Boann’s team is made up of exceptional leaders from across Canada’s social finance ecosystem, each bringing expertise, perspective, and lived experience that helps us see and engage with the richness and diversity of this ecosystem.
As we work together to build a vibrant social finance sector, we want to share insights from the leaders and experts who influence every level of Boann. This month, Boann Advisory Council member Tristan Smyth spotlights the importance of building up 2SLGBTQIA+ leadership in social finance, in conversation with Sage Lacerte, Director, Inclusion at Boann.
Tristan Smyth is a member of Boann’s Advisory Council and Managing Director of BSR Impact, a consulting firm that helps organizations to develop social finance products and to assess and scale their impact.
Auntie Sage: Tell me about yourself and how you came to the world of impact investing.
Hi, I'm Tristan Smyth (they/them). I live on unceded Algonquin territory with my spouse and my dog in what is commonly known as Gatineau, Quebec. I originally grew up in the prairies and DC, but I am slowly moving eastward throughout my life, and someday I'll reach the coast and then figure out where to go from there.
I've been involved in impact investing for a number of years, starting in the charitable sector and realizing what impact investing could do as both a way of funding social purpose organizations, as well as a way for social purpose organizations to diversify what they're investing in –– to make it more mission aligned, rather than what we see in traditional markets. And so that was my way in. Now I teach about responsible and impact investing at Carleton University, and I run my own consulting company, BSR Impact to help organizations get into social finance. That is me in this context.
Auntie Sage: How has your experience as a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community influenced your approach to impact investing?
This is a two parter, in terms of how I see myself in the ecosystem and what I’d like to see. There are so many queer entrepreneurs out there who can’t access financing. This is true with all equity-deserving communities –– especially when those identities intersect, and queerness is frequently an intersectional piece. We know that one of the best things for founders and entrepreneurs is being able to go to investors that look like them because there's that shared language, and there's so much that doesn't need to be said in those conversations, so much that doesn't need to be explained when say you're a Black founder talking to a Black financier. And for me, why I'm increasingly feeling the calling to start my own fund is if you don't see financiers who look like you, then, to me, that's the calling to become one! That’s been my drive in growing the impact investing ecosystem, it’s saying “I don't see others that look like me. We don't even have particularly good data in Canada to be able to map the flow of capital. And when we don't see ourselves in impact investing as queer people, to me, that's a call to become that person, that if no one else picks up the torch, it's your responsibility to go and try to pick it up.”
I think being queer in impact investing is so different from traditional investment, because it's all about the relationship, and it's moving money into places where traditional finance doesn't typically like to go. As a queer person, we understand to varying degrees different forms of social inequities. And I think that there's that common thread of understanding the challenges that entrepreneurs and founders of all backgrounds face when accessing capital or attempting to access capital.
Auntie Sage: Can you speak to the challenges that exist in impact investment for queer communities?
It’s like the inverse of Jenga. If you add on too many identities, people get less and less willing to take you seriously. They say “Okay, we can handle a queer person, but when they are a disabled queer person or a young disabled queer person, that's too much.” You're not credible, even though none of these things actually speak to the knowledge that we have. Lived experience, our education, our skill set. It's so so challenging when our identities are seen as elements of our wisdom and expertise, which have informed perhaps how we operate and how we think, but they don't mediate any of the gifts that we bring to the table.
Auntie Sage: How would you like to see Boann support queer leadership and success?
There’s still a great need for the saying “nothing about us without us,” and I find so often that there aren't queer people included in conversations that they should be included in. If you're being invited to speak on something, what's the representation on the rest of the panel? One of the things I'm quite passionate about is investing across the gender spectrum. And I find that so often when we have gender lens investing conversations, it still is held by cis folks. My advice is to invite more queer voices into the space. When we talk about a gender lens, we typically see cis women’s voices being invited into the circle. My advocacy says that’s great –– AND trans, non-binary voices need to be included too.
I'm the only they/them I've ever run into in this ecosystem. I've never run into anyone who identifies as trans, and so I think that's where we especially need a lot of support, thought and development: How are we building out leadership among gender diverse and trans folks?