The elea Way - Preview

elea’s FOUNDATION AND OPER ATING MODEL 99

organization. elea has been fortunate to be able to attract great people and to retain them for a long time. As of 2020, its leadership team has an average tenure of 11 years with elea. We aspire to be the employer of choice for professionals who want to make a career in impact investing. In line with our commitment to additionality, our team adds value to the quality and distinctiveness of our portfolio through sourcing, evaluation, and ongoing monitoring and support. Thus, adding young talent to our team also serves to create awareness and enthusiasm among the younger generation for our understanding of inclusive capitalism, for ethics, and for engagement in finding solutions to very large societal problems. For every Swiss franc that we invest in either a grant or the risk com- ponent of a loan or an equity stake, we invest another Swiss franc into our impact value creation efforts. This intensive and expensive focus on lever- aging capital contributions with professional expertise is quite unique and sets elea apart from more traditional philanthropic and charitable work. After almost 15 years into our journey as philanthropic impact investors, we are more than ever convinced that this is the right way for the focus and model we have chosen. Philanthropic impact investing is highly chal- lenging work. It is similar to venture capital and private equity investing, but with the added dimension of social impact. Such efforts require hard work, talent, skills, ambitions, and performance-driven attitudes that are comparable to those of any other professional services company in the consulting or financial services industry. We have, therefore, structured our professional development program after the model of commercial professional service companies. It starts with a positioning in the talent markets that attracts ambitious, com- petitive, hard-working individuals with a strong foundation of ethics and values. The recruiting process is intense, always involves a significant number of our senior team members, and looks at different angles, such as motivational structures and backgrounds, ambition, and entrepreneurial drive and energy, as well as work ethics. It also tests intellectual curiosity, analytical skills, and comfort levels at solving real-life elea case examples. We are searching for young professionals, mostly with business, econom- ics, legal, information technology, or science and engineering back- grounds, whose alternative target employers are commercial companies. Working at elea is serving a higher purpose that goes far beyond just “having a job.” Hence, compensation is not the most essential part of the