Longtime financial backers of liberals, VCs are now running for office themselves — and it’s causing a stir.

On a blistering Baltimore County day when temperatures would reach the mid-90s, former NAACP president Ben Jealous should have been in friendly territory as seven Democrats endorsed him during the outdoor press conference. But just a few blocks away, his opponent, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, was announcing an endorsement from one of Jealous’ own party members, Democrat state Sen. James Brochin, who accused Jealous of pulling the party too far to the left. The intraparty betrayal came after recent Republican ads and Hogan himself had accused Jealous of being a socialist.

So Jealous swung to the other extreme. “What I am is a venture capitalist, and what I do is invest in growing businesses,” responded Jealous, who has been a Maryland-based partner at Oakland, California, firm Kapor Capital since 2014.

Jennifer King is the Carolina Panthers’ first female coaching intern, but football remains a man’s world.

Jennifer King knows she has to study twice as hard. Even before she became the Carolina Panthers’ first female coaching intern, she pored over playbooks and delved into areas of football strategy she felt were a weakness. Mind you, this was on top of her highly successful day job as head coach of the women’s basketball team at Johnson & Wales University — where she won a Division II national championship and was named national coach of the year this spring.

This self-evaluation tool is helping families in 30 countries pull themselves out of poverty and offering organizations insight into their efficacy.

Over midafternoon coffees and Fantas, Robyn-Lee Abrahams and Joyce Paulse — employees at my local supermarket in Cape Town, South Africa — tell me how their lives have changed in the past 18 months. “I never dreamed my daughter would go to college,” says Paulse. “But yesterday we went online together and started filling in the forms.”

Abrahams notes how she used to live hand to mouth. “But now I’ve got a savings account, which I haven’t ever touched.” The sacrifice? “I eat less chocolate now.”

Paulse and Abrahams are just two of thousands of beneficiaries of the Poverty Stoplight, a self-evaluation tool that’s now redefining poverty in countries as diverse as Argentina and the U.K.; Mexico and Tanzania; Chile and Papua New Guinea. By getting families to rank their own economic condition red, yellow or green based upon 50 indicators, the Poverty Stoplight gives families the agency to pull themselves out of poverty and offers organizations insight into whether their programs are working.