President and FounderCriterion Institute
Joy Anderson is a prominent national leader at the intersection of business and social change. She began as a high school teacher in New York City Public Schools. She went to New York to understand how power works in big systems and stayed for eight years because she fell in love with the students.
Joy’s leadership and expertise have been at the forefront of the development of the social capital markets over the last 12 years. Her interest in the role of finance in changing the world was sparked during her eight-year consulting relationship with the General Board of Pensions of the United Methodist Church. As her interest deepened so did her leadership, co-founding Good Capital with Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones in 2006 and serving as founding chair on the board of Village Capital. She was instrumental in her board position at InFaith Community Foundation in their recent allocation to social investment and launch of a $10 million Gender Lens Investing portfolio, and as founding
investment committee chair. As a recognition of her business leadership, in 2011, Joy was ranked 51st in Fast Company’s annual of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.
Joy’s intellectual interests draw on her research for her Ph.D. in American History from New York University. Her dissertation examined prison reform in the 1830s and how individuals and organizations in democracies claim expertise in order to shape public institutions.
Joy lives with her husband and daughter in a Connecticut apple orchard, and can be found in the fall pressing cider and boiling apple syrup.