Agents of impact are used to grappling with difficult, complex and even painful systemic issues. Less often discussed is the toll of this daily work on practitioners, many of whom are personally affected by the problems they are committed to solving. In a guest post for ImpactAlpha, Thaddeus Fair, fund manager for Living Cities’ Catalyst Family of Funds, shares the personal challenges that come with leveraging capital to close America’s racial wealth gaps. “While helping lead the cheer for social progress, I too have experienced these traumas as a Black man,” he writes. “One day, I am closing an investment into a BIPOC-led investment fund with a lens of changing the landscape and moving society forward. The next, yet another unarmed Black man is murdered by law enforcement.”
- Space to heal. “I don’t have the luxury of putting on the ‘racial equity’ suit when I come to do this work only to remove it once I ‘clock out,’” Fair says. “I pondered quitting this space countless times because I couldn’t handle what it was taking from me.” Fair shares that deep meditation and “a fierce liberatory search inward” has helped him anchor and heal. Rock climbing, baking bread and exploring the outdoors have helped him pause and reflect, he says. “We are not superheroes, and it is OK to not be OK.”
- Check in. Ask your colleagues of color how they’re doing. “The gravity of the mass we carry is immense,” says Fair. “The perceived strength we are showing you in times like this may not often be real and certainly isn’t unshakable.” He shares his thoughts, he says, “in the hopes that revealing the points of weakness in my own journey can provide a light to another soul who may find themselves where I have been and often still am.”
Click here to read the full post, “Thoughts of a Black fund manager,” by Living Cities’ Thaddeus Fair.
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