Investment Manager x2

About the team

The Investment Team is responsible for selecting portfolio partners, managing our charity investments and supporting our portfolio partners to improve and scale their impact.

The Investment Team also leads the Impetus Leadership Academy, a leadership development programme to support talent from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK youth sector to progress into senior leadership roles.

The team is made up of 19 people, including former teachers, charity chief executives, charity impact leads, management consultants, social investment portfolio managers and impact consultants.

The team is led by a Portfolio Director who sits on the Senior Management Team. The Portfolio Director has 5 direct reports: a Deputy Portfolio Director, three Sector Leads (who lead our work in School engagement, School attainment and Employment Sectors) and an Impact Lead. Sector Leads line manage 6 Investment Directors. Investment Directors line manage Investment Managers (currently
6). Investment Directors and Investment Managers tend to primarily focus on a sector but might have mixed portfolios, depending on need, experience and interest.

The Investment Team has a good track record of role progression. All four Leads and a number of our Investment Directors were promoted from within the team.

The team is passionate, rigorous, determined, creative and warm. We come from a range of backgrounds and bring a broad mix of perspectives. We care deeply for our colleagues, our portfolio partners and the young people we serve.

We believe that all young people deserve to succeed in school and in work, whatever their background. We are pleased to be able to expand our team to support our growing portfolio of charity and non-profit partners, in order to reach and impact more lives. The role of Investment Manager presents an exciting opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the organisations we serve, the team itself, and the whole of Impetus.

We support a portfolio of 23 high potential charity and non-profit partners in the youth sector, helping them deliver benchmark-beating employment and education outcomes for young people, and to grow.

Working with our portfolio partners is a privilege. The leaders we support are incredibly talented, passionate and keen for external advice, and the issues we work through with them are stimulating and stretching. Our senior management relationships are some of the most fulfilling relationships many of us have had in our careers. The growth and impact performance of our partners are testament to their commitment to disadvantaged young people and the influence we have on their development.

Partners and funders often comment on the quality of our people. Our team is analytical and data driven; we are deeply relational, low-ego and collaborative. We actively invest in our colleagues holding regular training and community of practice sessions, and use skills-based assessments to tailor development.

As an organisation we seek to embed diversity of thought, background and experience in every aspect of our work and actively challenge our assumptions to better deliver change. Over the past two years we have taken action to help reduce racial inequality in the youth sector. In 2021 we launched our Connect Fund to support diverse leaders and their robust solutions to the entrenched employment gap faced by young people from ethnic minority backgrounds compared with their white peers.

We have also built a highly regarded Leadership Academy for emerging youth sector leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds, with generous from Bank of America and State Street Foundation.

If you are looking for a role combining strategic thinking, analytical insight and influencing emerging leaders, as well as the opportunity to work with a supportive team to transform young lives, I hope you will apply to work with us.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sebastien Ergas

Portfolio Director

• Supporting the annual cycle of identifying new investments - mapping the landscape of charities in thematic areas (e.g. Apprenticeships and Skills), conducting structured analysis of key impact and financial data and reviewing the current evidence base to identify high potential charities and inform options for Investment Directors.
• Contributing to due diligence of new organisations by reviewing quantitative and qualitative charity…