had mentioned at the beginning, I love the fact that the ARC Innovators program takes people who want to give back their time, talent, and treasure to do good, better somewhere else. Now this is for Princeton alums. So all of you who are listening or Princeton alums, you can find it. But are there other programs either through universities or other places that you’re aware of that are similar that people could get involved in?

Kef Kasdin (21:07):
Technically you don’t need to be a Princeton alum to participate in our ARC Innovators program and I should’ve made that clear. But I do need to admit that at the moment that program is in a little bit of hiatus, as we try to figure out how to emerge from COVID and do that in a way that’s impactful. We have continued to run our other programs but that one was a little bit more of a challenge for us, but I do know of some other groups that do similar work. One that I have participated in myself, the Stanford Graduate School Of Business.
So you do need to be an alum of the business school at Stanford to participate in this, has a program that’s called, the acronym is ACT, Alumni Consulting Teams. So one key difference is Stanford does their pro bono work in teams. Whereas for AlumniCorps, that was even more challenging for us to think about that. So we would just do individuals, primarily as match individuals with project ACT brings together teams. It was just remarkable.
It’s been around also for more than 30 years and so that is an opportunity. There’s an organization called Encore, encore.org, which is really about, I think, more focused on paid opportunities for that third act, but I know that’s a model.

Liz Tinkham (22:28):
I think a lot of people, as I’ve said, they just don’t want to play golf or sit around and pursue hobbies all the time, they still want to give back. Now I want to go back to climate change. So that’s running with you. So how’s that manifest in your philanthropic work and what are you doing with that?

Kef Kasdin (22:48):
Yeah. So actually back in that same timeframe when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do post the venture capital world, and starting to understand that venture capital may not be the best way to promote some of my passions around climate change, I got interested in philanthropy as that vehicle. And I was introduced to an organization called Rachel’s Network, which is a group of women who are environmental philanthropists, environmental advocates. It’s really about promoting women’s leadership in the environmental space, but clearly with a philanthropic lens.
It’s named after Rachel Carson. It was founded a little over 20 years ago, so long after Rachel Carson had passed away, but really in her memory and in her honor. So Rachel Carson was a scientist and an activist in the sixties who really shed a light on environmental pollution, especially around, she wrote a very famous book called Silent Spring, where she started to recognize that birds were disappearing, hence silence in the spring and why that was happening and it was about chemical pollution. So it is a nonprofit and it’s really about educating women philanthropists to help better inform their philanthropy around environmental causes and really about promoting women’s leadership in the environmental space.

Liz Tinkham (24:08):
That is really cool.

Kef Kasdin (24:09):
Yeah. So this includes advocating to get more women on environmental organization boards, which when the organization was founded 20 years ago, was not so much a thing. And I’m happy to say, if you look at larger environmental organizations, many of them are now run by women and do have more women on their boards, many of of whom are Rachel’s Network members.
The other piece that we’ve really leaned into in the last several years is around raising up the voices of women of color in environmental organizations. There have been many women of color working in environmental causes in communities that have not been recognized nationally. There are many grassroots organizations.
This whole field really now of environmental justice is something women of color have known for a very long time. And unfortunately, those of us with more privilege have been slower to recognize those needs. Philanthropy still very much is focused on white-led organizations and so we decided to really look at that much more closely and make an award for those women.

Liz Tinkham (25:18):
My listeners, I think a lot of them might be interested – if they wanted to get to know or have a better understanding of what some good places to be around environmental social justice, where would they look?

Kef Kasdin (25:29):
Well, they can certainly look at Rachel’s Network. We started something called the Catalyst Award two years ago. We now have a number of Catalyst Award winners, as well as finalists who are all featured on our website and that’s a great way to start to look at some of what’s going on. Unfortunately, tip of the iceberg, but some of what’s going on there. We spend a lot of time vetting and understanding those organizations and the ones we want to support but there’s so many more.
So that would be one place to start to understand this whole field and the work that’s going on in it. I continue to learn so much every day about the work that’s going on there and about how it really can … We actually can’t solve the climate change problem unless we recognize the needs of communities that have really been overlooked, and unfortunately, where much of the harm has been and will come. Yeah. And so really understanding that and bringing those voices to the table is absolutely necessary to make the kinds of changes we need to make.

