“To me, catalytic capital is the kind of capital that steps into spaces where others won’t. ”
— Yasemin Saltuk Lamy
My guest today is Yasemin Saltuk Lamy, Head of Investment Strategy at Legal & General (L&G), a London-based multinational financial services and asset management company. And believe it or not, her investment journey started when she was only 18.
Back then, she had been dreaming of studying in Senegal to experience a French-speaking African economy. But then, the University of Pennsylvania’s study abroad office made her an offer she couldn’t ignore: a $12,000 scholarship to study in Scotland.
For most students, that would have been a no-brainer – they would have spent it on books, rent, or maybe a bit of travel… But Yasemin saw it as an investment opportunity.
She did the math, figured she could live on $6,000, and put the rest into high-growth equities. It was 1998, the height of the dot-com boom. Her investment skyrocketed – until the bubble burst. Long story short, it took nearly a decade just to break even.
It was a tough experience at such a young age, but a powerful one. Watching markets rise and fall, she realized she wanted to understand the bigger picture – how economies impact people’s lives.
And she had a strong background for that. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Yasemin grew up between two worlds. After a military coup d’état, her parents moved the family to the U.S., settling in Rhode Island.
Every summer, she returned to Turkey, experiencing firsthand the stark economic contrasts between her two homes. In the U.S., she valued independence and opportunity. In Turkey, she saw the power of family networks and community-driven economies.
But it wasn’t until she moved back to Turkey as an adult that she truly felt the financial instability of inflation. She then abandoned her plan to pursue a Ph.D. in pure mathematics and instead studied financial mathematics at King’s College London.
However, before stepping into finance, she spent time teaching high school math. That experience taught her more about leadership, influence, responsibility, and performance than any boardroom ever could.
She was well-prepared for impact investing and moved into the space about 20 years ago. Since then, she’s been a pioneer in impact-driven finance, working at J.P. Morgan, British International Investment (BII), and now Legal & General.
At J.P. Morgan, Yasemin helped launch the Social Finance Team, shaping impact investing as an asset class and managing a $100 million portfolio for early-stage impact funds.
At BII, she led the Catalyst Portfolio, growing it from $300 million to $1.6 billion, using catalytic capital to bring private investors into emerging markets and climate-focused projects. Her focus was on de-risking investments, making impact-driven finance more mainstream, and channeling capital toward sustainability and inclusion.
At Legal & General, Yasemin is focused on bridging the gap between institutional capital and sustainable investments. She’s using her experience with catalytic capital to make high-impact projects – especially in climate resilience and infrastructure – less risky and more attractive to traditional investors like pension funds and insurers.
In this interview, Yasemin breaks down how catalytic capital is transforming impact investing and why pension funds have a duty to invest in the right things to protect long-term asset value.
The future of finance isn’t just about returns – it’s about reshaping the system to work for people and the planet. Tune in to hear how Yasemin is making it happen.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
SHOW NOTES:
[00:00] Introduction
[04:02] Yasemin’s childhood in Turkey and the U.S.
[11:00] Yasemin’s first investment at 18 and lessons from the dot-com bubble
[13:21] Be a woman in science, you will stand out
[20:53] Entry into finance and impact investing
[25:54] Co-founding J.P. Morgan’s Social Finance team and defining impact investing
[28:45] Working with the UK government & Bill Gates on the Dementia Discovery Fund
[31:28] Joining Omidyar Network
[34:53] Moving to CDC Group (now BII): Do good without losing money
[43:48] BII’s impact framework and risk mitigation strategy
[49:24] What is catalytic capital and how it mobilizes private finance
[53:58] Joining Legal & General (a high-level overview)
[58:13] The role of pension funds in climate-focused investing
[01:05:45] Future of impact investing
[01:08:22] Rapid fire questions
MORE YASEMIN SALTUK LAMY QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW:
“I think we need to think about impact as an intrinsic variable that exists whether you like it or not. ”
— Yasemin Saltuk Lamy
“J.P. Morgan’s Social Finance team started as an experiment – we believed in building a business that combined societal values with financial returns. In 2010, we declared impact investing an emerging asset class and defined it as investing with the intent to create positive social or environmental outcomes. ”
— Yasemin Saltuk Lamy
