Wealth Management Impact Investing Forum

Registration and Breakfast

Welcome and App Tutorial

Everything you, as an attendee, need can be found on our app, including program details, speaker biographies, benchmarking survey results, information on other attendees, white papers, and access to the speaker presentations we have been authorized to make available.

Presented by:
Steven Olson, Managing Director, Institutional Investor Memberships and Forum
Kip Miller, Client Services Director, Institutional Investor Forums

Forum Chairperson:
Jennifer Kenning, Founder & CEO, Align Impact

Interactive Polling

Moderated by:
Jennifer Kenning, Founder & CEO, Align Impact

What are the investment issues, concerns and priorities of your peers? What strategies and goals are front of mind for this group of elite firms? In this opening session and in subsequent sessions, attendees will be polled on a number of high-interest topics using an interactive electronic response system. The aggregated results of these polls will be displayed instantaneously on-screen to help illuminate the discussions which follow. By doing this, we will provide all attendees with useful and unique insights into the concerns of wealth managers, impact investors, and their clients.

The Fantastic Four: An Institution, RIA, MFO and SFO Define “Impact”

Moderated by:
Jeffry Haber, Senior Director, Finance, Commonwealth Fund

Panelists:
William Pusey, Senior Vice President, Keel Point LLC
Paul Simon, Advisor, Paul Simon Advisory LTD
Justina Lai, Director of Impact Investing, Wetherby Asset Management

The impact market is one of the fastest-evolving spaces within wealth management. Many new entrants and a broadening of interest among clients is changing the landscape dramatically and quickly. This wide-ranging panel discussion will explore some of the issues that wealth managers need to be informed about in order to keep pace, including:

With so many options, structures, and models available, how do you build and scale your business? Should you use a platform, hire a consultant, etc?
• With so many options, structures, and models available, how do you build and scale your business? Should you use a platform, hire a consultant, etc?
• Making sense of the solutions and services entering the market. What’s going to give you an edge and what’s going to give you value for the spend?
• Differentiating your firm in an increasingly crowded market
• Keeping your marketing strategy current to reflect cultural shifts and societal priorities

Darwinian Disruption: An Honest, Constructive Assessment of the Investment Solutions Available, and What’s Still Needed

The presenters will answer three pointed questions: What is your overall strategy? How does your integration of ESG or Impact criteria help you add value? Do you seek to measure and report on Impact and ESG, and if so, how?

Moderated by:
Mark Peters, CFA, Managing Director, Pathstone

10:35 am
Presentation: Long Short Equity

10:50 am
Presentation: Private Equity

11:05 am
Presentation: Fixed Income

Tabletop discussions

Seated in small groups, delegates will share their views on the previous presentations. Do they agree or disagree, and what are the reasons for their views? Are there other factors which should also be taken into consideration? Which factors have contributed to plan sponsors taking their respective positions and how are they changing their investment line-up and plan structure so as to facilitate better participant outcomes? As well as sharing knowledge and opinions, each table will be tasked with coming up with a set of questions or comments which they must be prepared to pose to the speakers.

Moderated Q&A

The original speakers will retake the stage, answer questions, and react to comments from the table discussions.

Moderated by:
Mark Peters, CFA, Managing Director, Pathstone

Lunch

Debating the Utility of Integrated ESG and Impact into Strategy Construction and Management

Tabletop discussions

Seated in small groups, delegates will share their views on the previous presentations. Do they agree or disagree, and what are the reasons for their views? Are there other factors which should also be taken into consideration? Which factors have contributed to plan sponsors taking their respective positions and how are they changing their investment line-up and plan structure so as to facilitate better participant outcomes? As well as sharing knowledge and opinions, each table will be tasked with coming up with a set of questions or comments which they must be prepared to pose to the speakers.

Moderated Q&A

The original speakers will retake the stage, answer questions, and react to comments from the table discussions.

Coffee Break

Workshop Series I

Workshop A | Winthrop Room
Topic and leaders to be announced

Workshop B| Leverett Room
Topic and leaders to be announced

Workshop Series II

Workshop C | The Evolution of Impact (Winthrop Room)
Workshop Leader: Ian Simmons, Co-Founder and Principal, Blue Haven Initiative

Workshop D | Why Gender Lens Investing Is Good for the World—and Your Portfolio (Leverett Room)
Workshop Leaders:
Kathleen McQuiggan, Wealth Advisor, Artemis Advisors (Invited)
Melanie Dubin, ESG Analyst, Avalon Trust (Invited)
Akasha Absher, Chief Consulting Officer, Syntrinsic Investment Counsel, LLC (Invited)

Risky Business: How Far Are You Willing to Go To Make An Impact?