Liz Tinkham (26:33):
I looked at Rachel’s Network and it’s just such an incredible organization to think about women who have money, and women who are leaders coming together for environmental causes, and then having a group that does advocacy and does education around it. Right? And so as I said, I’m sure we have a lot of listeners interested, we’ll publish all the information in our show notes if people are listening and are interested.
You mentioned that you’ve now moved back to San Francisco recently, and you’ve moved off of your ARC position. So what are you doing now? Where are you headed aside from working with Rachel’s Network?

Kef Kasdin (27:08):
I actually continue to be active with AlumniCorps as well. I went back to that president role, which is a volunteer role and continue to be on the board. We are working on a strategic plan. We have a lot going on so I’m really excited about that. So one thing I didn’t mention is I joined Rachel’s Network, but then I joined the board. This happens, I get involved and I jump in with both feet.

Liz Tinkham (27:30):
I love that you said, “This happens.”

Kef Kasdin (27:32):
This keeps happening to me. So no, I’m not a passive participant so I just get involved. I was asked to join the board of Rachel’s Network back in 2015 and then I actually became vice chair and then a board chair in 2017 and I continue in that role, so that’s a very active role there. I’m not on the staff, but I work very closely with the staff on that and especially all these initiatives around environmental justice that I have mentioned.
I have done a couple of projects for the Stanford GSB Act Program. So that was my way of starting to learn about the nonprofit community in San Francisco in particular and ways that I can get involved. So I really am more focused on environmental issues in the Bay Area of which there are also many opportunities.
I’m still learning. I’m very busy actually with the AlumniCorps work and the Rachel’s Network work and the ACT work, but to step back and understand where I can be most impactful from a nonprofit perspective. So definitely want to stay in the nonprofit community and we’ll see. I’m not exactly sure where that may end up, but my other opportunities have come up through learning and educating myself. And then being in the right place at the right time for something that serendipitously gets me excited.
I would say I’ve got a lot of family commitments now that I’m fully vaccinated, spend time with family. And I have some life events that are going to happen in the next year or so that are going to take some of my time. So I’m trying to leave time for that as well so I’m keeping busy.

Liz Tinkham (29:16):
I almost thought to name this podcast, I’m Not Done Yet because I feel like I’m not done yet. I can’t even imagine what you’re going to say but what aren’t you done with yet?

Kef Kasdin (29:24):
Oh so much.

Liz Tinkham (29:25):
Okay, name two things.

Kef Kasdin (29:28):
Yeah. So climate change, I mean, I will just start with that. There is still so much to do. Unfortunately there hasn’t been enough done, and then for me, I just feel like there’s so many needs and so many opportunities for impact that it’s just about figuring out what’s the next one. I won’t even say the best because there are so many, but just taking it one step at a time and where’s the next place I can really leverage my talents and experience to make a difference.

Liz Tinkham (29:56):
Well, that’s great. Well Kef, thank you so much for joining me on Third Act. We will publish in the show notes, all of the references you’ve had to the different ways you can get involved like at the Stanford Act Program or AlumniCorps or Encore as well as Rachel’s Network. Where else can people find you online? You’re a little elusive if I remember correctly.

Kef Kasdin (30:16):
Yeah. I’m not really. I don’t have much of an online presence to be honest, I guess I’m old school. My LinkedIn profile is a bit out of date but maybe I can work on making sure that that gets updated before this goes live but yeah, they can reach me-

Liz Tinkham (30:29):
We’ll publish that.

Kef Kasdin (30:29):
… through LinkedIn and/or through any of these organizations because they know where to find me so I would say that would be …yeah.

Liz Tinkham (30:38):
So what happens is, especially if people who are listening are interested in what others are doing, you might get some reach-outs, which I’ve had people do so I wanted to make sure we’ve got that. So thanks again and look forward to hearing more about your fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh act.

