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Presenters: Steve Lydenberg, William Burckart & Mirtha Kastrapeli
Hosted by Glenn Page
This webinar will explore the work of TIIP and their vision for engaging Blue Marble Evaluators to help transform the financial sector – with an eye to Large Asset Ownership.
TIIP was founded in 2015 by Steve Lydenberg—co-founder of the first index to utilize social and environmental standards—and William Burckart—a respected impact investing consultant—who were determined to help investors align their strategies and practices with the increasingly complex world of the 21st century. Not only did they want to show investors that everything—from the environment to healthcare to the financial markets—is interconnected, they also hoped to demonstrate that investors can play a major role in preventing environmental disasters and easing social unrest. They hoped that investors would realize that doing so is not only good for global sustainability and well-being, but it is good for their bottom lines. TIIP has since worked tirelessly to encourage adoption of system-level investing, an advanced sustainable investing approach through which investors consider the bigger-picture environmental, social, or financial system context of their security selection and portfolio construction decisions. Throughout 2015 and 2016, they established the theoretical frameworks for identifying systemic environmental and social challenges best-suited to investor action and developed and disseminated information about effective system-level investing tools. They have since broadened their efforts and are helping to meet industry demand for practical guidance on adopting system-level investing approaches and measuring investors’ impacts and influence on environmental and social systems.
Presenter Bios
Steve Lydenberg, TIIP’s Founder and CEO, also serves as Partner, Strategic Vision of Domini Impact Investments where he provides strategic vision and direction to guide the firm’s policies, procedures, and daily practices. Mr. Lydenberg previously served as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer and was a co-founder of the Domini 400 Social Index, the first index to utilize social and environmental standards. In addition, Mr. Lydenberg has been active in researching the social and environmental performance of corporations since 1975. Mr. Lydenberg was a co-founder of KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. and served as its research director from 1990 to 2001. From 1987 to 1989, he was an associate with Franklin Research and Development Corporation (now known as Trillium Asset Management). For 12 years he worked with the Council on Economic Priorities, ultimately as director of corporate accountability research. Mr. Lydenberg is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Responsible Investment (IRI) at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, which was established to provide institutional support for catalytic activity for responsible investment, broadly construed, with a strong focus on creating a foundation of research activity around the field. He has published widely on responsible investment and corporate social responsibility and is a CFA charter holder.
William Burckart is the President and co-founder of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), an applied research and consulting services firm that helps investors manage systemic environmental and societal risks. Mr. Burckart has worked with a range of clients, including investment management firms, private foundations and endowments, government and major industry bodies, helping them to integrate impact and investment goals through the development and implementation related strategies. He has also contributed to the field through groundbreaking research, including the development of market insights and practical guidance for investors and financial advisors in collaboration with the Money Management Institute (MMI); co-editing the New Frontiers of Philanthropy: A Guide to the New Tools and Actors that Are Reshaping Global Philanthropy and Social Investing (Oxford University Press: 2014), and helping to write the “Status of the Social impact investing Market: A Primer” (UK Cabinet Office: 2013) that was distributed to policymakers at the inaugural G8-level forum on impact investing. His writing has been featured in The Guardian, Forbes, Quartz, top1000funds, Investment & Pensions Europe (I&PE), Benefits & Pensions, InvestmentNews, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), ImpactAlpha, CSRwire, Alliance, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, FundFire and Nex
Mirtha Kastrapeli is the founder and CEO of Beyond Alpha. She is also a Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Investment, CCSI. Most recently, Mirtha was Managing Director and Global Head of State Street’s Center for Applied Research, an independent think-tank designed to provide insights about the future of the investment industry. In this capacity, she co-authored multiple papers including ‘The Big Shift; Finding a New Center of Gravity for the Investment Industry’ in 2019, ‘The Investing Enlightenment: How Principle and Pragmatism Can Create Sustainable Value through ESG’ in 2017, the award-winning study ‘Discovering Phi: Motivation as the Hidden Variable of Performance’ in 2016 and ‘The Folklore of Finance: How Beliefs and Behaviors Sabotage Success in the Investment Management Industry’ in 2014.
Ms. Kastrapeli has over fifteen years of experience in the private and public sector, analyzing capital markets, and helping shape public policy. She spent seven years as a Global Macro Strategist at State Street Global Markets in Boston. In the public sector, Ms. Kastrapeli served as an advisor to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Economics in Nicaragua. She also worked at the Economic and Commercial Office of the US Embassy in Managua, where she received a Meritorious Honor Award by the US Department of State. Mirtha earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in Finance and Economics from Ave Maria College in Nicaragua and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Brandeis International Business School.
