Today, I’m joined by Nadia Nikolova, CEO of responsAbility Investments, M&G’s emerging markets specialist impact asset manager mobilising institutional capital at scale.

Nadia is an investment management expert with deep experience in development finance and impact investing, with a strong track record in infrastructure debt and structured finance. As of September 2025, she stepped into the CEO role at responsAbility, a pure-play impact manager focused on deploying capital into sustainable solutions across emerging markets.

Prior to this she led the Direct Lending business for Allianz Global Investors across Europe and Asia having built a team investing in impact focused investments globally - from small cap European solutions businesses to blended finance at scale in Emerging markets. As an early entrant, AllianzGI was a market shaper in this field.

This special playlist is developed in partnership with ChangeNOW. We welcome some of the fund managers who presented during Funds for Change. Since they only had but a few minutes on stage to explain their unique angles, the sophistication of their approach, the urgent needs they want to address, we decided to offer them more time and broadcast their ideas to a wider audience.

Key topics:

Meet investors where they are. Institutional LPs don't buy impact first; they buy solutions to portfolio needs (risk, return, diversification, liquidity). Impact managers need to package products around investor requirements, not expect investors to adapt.

The future of impact is becoming mainstream investing. Nadia believes that as climate and social solutions become the new economy, the distinction between "impact investing" and "investing" should eventually disappear—because creating positive impact will simply be part of good investing.

Episode breakdown:

Intro - 00:00:00

Welcome - 00:02:16

Origin & Perspective - 00:03:23

Tensions - 00:27:27

Contrarian Thoughts - 00:29:12

Flash Round - 00:29:32

Follow us on:

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0Po2mXWyAelyE91jSa5flb

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alaqa/id1838909986

https://linktr.ee/alaqapodcast

Designed & Hosted by Imène Maharzi

Produced by Taisa Echterhoff

Episode ID: 1000774806005

GUID: 4509e41f-983a-48d6-8850-d9f05e00a860

Release Date: 30/06/2026, 08:00:00