Kef Kasdin (30:54):
Thanks a lot Liz, it was really a pleasure talking to you.

Liz Tinkham (30:59):
Thanks for joining me today. To listen to the Third Act podcast, you can find show notes, guest bios, and more at ThirdActPodcast.com. If you enjoyed our show today, please subscribe and write a review on your favorite podcast platform. I’m your host Liz Tinkham. I’ll be back next week with another guest who’s found new meaning and fulfillment in the third act of their life.

Liz Tinkham (00:17):
Hi, this is Liz Tinkham and welcome to Season Two of Third Act, a podcast about people embracing the third act of their lives with a new sense of purpose and direction. The third act begins when your script ends, but your show’s not finished. Hi, and welcome to Third Act. On today’s show I talk with Kef Kasdin, the philanthropic environmentalist. Kef is a long-time venture capital partner and founder of several renewable energy companies, well before it was fashionable to do so. When her twin daughters left for college, she decided that she needed to take the experience she had and apply it to doing good.
She launched the ARC Innovators program as part of Princeton AlumniCorps, to match experienced executives like herself, with nonprofits in need of the expertise. She also joined their board of directors and eventually became the executive director of the organization. But her work with those renewable energy companies led to a passion and commitment around climate change, so she founded Rachel’s Network, a women’s network dedicated to the education and advocacy of environmental philanthropic giving.
On today’s episode she talks about the work Rachel’s Network is doing around climate change and issues of environmental justice, as well as how you can get involved.
Hello and welcome to Third Act. Today my guest is Kef Kasdin and I’m thrilled to have you. Welcome to Third Act.

Kef Kasdin (01:46):
Great to be here.

Liz Tinkham (01:47):
So you are the first person I’ve had who is involved in climate change, as well as has found something else to do in their third act around their AlumniCorps. So very excited to get into it. Thanks for joining today.

Kef Kasdin (02:00):
Looking forward to the conversation.

Liz Tinkham (02:02):
Princeton AlumniCorps, what is it, how’d you find it, and what’s it doing today?

Kef Kasdin (02:07):
Princeton AlumniCorps is actually an over 30 year old organization that impacts nonprofit communities around the country by primarily developing nonprofit leaders. There are actually three different programs. The flagship program places recent Princeton University graduates in one-year paid fellowships in nonprofit organizations, but Princeton AlumniCorps does a lot more than just that matching. We surround the fellows with leadership development, mentoring, and other support.
Our Emerging Leaders program, which is open to anyone of any college degree or non-college degree, is a professionally facilitated leadership program, really for rising managers, relatively still young and early in their careers and while they’re still working. And then ARC Innovators, which is a program that I helped launch, matches experienced professionals with pro bono projects at nonprofits.

Liz Tinkham (03:04):
Yeah, that’s what I need. Okay.

Kef Kasdin (03:06):
If you think about it, it’s the whole arc of careers and talent development within nonprofit organizations. But yeah, happy to talk more about ARC Innovators as well as it, I think, relates to the work that you’re doing.

Liz Tinkham (03:23):
Well, how did you find it?

Kef Kasdin (03:25):
I actually found it, it’s a little bit of a funny story. I knew of the organization. I am a Princeton graduate myself, so I’d heard the organization was founded after I graduated, and I didn’t really know about all the aspects of what the organization did. And so fast forward to when my kids were going off to college. I have twin daughters and so I was really busy with my career as well as supporting and raising them. So when they went off to college I knew I’d have some more time. And I was actually really interested in figuring out how I could give my skills and experience primarily from the business world.

Liz Tinkham (04:03):
And this is while you were still working, correct?

Kef Kasdin (04:06):
I was working full-time. I was a venture capitalist doing early-stage investing and actually rolling up my sleeves and running companies, so I was quite busy but I wanted to do more. So I actually read an article in the alumni magazine for Princeton University. And it talked about this organization and how the name was changing and about some of the new initiatives, which included this program which I said, “I helped found.” But at the time I thought it existed already based on the article.
And it sounded great because that’s exactly … I thought, let me use my professional skills to give back to a nonprofit organization completely as a volunteer. But I wanted to volunteer with skills, and so I contacted them and it turned out the program hadn’t actually gotten off the ground yet. Given some of my startup experience, the executive director was very wise and she said, “Why don’t you help us start this?” And then 10 plus years later I am still very actively involved with the organization, so she was very perceptive about ways to engage volunteers.

