The Sustainable Finance Podcast

Today’s SFP guest believes that in the future energy will be clean, resilient, abundant, and free. Harnessing that energy will allow us to preserve wild places and protect the magic of our natural world, while propelling us to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond. Nick Davis, CEO at GridMarket.com, believes that we all have a role to play in the giant leaps that AI and energy abundance will produce for humanity. Nick also believes that harnessing the power of GridMarket’s subscription service in partnership with companies like GRP/Wegmanm will redefine clean energy projects, embracing state-of-the-art technology and AI to pinpoint, optimize, and execute renewable energy solutions with unmatched precision.

Andrea Longton is an award-winning author and professional social justice investor. She has raised over 1 billion dollars for social justice investments in the United States and has advised on another 1.5 billion dollars worldwide. Andrea’s new book is titled The Social Justice Investor: Advance Your Values while Building Wealth and will be released this month on April 23rd. Her professional experience includes positions at Opportunity Finance Network, Freddie Mac, Capital Impact Partners, which is now Momentus Capital, and Delphos International. Andrea holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation from the CFA Institute and has worked in structured finance investments, capital markets and change management.

Today’s podcast guest loves to speak with investors and asset managers interested in the sustainable food space. Shila Wattamwar, Founder and CEO of Radiant Global Advisory, is an adviser to companies that are optimizing logistics, reducing supply chain costs and emissions and fostering community engagement as sustainability goals they expect will produce greater ROI and profitability and help them become preferred companies to work for in their industry. She is a Fast Company Impact Council member and a contributing writer on sustainability themes. In a recent article Shila highlighted her framework that maps activities to positive actions, rather than just the issues we face, with the intention of making daily sustainability-focused action more tangible for consumers as well as investors and asset managers.

Tee Ganbold is Co-Founder and CEO at Improvability AI, the Generative AI improvement engine for sustainability. She was Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Clear AI, optimizing supply chains for sustainability utilizing knowledge graphs. Improvability AI enables companies to enhance their sustainability focus and increase profits through the power of AI automation - intuitive AI agents and applications that automate tasks and workflows to lower costs in the business model and supply chains. Clients use the Improvability AI RAG Platform to automate reporting, insights and research based on their private data and documents. They also work with Improvability AI to create their own platforms for clients or teams.

Sustainable Impact investing is at an inflection point in 2024, so where do Radhika Shroff and her Nuveen Private Equity team see value in this type of investing? Their investment thesis is rooted in addressing two critical and inextricably linked problems — inequality and climate change. They believe these problems create attractive impact investment opportunities outside of traditional developed markets that offer investors stability, competitive returns and liquidity for the right asset manager. Climate change knows no boundaries and will impact communities with varying levels of resilience. Nuveen also believes that by targeting the emerging low-income consumer segment, and providing that consumer with goods and services that mitigate carbon emissions and build resilience, they will select companies best positioned to grow and lead in the decades to come.

Many claim that ESG is dead. Our SFP guest today said that “ESG is broken” at NYC Climate Week last year. But ESG teams need ESG software in the same way that finance teams need finance software. Makes sense, but where should businesses start on this software adoption journey? Today followers of the SFP are going to hear from Marjella Lecourt-Alma, CEO and Co-Founder of Datamaran about “Smart ESG”, how it differs from other approaches and what are the benefits for businesses of different sizes and industries? Datamaran is the only software analytics firm in the world that can monitor external risks and opportunities (incl ESG) in real-time. The development of their patented technology is expert-led and fully transparent. Marjella and the Datamaran team believe that companies who care about their success - in an ever evolving world - incorporate material ESG risks and opportunities from the top down.

Amina Zakhnouf is an Investment Officer at the Fund for Innovation in Development (FID), which is hosted by the French government to fight poverty and promote sustainable economic growth. Zakhnouf supported the creation of the Hellenic Development Bank in Greece and backed the Tunisian government’s effort to create a favorable investment ecosystem for start-ups. Amina is also a Co-Founder of “I’m Committed to Africa” (JMA), a public policy incubator launched in 2020 with the mission of giving youth a seat at the table when it comes to Euro-African policy making.

As companies and investors continue to navigate the 3D-reset themes of decarbonization, deglobalization and demographic change, Schroders believes that it is important to consider the practical investment implications of these broad trends. In 2024, Schroders sees investors transitioning from simply thinking of ESG risk management and integration to an increasing focus on sustainable opportunities and themes to harness for value creation. But Sustainability need not be simply a growth-chasing exercise! In fact, Schroders believes that the asset managers who succeed in 2024 will be those that can deliver active management alpha around both valuation and sustainability objectives for clients. As a result, Roberta Barr and Alex Monk are focused on balancing both value and sustainability considerations in their portfolios. On one hand, they agree that “in the long run, the price you pay for something really matters,” and at the same time they believe that it is important to invest in sustainability leaders, companies that can deliver positive societal benefit and are best-in-class versus peers, and will therefore be better placed to navigate change in the future.

Lenka Martinek belongs to an eclectic team of sustainability investing professionals that are partners at SMS & Nordis Capital. She is a portfolio manager in partnership with an economist from the International Monetary Fund, an environmental engineer and the former CIO of a global asset management firm. Their partnership includes a shared belief that financial markets are an important sphere of influence where they can make a contribution to a more sustainable future while creating their own financial livelihoods. They launched their firm from scratch, which has been exhilarating and exhausting and are still very much a startup operation where all partners wear multiple hats and the firm takes an active management approach to investing in sustainability market risks.

