Positioned for Impact: Sıla Baştürk Ağıroğlu, Senior Associate of Impact Reporting at Rally Assets

There are a lot of people who want to make the world a better place, and through reporting, it’s my job to show them how impact investing can help them make this idea a reality.

With a perspective that values local impact as much as big systems change, Sıla Baştürk Ağıroğlu believes that impact investing is a powerful tool in tackling the social, economic, and environmental challenges of our day. She brings this belief to her role at Rally Assets, a partner of Generate Canada’s Solution Space the Nature Investment Hub. 

Below is a conversation we had with Sıla about how social and environmental impacts have been at the heart of her career path, and why she is working to bring the idea of impact investing into the mainstream. It has been edited for clarity and length. 

Generate Canada: Can you tell me about how you got started in the world of impact investing? 

Sıla Baştürk Ağıroğlu: When I started my degree in 2011 in Türkiye, where I am from, I didn’t know that I was going to specialize in impact investing. I wanted to keep my opportunities open, so choosing to do my undergrad in business and finance really worked out for me because there were many paths I could take from there—it was so flexible. 

When I graduated, I started my career in a global emerging market fund. This was around the time when environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds were emerging and I began to see the applications of ESG in investment decision making. 

This was a great experience, and made me realize I wanted to do more impact focused work, which led me to work for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in Türkiye, where I did a lot of work around energy systems. I ended up becoming so interested in this work that I enrolled in a master’s degree in energy systems, while I was still working full time with EBRD. 

I began to more deeply understand the relationship between economy, growth, climate change, energy systems, and how these things are present in everyday life. The energy system isn’t just about electricity–it’s connected to agriculture, transportation, real estate, everything we consume. 

This was a real ‘eureka’ moment for me in that it helped me realize that everything is so interconnected. If we want to solve one problem, we have to look at all of the problems connected to it. 

GC: Tell me about your move to Canada and how this impacted your career journey.

SBA: When COVID hit, I, like many other people, decided to make some major life changes. I looked at opportunities to live abroad and Canada became an attractive option. I have some family here and I was at a point where I knew I wanted to learn more and continue my education. Both my parents are teachers so maybe that’s where this need to keep learning comes from! 

I didn’t want to do an MBA or a finance degree–I wanted to do something that was specifically focused on environment and I wanted to learn more about the science of climate change in a way that was grounded in the realities of the world, not just in how it related to the financial system. So, I applied for the Master in Environmental Studies program at York University and was able to get a scholarship. 

While at York, I was also involved with a non-profit that is part of the university called Ecological Footprint Initiative as a data analyst, which provided me with some great experience in systems thinking.  

GC: How did you make the transition from your Master in Environmental Studies degree into impact investing?

SBA: Being a first generation immigrant is great, but in many cases there are a lot of blank spaces where other people have information. I knew I wanted to work for an impact investing firm, but I didn’t know who the firms were so I started researching–who are the active players, who are the companies? 

Rally Assets was one of the companies on my list and, lucky for me, they were hiring at that time. I was still writing my thesis when I was hired, but Rally Assets brought me on anyway and let me complete my degree while working full time for them. 

GC: Can you tell me about the work you are doing in your current role at Rally Assets?

SBA: Rally Assets is an impact management firm. To sum it up, we look for investable impact opportunities and then we conduct our own due diligence on them, looking into both the financial and impact aspects. We evaluate these opportunities for our client portfolios. 

We work in three ways. We manage custom impact portfolios for foundations and other groups that are interested in increasing their exposure to impact investing. We have two Rally  funds: Rally Total Impact Fund and Rally Global Equities Impact Fund. The other way we operate is as a wholesaler of a government social finance fund through our joint venture called Realize Capital Partners.

We find great impact opportunities that can be suitable for different client portfolios depending on their own impact mandates. For example, one client may be interested in affordable housing, another might be interested in sustainable development goals in general, another might be interested in investing in their local community. 

Learning about what our clients want and connecting with new investor audiences is a really exciting part of the work. Our team at Realize Capital Partners recently collaborated with Nature Investment Hub–who we are partners with–on a recent request for proposals (RFP) inviting social finance organizations to develop investment strategies focused on natural capital and associated industry value chains. 

Having partners like Nature Investment Hub allows us to expand our reach and connect social finance organizations with investor audiences looking to become involved in the impact investing space. As a next step of the RFP, we are working with Nature Investment Hub to place applications in front of potential investors.

The more we can collaborate to expand our reach, the more growth we will see in this sector! 

GC: Can you tell me about your role?

SBA: As a Senior Associate of Impact Reporting, I’m part of the impact reporting and communications team and I also spend part of my time doing private investment research. I love that I have exposure to all these different phases of investment, starting from screening, then due diligence, monitoring, and then finally reporting to clients. 

It’s this great bird’s eye view that gives me the ability to understand what an investment opportunity’s intentions were at the beginning of the investment journey and then what results came of the due diligence process, and then why we invested in that product. Seeing the real impact that these choices are making and making this information interesting for our clients is what I enjoy doing, and is really what our clients are looking for. 

GC: What role does reporting play in impact investing?

SBA: When I think about impact reporting, I think about two areas: education and accountability. 

The education piece applies to both our clients and the public too because everyone is at different places in their journey with impact investing. Some may need more time and information to better understand what it means to become an impact investor, so reporting plays a huge role in providing the information people need to take the next step. 

Educating people like capital providers, founders, and entrepreneurs helps to demonstrate how they can create impact in how they do their business as well as attract more capital, because obviously without capital to invest there is no investing! 

It’s also important for me to reach people who are curious about building a career in impact investing. There are a lot of people who want to make the world a better place, and through reporting, it’s my job to show them how impact investing can help them make this idea a reality. 