Liz Tinkham (05:11):
If I back up a little bit, so you went to Princeton. You find the organization at Princeton. So have you always lived in Princeton, or were there some job diversions in there?

Kef Kasdin (05:20):
Yeah. I actually first moved out to the Bay Area right after my undergraduate years. I was in management consulting for a couple of years, and then I went to business school at Stanford. And then after that, I got involved in technology management in Silicon Valley, like many people who move out to the Bay Area.
Though I didn’t join a startup, I joined a company that was already pretty well established, but it was the nineties and there was a lot of growth and opportunity and I grew with the company and grew into more and more senior roles. My second-to-last role there was general manager of a billion-dollar business so it’s a pretty big responsibility and then I did a little stint as more of a staff role working with the CEO and the COO, strategic initiatives and on operational initiatives.
And then my husband got an opportunity to teach at Princeton University. He is also a Princeton alum and that was an offer he couldn’t pass up, so we moved back to Princeton then. Yeah, we had been about 15 years out in the Bay Area and we came back to Princeton and I was there for the next 21 years.

Liz Tinkham (06:30):
Yeah. So is that where you find Battelle Ventures?

Kef Kasdin (06:34):
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, so I had moved back to Princeton and I was doing some part-time consulting work, and I met a couple of guys who had a small venture capital fund in Princeton. I joined them first as a venture partner, and then we had the opportunity to start a new venture capital fund with funding from a company called the Battelle Memorial Institute. It is actually a nonprofit as well, and Battelle manages some of the Department of Energy national laboratories, as well as doing its own research.
So the idea was to leverage all of that government funded research to create startup companies. There were four of us who became the founding general partners of that venture fund in 2003, 2004. And then we did a lot of very different kinds of things from your typical venture capital fund for the next 10, 15 years.

Liz Tinkham (07:35):
Is this where you start to get an interest in renewable energy?

Kef Kasdin (07:39):
Yeah. So as I mentioned, Battelle Memorial Institute ran or managed a few of the national labs for the Department of Energy. And by definition, there was a lot of energy research going on in those labs. There was other kinds of research as well, so we didn’t only do renewable energy, but I gravitated to those types of technologies and investments.
I think I’d always had an interest. I didn’t necessarily have the technical background, so I definitely found others who helped me evaluate those technologies. We were getting started really at the ground floor, literally walking the hallways of these labs, talking to researchers about technologies that were still very much on the lab bench and then figuring out which of those could have potential to create companies – and I even ran some of them. So we were so early that there was no management team. So I even started as a CEO of one of those companies and actually stuck with that for several years.

Liz Tinkham (08:38):
Of the things that you looked at back then in the early 2000s, I mean, renewable energy was coming along, but not like it is today. What do you remember that’s still around? Or does something stand out like a cool thing you saw that’s now more mainline?

Kef Kasdin (08:52):
So yes, you were right, that was early days. Certainly, in fact the term clean tech had just started or was just starting to be even recognized as an area of venture capital investing. It was actually a really collegial time for the venture-capital folks who were working in that space, but then it really just grew tremendously.
I invested in a variety of different technologies – solar batteries, biofields, energy efficiency, a traffic management company that we argued was also about energy efficiency, because it was really about moving traffic more smoothly through traffic lights, which does have implications for emissions and for fuel efficiency. So there was a lot that fell under that umbrella.
In terms of what I saw that other people were investing in, yeah, it’s hard to know. I mean, I guess what I have seen of late is that a lot of the technology’s still actually older technology, not necessarily some of the really revolutionary breakthrough stuff we tried to get going and so that’s why a lot of the stuff we invested in didn’t turn out. That’s just the nature of the beast when you do early stage investing.
It also became harder. The venture-capital community really moved away from those risky technologies, a variety of factors. That was when the current companies that are so successful in Silicon Valley were really getting their start and so a lot of the VC funding gravitated towards those technologies. The Obama Administration in particular was really supportive of renewable energy, and so there was government funding but then that dried up as well, unfortunately, and you really need all of that.
I think one of the things I became convinced of is venture capital isn’t maybe the best or only way to promote these technologies. But as to what survived from my work, there were a couple of the investments we made that then turned into companies and then were acquired by other companies that are still around. And the one in the battery space and one in the traffic management space that I talked about and that was actually of my work, the most successful outcome from a financial exit perspective. But we seeded a lot of other stuff that I do still see out there in different forms, so maybe I was just a little ahead of my time.

