With the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2025, many in the international development sector have worked hard to pivot, using their skills and experience in different ways to continue to improve lives. In the Future of Development Work series, SFS faculty weigh in on the ways in which international development professionals can continue to thrive and build careers of impact.
Rehana Nathoo, adjunct faculty member in SFS’ Global Human Development master’s program, is the founder & CEO of Spectrum Impact, a boutique consulting firm that supports a range of organizations looking to expand their impact investing and ESG footprint. Here, she examines why the future of development depends on cross-sector fluency—specifically, the ability to understand and mobilize private capital alongside public and philanthropic resources to address complex global challenges.
The Sustainable Development Goals—17 global targets adopted by UN member states in 2015—represent an ambitious blueprint for reducing poverty, advancing equity and safeguarding the planet by 2030. Every few years, UN agencies and their partners recalculate the SDG Financing Gap—a figure meant to represent the resources required to achieve these goals. By the latest estimates, that gap has soared to $4.2 trillion USD annually—nearly double its pre-pandemic size.
Traditional sources like public budgets, bilateral aid and philanthropy simply don’t have the capacity to close it. Take 2023, for example. Though hard to pin down a precise figure, these historical sources of funding totaled around $300 billion USD in capital. In the same year, global markets were valued at $213 trillion USD. Public and philanthropic flows could only cover about 7% of the financing gap, even under generous assumptions. The capital markets could finance that deficit more than 50 times over.
And yet, the private sector is still treated as a separate sphere—adjacent to development, but not integral to it. Yes, our classic financial systems have played a role in creating some of our current development challenges. But they also hold the financial power to advance progress in unprecedented ways.
Global development is no longer a purely public endeavor. Private finance is already shaping infrastructure, health systems, education access, climate adaptation and beyond. The question isn’t whether private capital should be involved—it already is. The question is: who gets to influence how it’s deployed?
This is where the development field needs to evolve—and quickly. Impact investing— an investment strategy that deploys capital with the intention to generate positive, measurable social or environmental impact alongside a financial return—offers a compelling path forward. Once a niche strategy, it now commands $1.57 trillion in assets under management globally, having grown from fringe experiment to institutional-ready strategy. But scale isn’t enough. The effectiveness of this capital depends on how well it’s targeted, governed and measured.
Doing that well requires a different kind of professional—not someone who merely learns the language of finance, but someone who understands how capital shapes power. Someone trained to navigate both development theory and market dynamics. Someone who can think systemically across incentives, risks and outcomes. Who can be honest about both the opportunity of capital and its limitations. Who sees incremental, rigorous progress as the achievement that it is. I have been thrilled to watch GHD students embrace this new way of thinking in my Impact Investing & Blended Finance in Global Development course.
That mindset shift is urgent. Because despite all the momentum, serious challenges remain. Reliable impact data is still elusive. Local capital markets remain thin. And too many so-called “impact” funds aren’t impactful at all—just slapping the right labels on the same old things. Without a workforce capable of navigating those tradeoffs—and calling them out—we risk losing a narrowing window to have real impact.
If you’re a student or early-career professional thinking about a future in development, consider making work with private capital your competitive advantage. Study it, challenge it and engage with it. Our field needs more translators, bridge-builders and systems thinkers who can operate across the public-private divide and who know how to make capital serve the public good.