Why Purpose-Driven Investing Is Reshaping the Future of Finance 

Hi and welcome to the Impact on FinTech TV.

I'm your host, Jeff Gitterman, down on the floor of the iconic New York Stock Exchange.

I'm joined this morning by Jenna Nicholas.

She is the CEO and president of Light Post Capital, and the author of Enlightened Bottom Line.

Jenna, thanks for being on the show today.

Thanks so much, it's great to be here.

So, one of my favorite topics, enlightened spiritual business.

Let's start a little bit with your backstory of what even got you into focusing on this aspect of work-life balance.

Yes, thank you.

I'm really excited to be here today.

So I grew up in, in London.

I was raised by my mother and grandmother, and I was raised as part of the Baha'i'i community.

So the idea around spirituality and how that shows up in our life and work was really cultivated within me from a young age, and I came out to the US and did my undergrad and MBA at Stanford, and my whole career has been in the area of social responsible investing and have kept having conversations over the years with people where.

They would share something to the extent of, I don't really feel like I can talk about it, but, and they would share these pretty profound spiritual experiences that they've had.

And so a big part of the inspiration around the book, and much of my life is sort of, how do we bridge together these conversations around purpose and spirituality and business and investing.

And just talk a little bit about, because we want to focus more on the book, but talk a little bit about your investing and how those two marry together.

Sure, so I started my career working with the Calvert Funds and the pleasure of working with Wayne Silby, the founder of the Calvert Funds and, uh, you know, one of the pioneers in the area of social responsible investing and lived in DC and China investing.

Into socially responsible businesses and funds and various other roles within the impact investing space, and currently lead a firm called Light Post Capital, where we do early stage investing and lower middle market M&A all with an impact focus.

So investing a lot in climate and healthcare and education, and much with the intersection with AI and I also run an organization called Impact Experience, where we do a lot of work, bridge building between investors and entrepreneurs and communities that have been overlooked and underestimated.

So the inspiration for the book, um, you know, sometimes it's a flash of inspiration that I need to write a book.

What was the pull or the call for you?

Yeah, it was really, I was at the retirement party of one of the co-founders of Calvert a few years ago, and people were sharing some of the stories of the early days of Calvert, really inspiring stories, many of which were quite spiritual stories.

So, you know, Wayne himself has the story of going to a Buddhist retreat in the late 1970s, and At the time, they had started Calvert as a money market fund and very successful firm, and at the retreat, they had them reflect on what would it say on your tombstone.

And his reflection was it would say, the man that made 2% more than the next man.

And he was like, this isn't really the legacy that I want to leave.

And so I went back to Calvert and inspired to make it into a socially responsible firm.

It's now a $45 billion firm.

And it really came from that experience of this transformational moment, and The inspiration for the book was like how to bring together many of these stories of, of people and how they've translated those transformative experiences into structural change within organizations, and how could that be of inspiration to other people on their journey as well.

So talk to us about the core frameworks that are in the book.

Yeah, so I have a framework that really came from many of these interviews with different investors and business leaders called the HAL framework, which stands for hope, empathy, abundance and legacy.

And really this idea is, you know, given so many of the challenges in the world right now, this practice of an active cultivation of hope and possibility, and, you know, how do we embed that into the organizations and communities that we're part of, and, you know, really thinking about this question of what is the trace that we're trying to leave, and what does that look like, you know, within the communities that we're part of.

When you're going around talking to people, especially in Impact, are you finding people very traumatized at this stage?

What's going on in the world and Yeah, you know, there's a concept in the Baha'i writings around the forces of disintegration and integration in the world, and I think so much of what we're seeing that's leading to this deep traumatizing impact are these forces of disintegration right, every day and the, the news, what we're seeing globally and domestically, and This desire that keeps seeing from people of, you know, where are those forces of integration that we can be part of and be cultivating, and that was certainly a, a big part of the inspiration for the work and also the, the book too.

So when you talk about the frameworks and connecting that to people and the work that they're doing in the world, how do you make that connection for them?

I think so much of it is.

The, the storytelling of how people go about doing this intimately on a day to day basis.

So one story I often share, I share in the book, and it's from a company that had a chance to invest in called Devoted Health, that's a very successful company in the healthcare space, they recently raised around at a $13 billion value.

Evaluation, they credit a lot of their success to a simple practice that they do, which is, before any of their healthcare providers engage with their patients, they have them close their eyes and imagine that the patient that they're about to interact with is a beloved family member.

