About Us
“The Sketch May Have Taken Me Five Minutes, But the Learning Took Me 30 Years”
~ Pablo Picasso
Our Story
Modern business owners and leaders are the most important people in the sustainable future room.
Today, the savviest of them are embracing ways to deliver the futures highest and most sustainable corporate profits, while also having the greatest positive impact on their communities and the environment.
They can do to this because of a small group of passionate business leaders who clearly saw the future of leadership and management. One of those was the Founder and Chairman of In Place Impact, who also happens to be our father.
"To prove his point, Stuart subsequently used his own "profit for purpose" leadership and management models to create almost $1Billion in realized shareholder value from the companies he started and sold, and or worked with".
~ Art Condodina
Impact Investor
In 1993, Stuart Williams co-created the first global platform of "Making A Profit While Making A Difference" for which he was awarded a Trademark. Today, more commonly known as "Leadership and Management Through the Lens of Profit for Purpose", it is clear to see from examples such as Larry Fink's Letter to CEO's, and, The Business Roundtable's Commitment to value all stakeholders equally, that global business leaders are embracing his work.
"The futures highest and most sustainable corporate profits will be delivered by owners and executives who embrace, embed, manage, and measure Leadership and Management Through the Lens of profit for Purpose".
Stuart M. WIlliams
Founder & Chairman
In Place Impact
By 1998, Stuart was tired of listening to Changemakers malign businesses and their owners, and he had also become frustrated that the organizations he supported through donations for causes he cared about were not putting a dent in those problems. Knowing that his platform of "Making a Profit While Making a Difference" worked, he started designing a new model of change making that would use business and economics to solve socioeconomic and environmental problems. It was important to him that it be inclusive of marginalized people as solution innovators, in addition to being solution recipients.
In 2006, Stuart and his partner sold the company they had started in 1991, and after an 18-month transition and another sale, by 2008 our family was ready to work on Stuart's vision on a full-time basis.
Today, Impact Economics is a community-centric, fully inclusive, circular economy that can be embedded in any country, city, or community in the world. It uses business and economics to increase innovation and economic vibrancy within every segment of a community, while providing every resident with at least the opportunity to participate in and personally benefit from contributing to a sustainable future. When economic vibrancy is increased in every segment or sector of a community, and for every resident, the multiple effects of a lack of economic vibrancy (that no one can seem to fix) start to be eradicated.
Today, In Place Impact focuses on 3 main areas:
Today, we are the only organization in the world that uses Impact Economics so that in the normal course of helping businesses become more profitable, sustainable and impactful to their communities, ALL community stakeholders achieve and exceed their goals. It naturally helps communities become economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable for ALL residents. It is all done through business and economics, no one is asked to give up or donate their gains, and it has a heavy focus on helping communities attain the United Nations SDGs.
Headquartered in Charleston, SC, and after live testing the model for 7-years, we are now rolling it out across the world. We are doing this via the creation a Certification model that aligns with the thesis of "Make A Profit, While Making a Difference".
Our father is still our role model and is still very much leading the charge. If you want to read more about him you can visit his LinkedIn profile, or this recent article on him "The Person Who May Have Reinvented Capitalism".
Needless to say, we are a family business that chose to focus on "Making A Profit While Making a Difference".
Kind regards, Emily, Alexander, and Olivia Williams.
Timeline
1993 - "Making A Profit While Making A Difference"
1998 - The decision to start designing a new inclusive economic model
2008 - The work becomes full-time
2010 - After 2 years of global focus groups in marginalized community segments, we felt that we had separated the hidden root cause of many of the world's problems from the effects that we see and have been trying to solve
2011 - Using the research, data, and information gathered between
2008 and 2010, the framework of Impact Economics was designed
2012 – We commenced live testing Impact Economics in communities
2019 - We had proven Impact Economics works and we held our first Certification class
2020 – The Pandemic and a realization that a new model was desperately needed
2022 - Impact Economics starts scaling across the world (see "Locations")