Marcela I. Pinilla
Director of Sustainable Investing
Download Q3 2025 Impact Update
At Zevin Asset Management, we view our fiduciary duty to our clients as inseparable from our responsibilities as global citizens. Through this quarter’s update we hope to give our readers a window into how we continue to contribute to shaping a more sustainable and just economy while stewarding clients’ capital responsibly.
From Parking Lots to Police Databases: Home Depot’s Data Privacy Dilemma
Home Depot stores are an informal hub for day laborers and this summer became the sites of multiple ICE raids, putting workers and customers in danger. Home Depot’s partnership with Flock Safety, a private surveillance company whose automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras track vehicles and feed data into massive police databases have fueled these raids.
This means Home Depot’s cameras could be funneling customer and worker data directly into federal databases—without transparency, oversight, or consent. Home Depot is risking community trust, customer and employee data privacy, and its own reputation by being opaque about its relationship to a company that has enabled discriminatory targeting and detention. In our letter to the company, we have underscored the growing concerns around data privacy risk as well as the impact that immigration enforcement has on the business. While the human cost of the raids is clear, they also bring material business risks: reduced staffing, delayed workflows, disrupted sales, and reputational damage. Our letter, co-signed by forty institutions representing roughly $326 billion in assets under management, urges the company to provide clarity on how it manages and mitigates these risks.
Technology and Human Rights
We are also confronting a broader pattern of the misuse of major technology companies’ products and services in ways that undermine human rights. While the exact chain of accountability is opaque—privacy structures and contractual arrangements often obscure who knows what—evidence continues to surface that Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others have supplied technologies later linked to surveillance, censorship, or targeting of vulnerable populations around the world. Against this backdrop, we have co-filed a shareholder resolution with Microsoft. Our request is straightforward: commission a third-party report assessing whether Microsoft’s human rights due diligence process is effective at preventing customer misuse of AI and cloud products in ways that violate international humanitarian law.
Safeguarding Foundational Climate Policy
Closer to home, we partnered with Ceres’ on a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urging the preservation of the 2009 Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gases. This policy underpins EPA’s authority to regulate emissions from power plants, vehicles, and other sectors. It has survived legal and political challenges for more than a decade because the science is clear: greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
We also joined a coalition of businesses and investors opposing the EPA’s proposal to repeal greenhouse gas standards for fossil fuel power plants. Our message to policymakers is simple: long-term policy certainty is not an obstacle to growth. In fact, it is essential for business planning and capital investment, encouraging innovation and cementing U.S. competitiveness in clean technologies. Rolling back foundational climate protections would only inject uncertainty into markets, chilling the very innovation our economy needs.
Safeguarding Foundational Climate Policy
Sustainable investing is not just about climate—it is about justice and access to pathways to dignified work. That is why we are proud to support the Road to Opportunity Act (H.3662 and S.2368). This bipartisan legislation would prevent Massachusetts from suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid fines and fees unrelated to driving.
Showing up in the halls of Congress
The reform may seem technical, but the implications are vast: millions of people lose access to jobs when they lose their licenses for reasons unrelated to road safety. Employers lose reliable workers, families lose income, and communities lose stability. Ending this practice would directly reduce employment barriers and strengthen local economies.
Earlier this month, Zevin Asset Management’s president Sonia Kowal attended a Hill Day in Washington DC with a coalition of investor advocacy organizations and their members in support of impact and sustainable investing practices organized by Ceres, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and US SIF. Our group met with congressional offices on both sides of the aisle to discuss shareholder rights and the freedom to invest and elevated how the recent budget cuts are harming women and children domestically and overseas.
A look into the work environment and the interaction between man and machine brought the stark reality of an Amazon worker’s life into focus. Working full-time at the fulfillment center involves a ten-hour shift that includes two fifteen-minute breaks and one thirty-minute break. Unfortunately, there did not seem to be an inviting space outside to enjoy that break, as the lunch tables were also inside the warehouse, within the whirring orb of sound and machinery.
In September Amazon announced that it had hit its fastest Prime delivery speeds in the US and around the world, with more than 5 billion items arriving the same or next day globally. There is a rigidity needed to proceed uninterrupted that feels out of sync with the human pace of work. We walked through packaging areas, labeling and sorting areas. One Associate stood in front of a tall pile of flattened boxes. He took one, folded it into a box, placed the precisely measured tape on the box that then went on the conveyor belt. The process is repeated.
As Amazon continues to automate processes and will rely on fewer people, human intervention continues to be essential. The company has taken positive steps by making significant investments in raising the starting average wages for all Associates to $22 per hour and has now adopted flexible scheduling, which it did not have in place prior to the COVID pandemic. Encouragingly, employees can sign up for benefits from day one, something that used to be a ninety-day waiting period.
Once outside, after a nearly three-hour visit, the constant humming of miles of moving conveyor belts was replaced by relative quiet, only subtle traffic sounds within hearing distance. As there was no natural light inside, my eyes slowly adjusted back. As Amazon continues to solicit employee feedback to improve its workplace, there is a lot of runway for reimagining work environments that prioritize worker wellbeing as equally as its customers’ satisfaction.
Always Looking Ahead
Across each of these engagements, our approach remains the same: to raise difficult questions, to collaborate with peers, and to press for solutions that safeguard both human dignity and financial value. We know that these issues are complex. We also know that silence is not a responsible option.
As ever, we are grateful for your partnership. Your trust allows us to engage companies, stakeholders, and policymakers with both humility and conviction. We welcome your thoughts, questions, and reflections on this work.
Thank you for reading and sharing. For more on this work and our broader advocacy, visit our website, and join us on LinkedIn and Facebook & instagram. And please don’t hesitate to contact Marcela Pinilla, Zevin Asset Management’s director of sustainable investing, at marcela@zevin.com with your questions, thoughts, and suggestions.
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