Shaping Impact Group

Scroll down to read Jamy’s story

Shaping Impact Group enables investors, philanthropists, funds and foundations to generate maximum societal impact with their available resources. We manage impact-first investment funds and offer both advisory and hands-on services in Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy. With over 10 years of experience in the field, we support our clients in leveraging the power of capital as a force for good, and make every penny count.

Shaping Impact Group was formerly known as ‘shaerpa’

Unit: 3.24

Meet the Impact Community – Jamy Goewie

How would you introduce yourself when meeting a new person?
I’m a person with a heart for social innovation and I’ve been on a quest to make the world a better place since I graduated from university. My first passion was to support entrepreneurship amongst youth from less privileged backgrounds in Amsterdam and later also in Asia and Africa. Then I also focused on helping enterprises scale as the founder/director of Ashoka Netherlands. This brought me to Shaping Impact Group, where I currently work as an impact investor thus combining my passion for both social innovations and social entrepreneurs. Together with Pieter Oostlander and an amazing team, I am responsible for the success of Shaping Impact Group. Besides being an investment manager I also work closely with our investors to understand their needs and help them achieve their goals.

What motivated you to become an impact investor?
When I was 9-10 years old, I remember seeing the news and I discovered that there was hunger in Ethiopia. I had no idea such things even existed! Eventually, this realization was my main driver to study human geography and child psychology so I “could help children in Africa and Asia”. However, when I finished, I recognized that working for an NGO where I would mostly just approve or disapprove proposals is not my cup of tea. That is why I launched my youth organization and started working directly with kids in Amsterdam, later scaling that program to Africa and Asia. Later on, I saw how important social entrepreneurs are to actually make change happen. Finding ways to help people who want to help others became my new passion. Ultimately, my main motivation is not to lead one company, but to support many.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
Truly, I think my greatest achievement is being able to connect unlikely people and organizations and have them work together successfully as a result. In a way, my fingerprints are on some very cool things that happened. I’m proud that even at a time when there was virtually no interest in entrepreneurship or youth I could launch an organization to help thousands of youngsters with training and support. Recently, I took personal pride in connecting EVPA with ImpactCity during the 2019 ImpactFest in The Hague. We managed to organize the biggest EVPA conference to date in The Hague involving not only the local community of The Hague but also a broader international European community of impact investors.

What do you do on a daily basis to grow as an impact investor?
I don’t have any tips and tricks to give. I’m a chaotic person myself, which also affects my personal life. It is very difficult for me to let go of work and responsibilities so the only thing I found works the best for me is taking long holidays. Short getaways hardly ever have an effect on me. Though on a daily basis I do like to incorporate regular walks with my dog. The rest of the time is focused work mode.

What advice would you give to your younger self?
Be more deliberate and faster when deciding who you want to work with and who you want to be around. In the past, I spent too much time working with the wrong people and which in retrospect could’ve prevented some failures. I generally have a good sense of people, but I couldn’t vocalize my doubts and lead open and transparent conversations out of empathy and respect for the other person. I see this as a common phenomenon among social entrepreneurs. We are very empathetic, we want to help people and we are determined to make things happen if they are for a good cause. When in fact, some people are just not the right person for the job and the collaboration is simply not working. I don’t let this happen anymore.

What are you recently up to?
We’re launching our third fund! We would like to focus more on equal opportunities. This makes me very excited as stemming from my background it is really important for me that all people get a chance to be successful, happy and participate in society.