Women’s History Month celebrates the contributions and achievements of women throughout the decades. Here at Summit, we are proud to recognize the luminaries who shaped the worlds of culture, sports, politics, and more, such as Katalin Karikó and Malala Yousafzai. But we also know the importance of offering a helping hand to lift others up.

This is the third post of a series discussing the role of the ESG and impact investing field in advancing racial equity by increasing access to capital and measuring impact.

In the previous posts of this series, we discussed the racial wealth gap and the impact that historically low access to capital has had on communities of color. We also discussed what firms in the ESG and impact investing space are doing to advance racial equity. These strategies run the gamut from creating dedicated funds designed to reach Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs, such as Reinventure Capital; to employing screening methods for companies with strong diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, like the Minority Empowerment ETF cocreated by Impact Shares and the NAACP (in ESG terms, a positive screen to increase exposure); to reimagining the process of due diligence with a racial equity lens, such as the Due Diligence 2.0 Commitment.

Summit’s mission is to help make government effective and society just. Therefore, we speak out against acts of injustice.

We speak out against the tides of injustice and violence faced by Asian communities: tides with deep currents in history that have surged to even greater heights during this pandemic.

We speak out against the tragedy in Atlanta earlier this week. We speak out against the violence that led to the deaths of eight people, six of whom are Asian women.

This is the second in a series on advancing racial equity through access to capital and impact measurement. The author thanks Catherine Dun Rappaport of BlueHub Capital and Caitlin Rosser of Calvert Impact Capital for their contributions to this article, as well as their time, expertise, and devotion to this work.

Summit has served our federal clients for more than a decade by providing statistical sampling and data analysis support for economic research and enforcement activities. In addition to completing ad hoc research requests, we develop and maintain a suite of analytic tools to streamline federal healthcare enforcement.

This is the first in a series of three posts on advancing racial equity through access to capital and impact measurement. In this post, we’ll talk about ESG and impact investing and highlight organizations in the space. Later, we’ll discuss the specific strategies organizations use to measure impact and the opportunities to build upon this work in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan.

With contributions by Mark Hutson, PhD

This is the fourth in a series on the end of the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR), a widely used financial metric that is integral to global finance. In this post, we cover the issues surrounding its primary replacement, SOFR, regarding the potential impacts on mortgages and consumer protection.

In this episode of Complexity Simplified, Summit senior manager Corey West speaks with Dr. Ed Golding, executive director of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy and senior lecturer, on housing policy, analytics, and the biggest changes in analyzing housing data. Tune in below for an insightful discussion.

In the first post of our series on the Federal Register, we talked about the “what” and the “why”: what are public comments on proposed rulemaking, and why is it so important to be thinking about them? In this installment, we’ll dig into the “how”: how do we actually do a thematic analysis of Federal Register comments?

While always a crucial part of government, public comments on federal rulemaking are particularly relevant during the first 100 days of the Biden administration due to rapid changes taking place. Reporting on the administration transition suggests a quick start to new legislation during the first 100 days, including measures on COVID relief, health care, climate, and government reform, among other topics. At Summit, we’re keeping a close eye on these proposed policies—see our recent blog posts on the first-time home buyer (FTHB) tax credit and student loan forgiveness.