Liz Tinkham (11:11):
Now did this then spark your passion for the climate change situation, or had you been thinking about that, knowing about it, before that?

Kef Kasdin (11:21):
I think it was in the background of my thinking for quite a while. I read a lot. I try to stay up on current events and news. And so I certainly think that the groundswell around the need to solve this huge societal problem around climate change was really building pretty dramatically in that period of time when I was doing these investments.
I came to realize over time that my passion for these investments was really this passion around trying to make a difference in this climate change, huge issue that we have and that’s why I focused on these. My thesis was these breakthrough technologies would really significantly move the needle, but I also knew that a lot of them wouldn’t survive to be able to do that but it was worth trying.
I think I’ve learned since then, there are all sorts of other approaches and you’ve got to look at it really much more comprehensively. But yeah, as I learn more about why I was doing the things I was doing, I realized I was really just much more mission-driven. I wasn’t necessarily looking to build wealth through my venture capital investing, I was really looking to change the world.
I know that sounds cliche, but that’s actually what I started to realize was important to me, literally changed the world in this case with climate change. And as I learned that about myself, I realized I really needed to be doing something different, and that venture capital wasn’t necessarily the way to fulfill that part of me.

Liz Tinkham (12:59):
Now back to the alumni courses, that when you decided to spend more time doing that. Because eventually you end up leaving the venture capital world and leaving your CEO spot and doing the AlumniCorps full time. Is that correct?

Kef Kasdin (13:12):
Yeah, that’s correct. I mean the order of events was we wrapped up the venture fund in 2015, but I had started back in 2010, 2011 was when I first got involved with AlumniCorps. So yeah, I think part of me saw that writing on the wall, saw that need to do something that filled a different part of me.
I had the opportunity to join the board, and then yes, post my venture fund I applied to be president of the organization, which was just a volunteer role. It’s a complicated structure. And then in 2017, the executive director, which is a paid staff position. The previous executive director decided to take a new, exciting position and that position became vacant and I decided to jump in with both feet and apply for that job. And so I took the helm as the executive director in the mid-2017 and did that until we moved to California last summer.

Liz Tinkham (14:13):
What was it like going from being a VC partner and also managing the startup companies, to being the executive director of a, I guess, not-for-profit right?

Kef Kasdin (14:26):
Yes. Yes. AlumniCorps is firmly a not-for-profit. It’s different but the same, I guess is the way I would put it. And part of what my philosophy is about, folks who work in the nonprofit sector or volunteer in the nonprofit sector with their skills and experience, is that there’s a lot that is transferable from any kind of leadership role. Running a nonprofit is still leading and it’s still, especially what AlumniCorps does, it’s all about leadership development, both in terms of the internal staff as well as our program participants.
So in my mind leadership is leadership. There are clearly nuances. It’s a different type of leadership, mission-driven, again, going back to that word. And that does mean you have folks working in nonprofits who are as skilled and as amazing as people who work in the business world, but they’re coming at it with a different mindset and value system.
It’s hard work and it does take all the same kinds of leadership development and support that is more typical in especially larger businesses. I know I got a lot of that when I worked in Silicon Valley, but it’s less prevalent. Unfortunately, the funders of nonprofits don’t necessarily recognize that.
And so people get excited about programs or what nonprofits do in communities and all the impact that they have. But sometimes they forget it’s still people who have to implement those programs and envision them and interact with communities. And that hard work is, yes, it’s very personally rewarding, but you also need the leadership skills and you need to be financially rewarded as well. So the challenge, I think, is that some of those pieces aren’t there and you have to create them as a nonprofit leader, or find the resources to do that and that’s what makes it different, but people are people at the end of the day.

