The post’s title says it all - almost. Yes, Acumen Fund founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz has written a book - it will be published in early March. Entitled The Blue Sweater, the book is part memoir, part manifesto - a personal history trafficking in the lessons of Jacqueline’s life. Those lessons inevitably include many of the core values on which she founded Acumen Fund: respect, generosity, accountability, humility, audacity.
Earlier this evening, New York Times syndicated columnist Nicholas Kristof posted a review of The Blue Sweater on his blog, On the Ground. His entry is entitled Investing to fight poverty:
One of the most interesting innovators in aid and development is Jacqueline Novogratz, a New Yorker, the CEO of the Acumen Fund. She is, what? An aid worker? A banker? A bleeding-heart venture capitalist? A tough-minded philanthropist? All of the above?
On my Southeast Asia swing, I read an advance copy of her memoir, “The Blue Sweater,” which will be published in February [actually, March 3], and it’s a terrific and sober-minded look at the complexities of doing good. She acknowledges that helping people is much harder than it looks, and that donors need to do more listening and less instructing – yet at the end of the day, she believes there are things we can do that really do make a powerful difference to the world’s neediest.
Browse to Kristof’s blog and check out the review: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/investing-to-fight-poverty/
You can learn more about The Blue Sweater at http://www.thebluesweater.com