The other important factor in impact reporting is accountability. When we invest our clients’ money, we report on how we delivered on both the financial and impact fronts. From the financial front, we report on how the return is aligned with expectations, and from the impact front we need to work with our client to ensure our goals are aligned and we are “speaking the same language”. What is good impact performance? What does an impact performance score mean? Delivering consistent reporting helps them to understand the impact of their investment better. 

Overall, good reporting contributes to the mainstreaming of impact investing, which is something we definitely want to see more of.  

GC: What are the benefits of working with a diverse range of clients who have different ideas of what impact is? 

SBA: I like working with clients at Rally because it provides opportunities for my work to have an impact on both a local and macro level. There are smaller scale projects I work on now that are having really big impacts and this is something that’s really a unique part of the position I’m in right now. These smaller size opportunities may have more diverse definitions of impact compared to traditional ways of thinking. 

For some, reducing emissions may be top priority, which is a great thing to focus on, but there may also be some who want to focus on a smaller scale community project that will maybe benefit 100 people, but will change the lives of those 100 people in a drastic way. To put it in investing terms, we’re talking about scale versus depth of impact. 

Working with both big ticket and small ticket investors is part of the impact investing landscape, but it’s the opportunity to work on smaller and more community-based opportunities in this role that has really been interesting to me.  

GC: What barriers have you come up against in your role?

SBA: Selecting impact investing as a career has been a great decision, however it does come with one constant—trying to explain what you are doing. Whether you are talking to a client or having a conversation at the dinner table with your family, you spend a lot of time explaining your work!

I try to put it simply and say that impact investing is both impact and it is investing. 

There are some groups that have some hesitancy around how to generate returns from an impact opportunity. So in one way, you need to convince people that yes, it is possible to have strong returns with an impact investment. This kind of investment is an investable product, is it an investment asset class that is similar to traditional asset classes that you see in the market. And we aren’t making investments based on faith—we have robust due diligence processes like you would have with traditional investments. 

Then on the other side of the spectrum, it’s about convincing people that these kinds of investments are making real impact. In some people’s minds, financial investment does not result in meaningful social or environmental impact, which is not the case. 

Another part of the impact picture includes grants and charitable donations. But, from a systems perspective, they are not sufficient to move the needle on their own. Impact investing has the ability to scale the investment universe because it also generates returns. If we 100% rely on grants and philanthropy, there is a limit to the impact that can be had. And not to say that impact investing should take the place of these forms of giving, it is just an additional tool to use in order to make and scale impact. 

It’s a challenge to convince people on both ends of the spectrum that we care about returns as much as we care about impact and vice versa. It’s a constant juggle! 

GC: What do you wish more people knew about impact investing?

SBA: It’s hard to convince people of the value of impact investing without a ton of history. Impact investing doesn’t have a history like S&P 500 for example where you can see years of ups and downs, so this is something we are working on—building more evidence around the history that people can rely on.  

Another thing is, when we combine money and impact in the same sentence, it might make people hesitant for different reasons. By developing good returns and impact we will continue to overcome that barrier. But at the same time, we need more people to put their money into impact investments so we are able to prove that it works. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. 

It’s not like impact investing is a new concept, but investments themselves take time to generate returns and create impact—whether they are traditional or impact investments. So it’s important to take the time and trust the process in order to evaluate the outcomes in a way that will set the precedents for the future. 

GC: What keeps you motivated?

SBA: Sometimes it is difficult to stay motivated because of the state of the world and the news we are all consuming about climate change and the many other challenges we are facing. What I try to do is draw inspiration from people who are looking to make real change—especially entrepreneurs and fund managers. These are people who are putting their time and effort and dedication into creating something that they can build on. 

Unfortunately, these things get less coverage than the negative things going on, but the real impact is ongoing. These people are not stuck in the moment saying “oh, we’re doomed”, they are excited about the positive change they are making.  

GC: If you were giving advice to someone looking to pursue a similar career path to you, what would you say? 

SBA: Sometimes it can feel like we are part of such a competitive environment in school and then that carries through to work. This makes sense, I mean, there can be literally hundreds of people that apply for one job and only one person gets it. So it makes sense that we need to be competitive sometimes.

However, impact investing is based on collaboration and is rooted in the mindset that you cannot go far alone. You need other people with you. You need that client putting money in, you need that product that you can invest in, then you need other investors. 

It is this collaborative spirit that will help us stay true to the reality of impact investing while scaling it.

I also think it’s important to stay curious. Things are moving fast and there are lots of resources that you can use to stay informed and learn about opportunities. Asking questions and making sure you are listening to the voices of the people you are working with is a really important thing to keep in mind as well. 

GC: What does meaningful impact look like to you?

SBA: I get excited when I see investments start to take shape. From the initial research and due diligence phases, to then see, a couple of years later, multiple companies investing in a fund that you helped to grow. 

It’s happening, it’s real, and in impact reporting, having the ability to communicate impact back to clients is really meaningful. Celebrating our successes is so important and in doing this, it really opens up conversations about what is next. 

GC: Is there anything you are reading/watching/listening to that you would recommend? 

SBA: I just finished The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, which is a novel about female friendship. It’s not related to work per say, but seeing a story told through a woman’s lens is actually quite applicable to my work. 

It made me think about why it is important to finance founders who are women, because they bring a different perspective to their work and will be the ones who can best accelerate work in gender equality. 

While I’m not reading any career specific books right now, I think it’s important to read things outside your area of expertise. It can be surprising how it can inform your thinking. 

If you are interested in learning more about the role impact investing can play in battling climate change, biodiversity loss, and a host of other challenges we are facing, visit or Rally Assets or the Nature Investment Hub.