Carrie Rich, 37, loves doing her part to make the world a better place.
Rich is currently the CEO of The Global Good Fund nonprofit. While this was not her intended career path, Rich always knew that she wanted to do something to make the world a better place.
Deciding she wanted to work with hospitals, Rich left her hometown in Massachusetts to pursue an undergraduate degree from Lehigh University. After graduating, Rich went to Georgetown University for health administration.
Rich, her husband Darren Margolis and their three children live in Glenwood. They belong to Beth Shalom Congregation, Beth Tfiloh Congregation, B’nai Israel and Chabad of Downtown.
How did you end up in Maryland?
I lived in D.C. for about a decade and met my husband at a charity event on Christmas Eve. He grew up in Pikesville. We were commuting back and forth and got married and had kids, and needed a place to live, so we ended up in Baltimore.
What do you do for work?
I wear a few hats. The main one is I’ve been the CEO of a nonprofit organization for the last 10 years called The Global Good Fund, which supports the leadership of social entrepreneurs around the globe, across the United States and in 40 countries globally. We find entrepreneurs who are running businesses for social good and help them grow through personal development, coaching, mentoring and philanthropy.
Did you know you wanted to do this job when you were younger?
No. My dream was to learn how to run hospitals, and that’s what I went to graduate school for. For me, that was the business of helping people. I have always been thinking about that and how to help others. I went to work at Inova health system after graduate school and worked for the CEO there. He really invested in my personal development. That became the impetus for The Global Good Fund, which is where I currently work. He and I ended up co-founding the nonprofit. The premise was, if you could put emerging leaders who care about making the world a better place with experienced business executives who want to convert their professional success into social significance and put some targeted capital behind that pairing, it could be incredible for social good.
What is your favorite part about your job?
I get to make the world a better place.
I also manage a venture capital fund that exclusively invests in social impact companies for financial returns. As the nonprofit grew, these social entrepreneurs, for their leadership development, needed increasing access to capital. We would refer the entrepreneurs to venture capitalists who would make great money on these businesses that the nonprofit had done all this work to support. This bothered me because the nonprofit should benefit in some way, but we didn’t have a structure to do that. So, it got rejected first 100 times, then 400 times. We’ve run two funds now.
At first, I really thought maybe someone who’s a more experienced venture capitalist should do this because that’s not my background. But what I learned is it’s really about relationships and being able to choose great people to take a bet on. It’s been very fulfilling because the people we’ve invested in are not typically who the market invests in and yet they’re producing very impressive financial returns that are as good or better than traditional VC funds and are socially impactful businesses.
How would you describe your relationship with Judaism?
Judaism is a foundational part of my life. It’s a guiding part of my life to repair the world.