And they, there's so much of that impact that comes from just literally that practice of how differently would we engage with somebody if we're imagining that they're a beloved family member than just a complete stranger, and I think practices like that, that, you know, really run throughout a broad range of industries that are, you know, reframing how we're thinking about how we engage with people.

You see a lot of people in fact, in position like you are, where they're out raising money for new funds, very innovative funds, really struggling today.

So, some of the things that you talk about, do they help people deal with the situation that they're in currently, and then see the world from a different place or perspective to help them then move forward?

Work is really, a lot of it's looking at of the. $82 trillion in the asset management industry, you know, less than 2% being invested into women and people of color run companies and funds, and, you know, a lot of the challenges they're seeing in fundraising, and a lot of that is expedited within, you know, women and people of color run funds and, and companies, and, and part of the hope with the, the book and the work is that understanding that the structural challenges that we're operating around require structural solutions, and that, A lot of the work we engage in is, you know, bringing people, for example, to Montgomery, Alabama to look at the historical context around racial and gender inequities and ways in which that's showing up to today.

And if we're trying to achieve behavioral change and say spiritual transformation, that being able to.

Understand the historical context that got us to where we are right now, so that as we're designing solutions moving forward, we're coming from this grounded place.

So, certainly the, the hope is that some of the examples and tools that are mentioned in the book, at the end of each chapter, I have a series of questions for people to reflect on and The, the hope is that these can be tools that can be helpful, certainly in fundraising and also just navigating challenging market dynamics.

And we're also in the most divisive time, I think we've had, although I guess you could say the Civil War was probably more divisive, but in modern times, I think we're dealing with the most divisive times we've been in social media is exacerbating all this.

It's led a lot of people to see the other person or other as wrong and the enemy, and You know, when you're out there raising money, it's very difficult to be in these oppositional meetings.

What do you tell people?

I love the example of, you know, thinking of the other person as your family member, but when you're going into a meeting with someone that's kind of completely on the opposite end of the political and and funding and capital spectrum, how do you help people hold themselves in a different way?

I think so much of it is this, how are we coming back to the core of what it means to be human beneath all of the surface level, this is my title and my role in society, you know, during the impact experiences I mentioned, we bring together folks, we have everyone share a symbol or an object that has significance to them, and, you know, we'll often have people in the group that are from very different political, social and economic, religious backgrounds and.

We find that what's so interesting in this, and people are bringing a part of themselves that is beyond just their professional roles, and have an opportunity to actually see that beneath all of that, so many of these core elements of what it means to be human and our care for our family and for Our community that so much we actually have more in common than we than we may realize, right?

And so, whether it's in a meeting or in any interaction, you know, how do we create those spaces to see more of what connects us rather than divides us and You know, I've been really inspired by a lot of the work of the former Surgeon General Vivek Murphy, who does a lot of work around loneliness, and he uses the language around spiritual health, and, and I think so much of our challenges right now are these, this disconnection, and so the more that we can create spaces to reconnect us, I think is where the opportunity lies.

So you're trying to turn this into a broader movement through the organization that you work with.

How do you see that spreading and growing?

Definitely, I mean, really a huge part of my inspiration around my work and in the book is what is this ever expanding circles of community that we can create around this, and I've been so inspired by both how much the concepts are resonating with people, but also all of the.

Intersecting movements that so much of your work and others in the community that I uh care passionately about these topics and really see it as a, a source of of change and transformation in this moment.

It's interesting because it's very hard to transform and change when things are going great.

Do you look at this time in the world and think that this is a huge opportunity for people to really shift and transform?

Definitely, you know, I lived, eventually I lived in China for a while and speak some Mandarin, and there's a, you know, people often talk about how in, in Mandarin that the same word for crisis and opportunity and Uh, I often think about the, in the, the depth of the challenges that we're operating within right now, or are those seeds of opportunity, and it can be so hard, you know, when we're in the depth of it to recognize and to see that, but to be able to take a bit of a step back and to actually see, you know, how do we view this moment.

You know, with those seeds and opportunity and Technohan would say no mud, no lotus, right?

So it's like, you know, where is that lotus that we're developing.

So what do you say to financial advisors, asset managers, CIOs, how they could really start incorporating this work into the work that they're doing?

I think that so many financial advisors, it's a, can be a deeply spiritual journey to hold the space for clients that they're working with.

