By Bonnie Chiu, Managing Director, TSIC
Twelve years ago, I wrote a cover letter for my dream job.
I was just starting out, fueled by a quote from Margaret Mead that I had carried with me from mentors in Singapore and Pakistan: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” When I joined The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC) in 2014, and later when I took over the business at age 26, that quote was my North Star. At the time, we were exactly that: a small group. We were thoughtful, we were committed, and we were making a real dent in the world. But as the years passed, I began to realise that while we had the depth, the world was demanding a breadth that our small team couldn’t reach alone.
Meeting the Moment: The Impact “Singularity”
We are living through what I believe is a moment of ‘singularity’ for the impact sector. Impact is no longer a niche conversation; it has moved to the absolute forefront of global policy and capital.
Interestingly, the current backlash against ESG has actually accelerated this. People are tired of compliance-heavy, “tick-the-box” exercises. Many are actually yearning for real, meaningful impact. At the same time, the retreat of global aid has made the transition to sustainable, impact-led investment more urgent than ever, beyond grantfunded and charitable models.
The trends are accelerating impact, but by size, the sector still remains niche. I believe we have a short window, amid many contending priorities and forces, to truly mainstream impact.
We couldn’t just keep swimming against the tide. We needed to ride it.
Why Consultancy Alone is Not Enough
In our work to ‘reimagine consulting,’ we’ve had to acknowledge that the traditional model—defined by short term, time-bound contracts—is no longer enough to meet the scale of global crises. To drive true systems change, we must move beyond providing advice and start building ‘knowledge infrastructure.’ This means transitioning from fragmented reporting toward integrated systems that allow us to decouple growth from manual effort, using technology to bridge the gap between grassroots wisdom and the vast pools of global capital. Technology and AI are no longer “the future”—they are here. Yet, all too often, these transformative capabilities remain out of reach for the very impact organisations that need them most.
The Serendipity with Rimm
The exploration of possibilities with Rimm Sustainability began with what I can only call serendipity. Three years ago, we met at the India Global Forum in a roundtable about ESG. Our first conversation was about the broader landscape of sustainable impact measurement, exploring innovative approaches to assess social, environmental, and economic outcomes. Then, a bit later, we met again at Culture Shifting Summit. This time, the conversation went beyond measuring impact, towards capital deployment for impact and sustainability. We came from different career trajectories and different life journeys, but we were holding the exact same questions: How can we truly unlock capital to solve problems meaningfully? How do we scale depth?
Through our conversations, we realise that we have the same set of values, identity and ambition, but we were in our respective silos of ‘sustainability’ and ‘impact’ – and there’s a real opportunity in the coming together of sustainability and impact.
On top of that, we are building one of the few global impact platforms driven by Global Majority leadership ensuring that the future of sustainability and impact is built with diverse perspectives at its core.
Designing the World We Want
There is a speech by the legendary social entrepreneur, Muhammad Yunus that has stayed with me forever. He said in the One Young World Summit in Ottawa, 2016: “If you follow the same path as previous generations, you will get to the old destination. This won’t help us and the planet. You need to go to a better destination. Build new roads, design the world that you want.”
The partnership with Rimm is that new road.
It is a convergence of sustainability and impact; of cutting-edge technology and humancentred expertise. We are trying to create a new world before we get sucked back into
the old one.
TSIC will keep its brand, its intellectual independence, and its soul. But we are no longer just a small group of committed citizens. We are now part of a global infrastructure with the technology and the scale to finally bridge the gap between grassroots wisdom and global capital.
I hope you will join us on this new road.