Liz Tinkham (16:30):
I know because this podcast is about people in their third act and people thinking about doing something new. I mean, if you had to offer up a piece of advice about that transition from the for-profit world to the non-profit world, anything come to mind in terms of if you’re thinking about becoming an E.D.? Because I know people are like, “I think I’m going to retire and I’m going to go run a not-for-profit.” And I’m a board chair of a for-profit, and I’m like it’s so different. I’m not sure that that is always the most natural progression. So what would your thinking be if you were giving advice on this?

Kef Kasdin (17:03):
Listen, listen, listen, first of all, really don’t come in with any preconceived assumptions. Listen to the people who are the experts and the practitioners on the ground doing that hard work, and approach it with humility. And understand that yes, there are definitely parallels and ways to tie in your experience, but take the time to learn and listen, and then figure out how to best map those skills to the non-profit. So that would be my first and foremost piece of advice.
I think the other is to recognize that if you’re coming from a bottom-line driven type of background or your prior lives in companies, that part is different. So many nonprofits still today, really start over every year. They need to raise their money from their donors or from wherever way they generate income but that income is tied to their mission and tied to their programs and I mean they’re not-for-profits. They’re not meant to have a surplus, but it’s a fine line, right?
So in other words, best case is you break even. You bring in enough money, and then you start over every year. Now that model is changing and I’m happy to talk about that some more but to just recognize that P&L, I mean, it looks different because this is not-for-profit. Yeah, and think about how those sources of revenue don’t necessarily have anything to do with the programs you’re delivering and that’s figuring out how to best match that.
Fundraising is important for every single executive director, becomes a key part of their job but that’s about relationships. I think bottom line, it gets back to people and to listening, right? It’s about understanding that the way to raise money is to develop relationships and find people who want to support your mission. Yeah.

Liz Tinkham (19:03):
As you look back on it, what’s your proudest moment?

Kef Kasdin (19:06):
Yeah. I mean, I think it was so many different smaller things, but I would say overall it’s the impact we continue to have in the nonprofit community. Overall, we’ve built a network of our program participants, our volunteers, our donors, that really is self-supporting in a way. It feeds on itself, it allows for new opportunities to bring this leadership development to more people.
Seeing the folks we have developed and worked with earlier in their careers, continue to have impact or grow in their roles. So, just being proud of our role in helping them achieve their goals and ambitions in life. I would say, yeah, there isn’t any one particular thing, it’s really just continuing to build that momentum. I would say developing my own staff when I was executive director.
There’s a lot of turnover in the nonprofit sector. It comes from all the things I talked about earlier, and so I am proud that we actually have a fairly stable team which I helped to grow. Some of those folks were hired by my predecessor so I can’t take all the credit, but to really see them grow in their roles.
The person who took over from me as executive director when I left last summer, has now been in the organization for seven, going on eight years and has been promoted into that now executive director role, and I like seeing that we were able to promote from within. So in a way we were drinking our own Kool-Aid, right. It’s about developing our own staff and giving them the opportunities to blossom in their careers, so I’m proud to have left that as well. So those are some of the things that I would point to.

Liz Tinkham (20:44):
As I had mentioned at the beginning, I love the fact that the ARC Innovators program takes people who want to give back their time, talent, and treasure to do good, better somewhere else. Now this is for Princeton alums. So all of you who are listening or Princeton alums, you can find it. But are there other programs either through universities or other places that you’re aware of that are similar that people could get involved in?

