ABOUT
InnovateImpact and Project Covalent
InnovateImpact is the home of Project Covalent, an open research initiative exploring a shared signal layer that helps investors see how risk, return, and real-world impact connect before markets price the connections. The work is deliberately cross-sector with its core thesis that no single investor type can build these signals alone.
Holden Lee
Holden created Project Covalent to build on two insights from a career at the intersection of public, private, and philanthropic markets. The first is that improving investor resource allocation decisions depends on more rigorous hypotheses around risk, return, and impact. The second is recognizing that while each investor has their own hypotheses of how these three dimensions create value, sharing their insights may help other investors with very different mandates achieve their objectives. Both insights are critical to helping all investors navigate the rising challenges of systems change.
Holden has three decades working at the boundary between capital markets and systems change by advising asset owners and managers, serving on fiduciary boards, leading philanthropic initiatives, and building cross-sector frameworks to allocate capital more intelligently.
InnovateImpact and Project Covalent are the practical synthesis of that experience. The through line is a simple conviction that better decision infrastructure helps different forms of capital pursue their own mandates while contributing to more robust collective predictive intelligence.
Holden is a board member of Sonen Capital and Horizon 2045, and he is a fellow at the Center for Social Sector Leadership at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. He works across investment, governance, philanthropy, and foresight.