Social Responsibility

How Can Investors Help Confront Racial Injustice?

Download a PDF of this Impact Brief

Here is an update of our 2017 paper on racial justice and investing, renewed to reflect more recent events, engagements, and developments that we are trying to press in our field.

Inequality and injustice based on race were founding economic realities of American life. Two centuries later, inequality, abuse, and discrimination are still present in every sector — in education, housing, healthcare, and policing. In spite of halting progress, our economy, and our capital markets specifically, are still systematic in failing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities, continuing to extract value from them, and profiting — and thereby contributing to — their further marginalization and carceration. Not surprisingly, those conditions shape businesses’ risks and opportunities. This paper discusses integrating racial justice into investment — both with an analytical lens and an economic reality. Doing so helps us protect the value of our portfolios and channel our clients’ voices to help create positive change.

To read more download a PDF of this Impact Brief.

Responsible Investment and Divestment: Our Testimony

Another year has begun with climate catastrophe bearing down on our civilization. Two years after historic bushfires, Australia is now facing the worst flooding in decades. NATO is warning about an intensification of climate change’s effects, which could “lead to more extreme weather, to droughts and to flooding, force people to move, to more fierce competition about scarce resources, water, land.” This is already obvious for poor and marginalized communities like the “climate migrants” facing human rights violations at the US-Mexico border.

How I Learned to Start Worrying (About Values) and Escape Traditional Investing

I came to my work in socially responsible investing because I was bothered by the inconsistencies between the ethical lifestyle I was trying to lead and the investments I was making in my professional life. I came to realize that no matter what I did at home in terms of supporting environmental or social causes or being a conscious consumer, these positive behaviors and consumer choices were dwarfed by the negative effects of the investments I was making as an equity analyst and portfolio manager at a large conventional asset management firm.

Honoring Hiroshima & Nagasaki by working to de-fund the military-industrial complex

This month we remember the United States bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago. On August 6 and August 9, 1945, those cities were destroyed, instantly killing or injuring at least 200,000 people. The bombings scarred the lives of the survivors, the hibakusha — many of whom succumbed to related diseases years later and the last of whom mark this anniversary with us. The bombings also shaped the last 75 years of global politics and forced us to question our belief in a positive future for humankind.