According to the United Nations desertification caused by climate change affects a third of Earth’s land surface. This is a growing problem for the 250 million people directly impacted by the degradation of formerly fertile land. Wissal Ben Moussa, Co-founder and Chief Agricultural Officer of Sand to Green, says this Moroccan startup can transform a patch of desert into a sustainable and profitable plantation in five years and the firm’s technology can be deployed anywhere there is a source of brackish water, which Sand to Green desalinates using solar-powered technology. In today’s SFP episode we will unpack some of the opportunities that Sand To Green offers for investors interested in sustainable and profitable agricultural ventures.

When you’re the third-generation co-owner of a company that manufactures plastic bags for your family’s financial well-being, the idea of re-creating your business operations model to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable could easily be the stuff of nightmares, cold sweats and sanity checks. For Trent Romer and Clear View Bag Co., however, sustainability planning has been a way to reduce expenses, increase revenue and generate more profit from the family business. Trent is joining me for this episode of the SFP to discuss how the 60 million small business owners in the U.S. can transition their business operations models toward sustainability by choosing a slingshot versus a moon shot approach.

What sustainability progress have banks and insurers made in the last two years, given the role of financial institutions as a core component of the economy, and bearing in mind their responsibility to uphold the rigour and resilience of their risk management? Equally significant is their social responsibility to offer vital financial support to the development of sustainable global economies. In this episode of the SFP I discuss with Phuong Gomard of Mazars the need for the financial industry to reboot and shift to a more responsible finance model. Gomard is Sustainable Finance Global Leader at Mazars, which has just published it’s 2023 Sustainability practices stocktake for banks and insurers, which contains much of the data we will discuss.

ScopeFour Capital is an investment management firm focused solely on climate solutions in the public equity markets. Founder and CEO Heather Beatty is committed to climate solution investment and the great re-imagination of economic growth by directing capital towards “drawdown”, when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline, thereby stopping human-induced climate change. ScopeFour provides investors with a roadmap to net zero and creates an opportunity to invest in the economic transition to decarbonization. Heather also co-founded Women in Institutional Investments Network (WIIIN), a Los Angeles-based 501c3 as part of her dedication to the advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion in sustainable investment.

Climate-focused philanthropy has increased significantly in recent years, but it’s still insufficient relative to the size and urgency of the challenge. Randall Kempner is a senior advisor at the Energy and Environment Program of The Aspen Institute, and a global leader in advancing policy solutions for critical issues. He joins me today to discuss why less than two percent of global philanthropy is focused on climate-related giving, while 85 percent of all U.S. foundation funders stated in a recent report that climate change was a top three issue. Nevertheless, only one third reported they were “open to considering funding efforts” to address climate change.

More successful employees create financial value for their employers and career opportunities for themselves. Our focus in today’s episode is how Ownership Works supports increasing prosperity through shared ownership, and that’s the mission of this non-profit organization. Executive Director, Anna-Lisa Miller joins me and Gloria Mirrione, Executive Director, and Head of Sustainable Finance & Impact Investing at Acre, Americas. Anna-Lisa will share with us how her firm supports the creation of a culture of ownership that aligns an entire workforce around a common purpose, values and goals to maximize shared wealth creation.

In his role as General Manager of Sustainability Solutions at Microsoft, Mark Kroese leads a team that drives product, customer and market development solutions that help Microsoft realize its goals of becoming a Carbon Negative company. Mark Fischel is the Carbon Product Lead at Novata. They are their launching their brand new tool, the Novata Carbon Navigator in January to radically improve the carbon reporting experience for Novata’s private company platform partners. Both Marks have joined this third episode of the SFP / Novata series on “Demystifying ESG” to help our sustainability-focused investor audience and their companies follow the pathway to decarbonization.

The Climate Bonds Initiative has identified five Hallmarks of a credible climate mitigation transition for companies. Today the SFP is fortunate to have Sean Kidney, CEO at Climate Bonds Initiative, as our guest to update our followers on how companies are using these Hallmarks and what climate mitigation action investors and their financial advisors can expect from companies in various sectors of the global economy between now and 2030. We’re also going to talk about what choices investors can make to support companies in achieving their Net Zero near-term objectives.

“Policies and institutions that open opportunities for focus on people of color are not racist. They are not even an attempt to “level the playing field” after centuries of systemic racism. They are an effort to bring Black people onto the playing field of economic mobility after centuries of being locked out…” I’m quoting from a Forbes article published on Oct. 12th and written by Lenwood V. Long, Sr., President & CEO, African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, my guest for today’s SFP conversation. Lenwood joins me to tell us the story behind the article.

Companies in every sector of the global economy are discovering that the full spectrum of sustainability-focused challenges are more than their own and must be solved in collaboration with their partners in other businesses. My guest is this episode of the SFP is Karthik Balakrishnan, Co-Founder and President of Actual, which has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes and Business Insider among many other publications for it’s Sustainability Transformation Platform, a single place for firms to collaboratively study impact, minimize risk and maximize ROI while meeting strategic priorities. Open the BrightTalk Episode 238 Attachments tab for links to ACTUAL newsletters providing detailed research.

I’ve had the privilege to work with both of today’s podcast guests as leaders of their company, the first to launch a Responsible Investment fund and still a leader in the field. Calvert Research and Management is part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management today and traces its roots to Calvert Investments, which was founded in 1976. The SFP is privileged to welcome Emily Chew and Anthony Eames to this episode and we’re going back in time to begin today’s conversation. Responsible Investing was first given official status as an industry concept by the UN Principles for Responsible Investment in 2006, however, Calvert's history in the field stretches back many years before that.