Anderson ’89 is One of 100 “Most Creative in Business”

Joy Anderson ’89, the founder and president of Criterion Ventures, was selected for Fast Company’s 2011 list of “100 Most Creative People in Business.”

Criterion Ventures is a hybrid for-profit/non-profit firm consisting of Criterion Ventures and Criterion Institute. It identifies large-scale social and environmental problems and designs and implements collaborative ventures and projects that generate solutions to the problems.

A political science major at Wesleyan, Anderson was an teacher and administrator in Brooklyn, with professional leadership roles at the national level. She completed her her Ph.D. in American History from New York University in 2001. Since founding Criterion Ventures in 2002, she has led the firm to built a network of relationships; launch a series of companies; and accumulate significant knowledge around the intersection of business and social change. In 2006, with Tim Freundlich ’90  and Kevin Jones, she founded Good Capital, an asset management firm “seeking to move capital to good,” she explains.

Currently, Criterion’s work is focused on large field building initiatives that look at how to change the way markets function to bring about social and environmental change. Their major initiatives include “Women Effect Investments” — focused on directing investment dollars to benefit women and girls around the world, and “Church as an Economic Being,” which is looking at how the Christian church, in all of its expressions, is both an actor and implicated in the economy.

For more information, please see http://www.criterionventures.com/.