Yesterday was a classic Chicago Fall transition day. The gray sky, rain tapping against the windows, and a room full of investment professionals dressed in conservative suits, each one fluent in the language of risk and yield.

I love the Chicago SRI/ESG/Impact quarterly breakfast crowd, where I get a chance to change gears, think a little differently and catch the pulse of investors. As a strategy advisor to startups and mentor at Chicago’s mHUB, I spend most of my time with builders and founders. They live in the world of prototypes and payroll, not portfolios. But yesterday morning reminded me how far the investment world has come. Their metrics increasingly connect to those who actually make things—impacting the people wearing the working shoes on the ground of our local economies.

The Panel session, hosted by University of Chicago Booth Rustandy Center, was led by Shari Gilfillan, SVP, Senior Client Investment Officer / Not-for-Profit OCIO at Northern Trust Asset Management and featured Noelle Laing, Chief Investment Officer, Builders Vision and Stephen M. Liberatore, CFA®, Portfolio Manager, Head of ESG/Impact, Global Fixed Income, Nuveen. The discussion focus referenced the new Scaling Solutions paper.

Their premise was simple and radical:
impact investing doesn’t belong only to private equity. Fixed income—the largest asset class in the world—is where scalable solutions live.

The crowd tuned in to the panel room leaned forward when one speaker noted that ESG investments drive true Long Term returns. Impact needs Long Term capital and fixed income already funds most of what we call civilization—roads, housing, hospitals, and energy grids. Why shouldn’t it also fund climate resilience, local manufacturing, and circular fashion? If bonds can rebuild bridges, they can also rebuild supply chains.

The data I found later reviewing Scaling Solutions paper was hard to ignore:

• The global fixed income market now tops $141 trillion, over half of all investable assets.
• Yet only 12% of all impact investing assets—around $189 billion—sit in fixed income.
• Impact-labeled bonds (green, social, or sustainable) surpassed $5 trillion in cumulative issuance last year and are growing by roughly $1 trillion annually.

This isn’t theoretical capital. It’s the capital that builds neighborhoods. It’s the tool that can fund textile recycling, local material innovation, and sustainable manufacturing infrastructure right here in Chicago. The challenge may be convincing people of the alternative value possible from revitalizing local economies is worth the offset variation in returns from unrestricted geographic investments,

My day ended with a fitting bookend at MHUB for the Rewoven Runway—a showcase of Chicago designers bringing sustainability to the catwalk. The designers’ materials were reclaimed, their methods inventive, and their resolve fierce. The program kicked off the conversation challenging the status quo, and described the struggles to find local textile mills, dyers, or fabric finishers. Chicago once was buzzing with large scale production and a vibrant Apparel industry. Today, nearly all are gone.

Watching those garments move under the lights, I realized the same question from that morning applied here: what would it look like if our financial systems helped close the loop between creativity and capacity?

Imagine a Chicago textile bond—debt financing that helps modernize small batch manufacturing, fund fiber recycling facilities, or retrofit underused industrial spaces for circular production. This could keep money and materials circulating locally while giving investors the transparency, liquidity, and measurable impact they increasingly demand.

Both conversations—morning and evening—pointed to the same truth: we don’t lack ideas or creativity. We lack the connective tissue of finance and production.

Builders Vision calls fixed income “an anchor for resilience.” They’re right. If impact investing is about building what lasts, then Chicago’s creative economy deserves to be part of that portfolio.

The opportunity is sitting in plain sight. We just have to start seeing bonds as more than paper—they’re stitches in the fabric of a sustainable future.