Kef Kasdin (21:07):
Technically you don’t need to be a Princeton alum to participate in our ARC Innovators program and I should’ve made that clear. But I do need to admit that at the moment that program is in a little bit of hiatus, as we try to figure out how to emerge from COVID and do that in a way that’s impactful. We have continued to run our other programs but that one was a little bit more of a challenge for us, but I do know of some other groups that do similar work. One that I have participated in myself, the Stanford Graduate School Of Business.
So you do need to be an alum of the business school at Stanford to participate in this, has a program that’s called, the acronym is ACT, Alumni Consulting Teams. So one key difference is Stanford does their pro bono work in teams. Whereas for AlumniCorps, that was even more challenging for us to think about that. So we would just do individuals, primarily as match individuals with project ACT brings together teams. It was just remarkable.
It’s been around also for more than 30 years and so that is an opportunity. There’s an organization called Encore, encore.org, which is really about, I think, more focused on paid opportunities for that third act, but I know that’s a model.

Liz Tinkham (22:28):
I think a lot of people, as I’ve said, they just don’t want to play golf or sit around and pursue hobbies all the time, they still want to give back. Now I want to go back to climate change. So that’s running with you. So how’s that manifest in your philanthropic work and what are you doing with that?

Kef Kasdin (22:48):
Yeah. So actually back in that same timeframe when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do post the venture capital world, and starting to understand that venture capital may not be the best way to promote some of my passions around climate change, I got interested in philanthropy as that vehicle. And I was introduced to an organization called Rachel’s Network, which is a group of women who are environmental philanthropists, environmental advocates. It’s really about promoting women’s leadership in the environmental space, but clearly with a philanthropic lens.
It’s named after Rachel Carson. It was founded a little over 20 years ago, so long after Rachel Carson had passed away, but really in her memory and in her honor. So Rachel Carson was a scientist and an activist in the sixties who really shed a light on environmental pollution, especially around, she wrote a very famous book called Silent Spring, where she started to recognize that birds were disappearing, hence silence in the spring and why that was happening and it was about chemical pollution. So it is a nonprofit and it’s really about educating women philanthropists to help better inform their philanthropy around environmental causes and really about promoting women’s leadership in the environmental space.

Liz Tinkham (24:08):
That is really cool.

Kef Kasdin (24:09):
Yeah. So this includes advocating to get more women on environmental organization boards, which when the organization was founded 20 years ago, was not so much a thing. And I’m happy to say, if you look at larger environmental organizations, many of them are now run by women and do have more women on their boards, many of of whom are Rachel’s Network members.
The other piece that we’ve really leaned into in the last several years is around raising up the voices of women of color in environmental organizations. There have been many women of color working in environmental causes in communities that have not been recognized nationally. There are many grassroots organizations.
This whole field really now of environmental justice is something women of color have known for a very long time. And unfortunately, those of us with more privilege have been slower to recognize those needs. Philanthropy still very much is focused on white-led organizations and so we decided to really look at that much more closely and make an award for those women.

Liz Tinkham (25:18):
My listeners, I think a lot of them might be interested – if they wanted to get to know or have a better understanding of what some good places to be around environmental social justice, where would they look?

Kef Kasdin (25:29):
Well, they can certainly look at Rachel’s Network. We started something called the Catalyst Award two years ago. We now have a number of Catalyst Award winners, as well as finalists who are all featured on our website and that’s a great way to start to look at some of what’s going on. Unfortunately, tip of the iceberg, but some of what’s going on there. We spend a lot of time vetting and understanding those organizations and the ones we want to support but there’s so many more.
So that would be one place to start to understand this whole field and the work that’s going on in it. I continue to learn so much every day about the work that’s going on there and about how it really can … We actually can’t solve the climate change problem unless we recognize the needs of communities that have really been overlooked, and unfortunately, where much of the harm has been and will come. Yeah. And so really understanding that and bringing those voices to the table is absolutely necessary to make the kinds of changes we need to make.

Liz Tinkham (26:33):
I looked at Rachel’s Network and it’s just such an incredible organization to think about women who have money, and women who are leaders coming together for environmental causes, and then having a group that does advocacy and does education around it. Right? And so as I said, I’m sure we have a lot of listeners interested, we’ll publish all the information in our show notes if people are listening and are interested.
You mentioned that you’ve now moved back to San Francisco recently, and you’ve moved off of your ARC position. So what are you doing now? Where are you headed aside from working with Rachel’s Network?