I mean, the all of the emotions and stories around money, and one of the themes I mentioned earlier, this, uh, within the heel framework around abundance, so much of that is interconnected with this idea of like what is enough, um, and I think that, you know, financial advice. and asset owners more broadly are part of the conversation with clients, and we're seeing this a lot with intergenerational wealth transfer and, you know, as we're cultivating values within the next generation, and a lot of interest from the next generation in investing in a way that is more socially responsible, that creating spaces for really honest conversations of what do we want our money to do in the world, and what is that.

A currency as being a form of current and like what is that flow of money that we're, we're seeking to, to create and how to use that, you know, trusted opportunity uh in engaging with, with clients and to have those deep conversations.

You talk in the book about values investing and being values aware.

Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Much of my work has really been focused on how do we think about impact and values across our whole portfolio, so rather than it just being.

Let's have a carve out to do impact with this part of the portfolio, really, you know, how are we thinking about within our public equity assets, within the private, within philanthropy, and it's being something that can be both, what are we choosing not to invest in, but also what are we choosing actively to invest in, and really taking that time to reflect on.

What are those values that resonate with you, and that's gonna be different for each person, I think again, where there's such an important role of advisors to hold that space to really tune into how to really map the portfolio to those specific values of a uh an individual client, and that may change over time and being able to have very open and honest conversations as that continues to develop over time as well.

Do you think there's a sacrifice in doing impact, or can you do impact and make money?

A lot of the examples that share in the book and had a chance to invest in, you know, really are where there's this co-linearity of companies and funds that are generating really strong financial returns, and also having great social and environmental impacts across a broad range of, of sectors.

Of course, I think there are opportunities where you'll have amazing social impacts and lower financial returns and also. the flip side, but I do think there's an increasing number of opportunities that are really in this, you know, powerful intersection where as each reinforce the other, and by doubling down around that impact, that she's seeing a greater generation of financial returns.

We're hearing a lot about AI, um, I don't know if you've been reading the trade journals a lot about how AI will replace financial advisors.

What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think it's definitely, we're in a really interesting moment in time, both in terms of how it may replace financial advisors, and also workforce more broadly, and, you know, very real conversations about what does that mean and how do we think about retraining.

And a lot of our work has been looking at those opportunities for, of AI for good.

So we invested in a company called Eviti AI that's doing a lot of work in the healthcare and AI space, doing more personalized medicines.

I think there's some really powerful applications of.

AI for good, and on the flip side, I think that there's so much, we've been doing some work with a, an AI company around how do we think about, you know, training from an ethical and spiritual lens, because there's, we're seeing a lot of unintended consequences of an AI does things that maybe wasn't so much the intention of the uh person that was giving the prompts in the first place.

And then I think was it relates to.

To the whole financial industry, we're certainly seeing a strong disruption and increasingly so.

I do think there's always going to be an importance of this real stewardship and accompaniment that is a high touch element.

So whilst maybe some elements will be automated, the importance of having that human to human connection to ask some of these harder questions and maybe more existential questions as well.

Yeah, I would agree for sure.

I think financial advisors do a lot of handholding, um, myself being one, and I don't see AI yet, until the robots look really good, holding people's hands through really troubling times, and In times of crisis, that's when people need their financial advisor the most, and that's a time where it's going to be hard for people to go to their AI and really find their way through an uncomfortable situation.

Markets are free falling.

Is the AI really going to give the best advice for that specific person and their emotional state?

I just don't see that lining up.

I think it'll automate.

A lot of what we do day to day, but I don't see financial advisors at one of the at-risk jobs.

I think there are a lot of at-risk jobs, and that goes to purpose and fulfillment, and I think you know from your background and and the book that you wrote that people can't not work.

They have to have some ability to find purpose, um.

In order for them to feel fulfilled.

Definitely, definitely.

So final message to people out there in the impact space who are struggling, um, why should they read the book?

I think one element is really feeling less alone in this work, you know, I think that so often it can be, particularly given so many of the challenges, it can feel quite isolating that you care deeply about some of these topics, and it feels like it's working against the currents that exist in the world, and I hope that in reading the book, that seeing the stories and inspiration of so many different people from different backgrounds and contexts and some frameworks and tools to be able to.

Help to just take each step at a time and to see those sources of possibility.

Well, thank you for writing the book.

I meet people regularly, especially in the impact space who are out of work these days, because of the shrinking of a lot of companies' sustainability departments.

I think it's very timely that you wrote the book.

Hopefully people can get a lot out of it.

Again, the book is Enlightened Bottom Line.

Make sure you get your copy.

That's it for the impact on FinTech TV.

I'm your host, Jeff Guterman.

Until next time.