So where does the money go?

What excites us about the Capitalize for Kids’ Best Ideas Investors Conference is the fundamental business approach undertaken by our speakers to identify their best ideas. It is very similar to our own innovative strategy to creating capacity in kids’ mental health. We identify excellent business teams facing operational challenges where we can work together to co-create solutions. We engage management to work through the implementation and change management processes to achieve meaningful and measurable improvement in operations. Finally, we inject capital into the business to support the change for up to three years while we periodically measure ongoing results and impact. Taken together, this is the Capitalize for Kids impact.

impact noun (EFFECT): the strong influence that something has on a situation or person.

Capitalize for Kids prides itself on the impact work that we conduct with kids’ mental health agencies across Canada. We are a small but mighty organization that delivers consulting services that truly influence the operations of organizations striving to serve kids and families that are struggling with mental health challenges. In our consulting team, Andrew Tischler, Anneliese Poetz, Evan Sambasivam and Scott Ng bring their considerable talents to the table. What makes our model truly powerful is our ability to supplement our in-house consulting capabilities with support from pro-bono partners (Bain, BCG, Deloitte, McKinsey, MNP, RBC and Sia Partners). We are very thankful to these partners who supercharge our engine!

Our consulting team works with management teams to surface data that identify fundamental business challenges that the agency faces. We work through those challenges to isolate a single opportunity to make change and then co-create solutions with management. We then work hand in glove with the organization to implement and manage the change process and ultimately fund any capital requirements that are a necessary part of the change process for the next three years. We continue to engage management with data to support the process and ensure that the change does not go off the rails. This is the essence of our work. It is also why we need to raise money through our 7^th Annual Investors Conference.

As we have highlighted in our last post, the first day of our Investors Conference will be exciting, launching with Nelson Peltz as our keynote opening followed by Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, Malcolm Levine and Alex Roepers. After a short session where we highlight the value of the consulting efforts for one of our beneficiaries, we will then get things started with a Private Equity discussion.

October 21, 2020

11:15 AM – Yann Robard, Whitehorse Liquidity Partners
11:35 AM – Jeffrey Olin, Vision Capital Corporation
11:55 AM – Kim Shannon, Sionna Investment Managers

Yann Robard is the CEO of Whitehorse Liquidity Partners and an alumnus of CPPIB, an organization that has been an influencer on many speakers in our lineup (and is a great partner of Capitalize for Kids). Since its inception in Q4-2015, Whitehorse has undertaken 58 transactions (a transaction value of $4.8 billion) by bringing structured liquidity solutions to the private equity market. We expect that Yann will take attendees through opportunities that exist in the private market and why the liquidity structures that Whitehorse creates have been so effective in generating significant returns. In late 2019, Yann predicted that the secondary market for private placements should reach $200 to $250 billion—double their current level—by 2025. Clearly this is a market that should grab investors’ attention. We want to thank Whitehorse and Yann for their financial support of Capitalize for Kids’ impact team projects.

Jeffrey Olin is the President and CEO of Vision Capital Corporation, an organization that he co-founded in 2007. Jeff has addressed the Capitalize for Kids conference on two previous occasions, delighting attendees with investment ideas focused on public equities aligned to the real estate vertical. As Jeff suggested in his opening remarks in 2017, Vision leverages their significant understanding in the real estate market to identify great investment opportunities. Jeff recommended GGP (General Growth Properties) in 2017, which was ultimately bought out by Brookfield Property Partners in 2018. In 2019, Jeffrey pitched a U.S. residential rental market play—BSR REIT—which has had a tougher ride with the COVID-19 pandemic in the background. We are very interested to hear what Jeff is choosing as his pick in 2020, as he balances capital preservation with targeting superior risk-adjusted returns. We also want to thank Jeff for volunteering his time on the Leadership Development Advisory Council of Capitalize for Kids.

Finally, we will have Kim Shannon, President, Co-CIO and founder of Sionna Investment Managers, come to the stage for her second appearance. Kim practises a relative-value-based investment philosophy. She and her team make their determinations on a bottom-up basis using data to inform their decision making, and then opportunistically invest in good businesses when they are temporarily undervalued. Interestingly, like Capitalize for Kids, Sionna looks for managers of businesses that are vivid spirits that inspire their employees, clients, suppliers and, in the public markets, shareholders. Given the significant divergence of market-sector performances during the COVID-19 pandemic, there would appear to be much to choose from for Kim’s best idea; in 2018, she pitched CI Financial as a buy.

Following Kim’s presentation, we will break for two hours for lunch, but you will definitely want to make it back for the afternoon session!

Special thanks to all our sponsors, and please contact [email protected] if you would like to add your company to this notable list:

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