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Zevin Asset Management was founded by Robert Zevin, a pioneer of socially responsible investing whose career in the field began in 1967, nearly a decade before the term had entered common use.

Long before "ESG" entered the mainstream lexicon, Robert challenged the traditional Wall Street paradigm. He operated from a deeply held conviction that capital could, and must, be used as a tool for social justice, human rights and environmental stewardship. He believed that investors did not need to sacrifice their values to pursue financial security, and he built his practice around that conviction.

A Harvard PhD in economics, Robert taught at Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Boston University, UMass Amherst and Simmons College, and published two books and numerous articles on economic history and social policy. In 1975 he started what is now Walden Asset Management, the first explicit socially responsible investment unit inside any bank. Seven years later, he was a principal architect of the first Calvert Social Investment Fund.

He was a leader in the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa - giving testimony, performing studies and engaging in public debate across cities, states and universities. His 1987 expert testimony in defense of the Baltimore pension funds' right to divest led to a precedent-setting legal decision. He recognised early that holding a share of a company gave investors both the right and the responsibility to demand better corporate behaviour.

His commitment to change extended well beyond finance. Robert co-founded and led organisations including Resist, which opposed the war in Vietnam; the Haymarket Foundation; Affirmative Investments, focused on direct community investment; and Shared Interest, which has supported the informal economy in South Africa since 1996. His activism, carried out in boardrooms and in the streets, led to arrests and beatings as well as policy change.

He was also unsparing in his criticism of the field he helped build. He mourned that the movement he helped create had morphed into an industry driven more by commercial incentive than conviction, and he was unapologetically critical of greenwashing and impact washing wherever he found it. He described his own perspective in a GreenMoney essay and in a Bloomberg documentary made a few years before his passing.

When Robert founded Zevin Asset Management in 1997, he built it with uncompromising ethical standards. A firm for investors who wanted their portfolios to reflect a vision for a more equitable and sustainable world. He mentored and trained many people across the social investing movement, both as employees and as friends.

In 2010, as part of his succession plan, Robert did something virtually unheard of in the financial industry: he gifted the firm to its employees. While standard industry practice restricts ownership to senior executives or investment staff who can afford to buy in, Robert rejected that model. To this day, units from subsequent share issuances are gifted to all tenured staff every two years rather than sold. It was a tangible, lasting reflection of his commitment to economic justice.

Zevin Asset Management carries that legacy forward.

Links:

GreenMoney Essay: https://greenmoney.com/socially-responsible-investing-whence-did-we-come-and-whither-are-we-going/

Bloomberg Documentary: https://www.zevin.com/news-views/bloomberg-documentary