Q & A

We recently sat down with Joanne Cheung to find out more about her passions, her calling and generally dive in deeper to get to know her.

2

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your work over the last few years?

The challenges are systemic problems, which stem from intentional decisions that were made to economic structures and political structures in order to exclude certain populations. My biggest worry is the pernicious effect of these systemic problems in limiting the scope of our collective imagination:   when our responses to the symptoms of the problems still play into the hands of the structure that was problematic in the first place. I think it's useful to expand our aperture and understand how things came to be, and then recalibrate our ambition  on what it takes to create the magnitude of change that we want. Otherwise, all the normative forces will push the easiest solution forward.

3

Developing alternative business models to the startup status quo has become a central moral challenge of our time. These alternatives want to balance profit and purpose and put a premium on sharing power and resources. Why is getting investments in this alternative model crucial for those who seek it?

Why do we need to invest in alternative models?

Purpose and profit is a false dichotomy. I think it’s more useful to examine how a business accounts for the byproducts it generates alongside profit rather than a purpose that sounds good on paper. Profit for whom and at what cost?

While profit is easy to calculate, negative externalities generated as a byproduct are harder to calculate. For example, soil health depleted by monoculture crops and emissions from motor vehicles result from individual organizations simply going about their businesses as usual. These tragedies of the commons aren’t accounted for in a typical business model nor adequately addressed by corporate social responsibility.

We need alternative business models that take these externalities into its equations. A good example is true cost accounting in food and agriculture, which factors in external costs in the production of food to show the high environmental cost hidden beneath cheap market-based prices. It’s a catch-22: while true cost accounting helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the environment, which is the necessary condition for all food businesses, building a business based on true cost accounting in the current system means you lose out on price-based competitions in the market. In order to get out of this catch-22, we need investments that can catalyze alternative business models and ask for different kinds of returns.

4

How do we shift the narrative about the role of capital in BIPOC communities and reframe the perceptions of the risk involved?

The issue has less to do with risk and more about what risk is mapped to. This concerns social discrimination, bias, and a deep history of harm. I think transparency around what we're making decisions about should become normative practice. For example, look at the history of redlining. Redlining was perceived, at the time, as an objective way of assessing risk and allocating credit, when in reality it was about reinforcing racism..It was explicitly using risk as a proxy for racial discrimination. I think it's a good reminder that redlining took place not that long ago, and the motivation behind the practice persists in many domains today.. If we are going to change the system, we have to understand that risk has always been entangled with identity politics.

5

What are the top three pieces of  advice you would give to BIPOC entrepreneurs, who are dedicated to both purpose and profit, as they are starting or scaling their business?

I might not have three, but I have one, which I remind myself again and again: Pay attention to your cognitive dissonance.

We all live in a political economy that is not working. We are constantly making choices that don’t  reconcile—between purpose and profit, for example—, which also brings a lot of emotional baggage. For example, consider where you work: What does it mean for a BIPOC employee to work in an organization which generated its wealth from the historical oppression of BIPOC communities? What does it mean to get paid by—to personally profit from—an organization that profits from the oppression of communities you represent?

My recommendation is not to sweep that cognitive dissonance under the rug, but to really interrogate it. Don’t say, “These decisions are about my work, and I'm not going to think about things that have to do with my values or race or history. I can talk about that in my personal life.” Artificially compartmentalizing ourselves is a coping mechanism, which helps relieve us individually but it also allows for the persistence and continued exploitation of the system. Rather than seeing cognitive dissonance as something to get rid of, start seeing them as wake up calls  and motivation to transform systems for the better.

6

What is the call to action for investors who seek to promote social justice through investment solutions?

Give labor its due.. Because investors and workers are fundamentally different classes, my call to action for investors who have access to capital to deploy is to orient your capital in solidarity with workers who do not have access to capital, so that when capital is deployed, it can be in service of equity.