Kef Kasdin (27:08):
I actually continue to be active with AlumniCorps as well. I went back to that president role, which is a volunteer role and continue to be on the board. We are working on a strategic plan. We have a lot going on so I’m really excited about that. So one thing I didn’t mention is I joined Rachel’s Network, but then I joined the board. This happens, I get involved and I jump in with both feet.

Liz Tinkham (27:30):
I love that you said, “This happens.”

Kef Kasdin (27:32):
This keeps happening to me. So no, I’m not a passive participant so I just get involved. I was asked to join the board of Rachel’s Network back in 2015 and then I actually became vice chair and then a board chair in 2017 and I continue in that role, so that’s a very active role there. I’m not on the staff, but I work very closely with the staff on that and especially all these initiatives around environmental justice that I have mentioned.
I have done a couple of projects for the Stanford GSB Act Program. So that was my way of starting to learn about the nonprofit community in San Francisco in particular and ways that I can get involved. So I really am more focused on environmental issues in the Bay Area of which there are also many opportunities.
I’m still learning. I’m very busy actually with the AlumniCorps work and the Rachel’s Network work and the ACT work, but to step back and understand where I can be most impactful from a nonprofit perspective. So definitely want to stay in the nonprofit community and we’ll see. I’m not exactly sure where that may end up, but my other opportunities have come up through learning and educating myself. And then being in the right place at the right time for something that serendipitously gets me excited.
I would say I’ve got a lot of family commitments now that I’m fully vaccinated, spend time with family. And I have some life events that are going to happen in the next year or so that are going to take some of my time. So I’m trying to leave time for that as well so I’m keeping busy.

Liz Tinkham (29:16):
I almost thought to name this podcast, I’m Not Done Yet because I feel like I’m not done yet. I can’t even imagine what you’re going to say but what aren’t you done with yet?

Kef Kasdin (29:24):
Oh so much.

Liz Tinkham (29:25):
Okay, name two things.

Kef Kasdin (29:28):
Yeah. So climate change, I mean, I will just start with that. There is still so much to do. Unfortunately there hasn’t been enough done, and then for me, I just feel like there’s so many needs and so many opportunities for impact that it’s just about figuring out what’s the next one. I won’t even say the best because there are so many, but just taking it one step at a time and where’s the next place I can really leverage my talents and experience to make a difference.

Liz Tinkham (29:56):
Well, that’s great. Well Kef, thank you so much for joining me on Third Act. We will publish in the show notes, all of the references you’ve had to the different ways you can get involved like at the Stanford Act Program or AlumniCorps or Encore as well as Rachel’s Network. Where else can people find you online? You’re a little elusive if I remember correctly.

Kef Kasdin (30:16):
Yeah. I’m not really. I don’t have much of an online presence to be honest, I guess I’m old school. My LinkedIn profile is a bit out of date but maybe I can work on making sure that that gets updated before this goes live but yeah, they can reach me-

Liz Tinkham (30:29):
We’ll publish that.

Kef Kasdin (30:29):
… through LinkedIn and/or through any of these organizations because they know where to find me so I would say that would be …yeah.

Liz Tinkham (30:38):
So what happens is, especially if people who are listening are interested in what others are doing, you might get some reach-outs, which I’ve had people do so I wanted to make sure we’ve got that. So thanks again and look forward to hearing more about your fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh act.

Kef Kasdin (30:54):
Thanks a lot Liz, it was really a pleasure talking to you.

Liz Tinkham (30:59):
Thanks for joining me today. To listen to the Third Act podcast, you can find show notes, guest bios, and more at ThirdActPodcast.com. If you enjoyed our show today, please subscribe and write a review on your favorite podcast platform. I’m your host Liz Tinkham. I’ll be back next week with another guest who’s found new meaning and fulfillment in the third act of their life.