Carl Fischer
Senior Consultant
Carl Fischer, CEO of Positive Capital Corp.PBC, started business life at Merrill Lynch and spent almost two decades on the “dark side” of finance. As a “Quant” he founded and built three companies while at times also working as a proprietary trader for various financial firms. In 2006 while Head of Model Trading at ED&F Man in London, one of the world’s largest physical trading houses and one of the first in Fair Trade, he was (t)asked to structure an option to guarantee coffee farmers a steady income independent from price and currency fluctuations while simultaneously providing the firm with a continuous flow of produce. This brought him in touch with Impact Investing. Ever since, Carl has been active as an advisor, mentor and Impact Investment developer.
Working with various firms, individuals and organizations in the Impact Investing sector he quickly realized that financial structures, which in the past had benefited Wall Street so well, could be usefully employed to create positive impact, by using bond, equity or fund structures, for accredited or unaccredited investors, and for both non-profit and for-profit entities.
Carl launched:
- the first Public-Private Impact Investment project for the Philadelphia Water Department
- a Social Impact Bond against homelessness in Baltimore, applying an idea lifted from AHS’s HOPE project in Rotherham, UK
- the Social Success Note for Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof. M. Yunus and the Rockefeller Foundation
- the structure of the first Impact Investment fund for unaccredited investors in the US with its focus on community development, i.e. jobs for low-skilled labor in Baltimore, working with the CFVCA
- the first-ever Entrepreneur Revenue Structure currently being considered by Rutgers Graduate School, Newark
Currently his focus includes identifying sustainable solutions for refugees globally.