Imperative Fund Joins Forces With Researchers at Columbia University to Develop Scientific Framework to Eliminate Poverty in a Mass-Scale

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Jan 19, 2016) - The Imperative Fund, a company which focuses on Sustainable Community Development™, is redefining Impact Investing with a model that can lift communities out of poverty in 5 years or less while generating market competitive returns, today announced that in collaboration with researchers at Columbia University, it has developed a mathematical framework that optimizes poverty elimination and investor returns. This framework, developed by Imperative in conjunction with faculty and graduate students at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, will start being implemented in January 2016 in Escárcega, the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico with a population of 2,000.

Through its investment framework, Imperative aspires to become the leading fund working on bringing communities out of poverty, without being dependent on local, central or federal government support. Furthermore, Imperative envisions becoming an outsourcing alternative for governments as they strive to provide access to all goods and services required to mobilize a community to its next level of social, economic and environmental sustainability. By harnessing today's financial and technological innovations within an open market economy, Imperative's framework eliminates the association between low-income and poverty.

CEO and co-founder Camilo Galvis says: "We are very excited to have developed a rigorous mathematical model to optimally guide our investment process. Following this breakthrough, we are now focused on the successful implementation of our first project in Mexico in 2016. By lifting an entire community out of poverty and generating competitive returns on investment, we would then be set to move on to replicate this work at a much larger scale and under the guidance of a model that aims to tackle poverty elimination and social mobility at an industrial pace, in those communities that can benefit from our approach."

The Imperative Fund and its investment by-laws:
The Imperative Fund selectively chooses social enterprises with expertise in different social and environmental areas, and bundles them together to deliver a holistic service tailored to the needs of an individual community. This work is performed by committing to 6 specific by-laws that serve as ground rules for its work and are also embedded in its investment model. Although an investment committee ensures that all investment funds closely follow Imperative's by-laws, to minimize human error, the Imperative Fund worked on developing a mathematical model that provides an optimal solution to the best use of funds to eliminate poverty while maximizing returns. This model was translated into an algorithm for continuous implementation.

Co-founder Angélica Fuentes says: "Our goal is to provide innovative and efficient solutions to reduce poverty in developing countries. I feel excited and proud to be part of this project. The Imperative Fund will foster economic, social and institutional transformation towards sustainable development. We will continue our efforts to implement this model around Latin America and prove that it is possible to bring communities out of poverty in 5 years or less, while generating market competitive returns."

Mathematical model and algorithm:
Based on 5 years of field work, within 6 months the Imperative Fund together with faculty and graduate students at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, designed a mathematical framework that ensures the best allocation of capital and the best combination of services that maximizes the number of individuals brought out of poverty, while also maximizing the return on any invested capital for this purpose. The mathematical model has been translated into an algorithm that can compute this allocation efficiently and accurately. The final version of this solution will be ready to use by the Fund during the 2^nd Quarter of 2016.

For media inquiries and for more information about how to participate with the Pilot Sustainable Community Development (SCD) project or future projects, please contact Matthew Bird at - matt.bird@1800pr.com / support@1800pr.com

About CEO and co-founder Camilo Galvis
Camilo Galvis is the CEO of Imperative Advisors, LLC and the Director of the Angelica Fuentes Foundation, a NYC based non-for-profit focused on women economic empowerment and gender equality in the Americas. Mr. Galvis has also been serving as a researcher at Columbia University in New York City.

About co-founder Angélica Fuentes
Angélica Fuentes is one of Latin America's most prominent businesswomen and committed philanthropist, having served as CEO of a global nutrition company, an international cosmetics brand, and a major natural gas distributor.

She currently co-chairs the Mexico Gender Parity Taskforce, a World Economic Forum initiative; she serves on Secretary Clinton's International Council on Women's Business Leadership; is member of the Private Sector Leadership Advisory Council of UN Women and is a Global Advocate for the Girl Up Campaign, a United Nations Foundation program.

The research team behind the mathematical framework
Soulaymane Kachani, Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and Senior Vice Dean of Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, and candidates for the Master of Science in Management Science and Engineering Ali Youssef, Shouryadipta Sarkar, Umair Mesiya, Bill (Chenze) Bao, Sunny Agarwal, Ankit Manoj Jain, WeijiaHuang, Jiaming Liu joined Imperative's co-founders Angélica Fuentes and Camilo Galvis, and COO Rodrigo Bravo in the development of the framework.

About The Imperative Fund
The Imperative Fund works on sustainably lifting communities out of poverty, in 5 years or less, while recovering 100% of the invested funds and generating market competitive returns. In implementing its model, Imperative aspires to become the most efficient Fund/Company working to bring communities out of poverty, without being dependent on local, central or federal government support. Furthermore, Imperative envisions becoming an outsourcing alternative for governments in their strive to provide access to all the goods and services required to mobilize a community to its next level of social and economic development and environmental sustainability.

By harnessing today's financial and technological innovation within an open market economy, Imperative's framework eliminates the association between low-income and poverty. Through a private fund investment strategy built on rigorous by-laws, algorithmic computation and Asociological analysis, Imperative bundles social enterprises to deliver a suite of goods and services tailored to the needs of each community.

For more information, please visit: www.imperativefund.com