Moderated by:
Samira A. Salman, Chief Operating Officer, Heathside Ventures LP

Panelists:
Lorenzo Bernasconi, Senior Associate Director, Innovative Finance, Rockefeller Foundation
Ian Simmons, Co-Founder and Principal, Blue Haven Initiative
Lorraine George-Harik, Partner and Co-Founder, Cerity Partners (Invited)

In an ideal world, investing to do good would be the only necessary criterion. But we don’t live in an ideal world, far from it. And especially when you are investing other people’s wealth, you have to make sure the risks you are introducing into the portfolio make sense from a holistic portfolio perspective and can be explained and enumerated. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch, after all.

Intersections: Where Philanthropy Meets Impact

Presented by:
Marta Ferro, Senior Managing Director, Angeles Wealth Management

Philanthropy is at the extreme end of the impact investing conversation. Many individuals and firms often wrestle with the native desire to create impact within their organization, but also how to perform competitively in the space. This presentation will focus on the philanthropic component of the story and how impact investing can be seen as an emerging paradigm shift within philanthropy itself.

Cocktail Reception

Evening Free for Private Functions

Breakfast Discussion Tables

At peer-moderated tables of 8-10 participants, delegates will share their opinions and compare notes on a number of important issues identified by Advisory Board members as worthy of discussion. Delegates will be asked to contribute to the overall discussion with the intention of sharing information and learning from others’ experiences.

Table 1 | Aligning Your Firm’s Culture with Your Clients’ Missions

Table 2 | Shareholder Activism

Table 3 | How to Grill Managers to See If They’re ESG Compliant

Table 4 | Impact Branding and Marketing 101

Table 5 | Do You Have to Go Private to Make an Impact?

Table 6 | The Evolving Future of Fiduciary Duty in an ESG World

Table 7 | Are Qualified Opportunity Zones the New Bitcoin?

Table 8 | Next Gen Impact

Reporting Back on Table Discussions

Moderated by:
Jennifer Kenning, Founder & CEO, Align Impact

The leaders of each of the breakfast roundtable will have four minutes to recap one or two key points from that discussion so that all Forum attendees are able to share in what was discussed.

Putting Together the Pieces: HOW to Incorporate Impact and ESG into Client Portfolios

Moderated by:
William McCalpin, Managing Partner, Impact Investments, Athena Capital Advisors

Panelists:
Lorraine George-Harik, Partner & Co-Founder, Cerity Partners (invited)
Sonia Kowal, President, Zevin Asset Management, LLC (invited)
Jeffrey Gitterman, Co-Founding Partner, Gitterman Wealth Management

There are many (too many) discussions of how asset owners might engage with opportunities in a particular asset class (public equities, fixed income, venture capital) or in a given thematic area (education, financial inclusion, food and agriculture or the environment). This helps advisers and consultants identify specific opportunities to bring to the attention of their clients, but it leaves unexplored the challenge of putting the pieces together in a portfolio context where there are some portfolio-level objectives. If impact investing is going to mature into a mindset, from a practice of making cool one-off investments here and there, there needs to be a much richer conversation about portfolio interactions and dynamics.

Case Study: Transforming a Traditional Portfolio into a Values Aligned Portfolio

Presented by:
Rocio Ortega, CFP, Partner, Associate Advisor, WE Family Offices
Richard Zimmerman, Advisor, WE Family Offices

In recent years, WE Family Offices has been asked to help several families transition all or portions of their investments into values aligned portfolios. In this case study presentation, the WE Family Office will describe the journey that WE and their client families have taken from traditional to more values-aligned portfolios including: key drivers behind the families’ desire to transition their portfolios; lessons learned along the way; tools and analytics used to construct the portfolios; insight into portfolio construction and investment selection; and observations about the values-aligned investment marketplace today.

Coffee Break

Removing Regulatory Barriers to Unlock Impact Investments

Presented by:
TBD, The Case Foundation (proposed)

Making Sense of the Ratings Agencies: Measuring and Reporting Explained

Moderated by:
Mark Berryman, Managing Director, Impact Investing, The Caprock Group, Inc.

Panelists:
Erika Karp, Chief Executive Officer, Cornerstone Capital (proposed)
Amy Domini, Founder & CEO, Domini Impact Investments (proposed)
TBD, Sustainalystics (proposed)

The private sector as well as supranational and national agencies and associations are piling into designing ratings systems for impact investments. But just like with the Principles and Stewardship Codes which multiplied a few years ago with responsible investing and sustainability, impact-minded wealth managers and their clients are now left facing the daunting challenge of making sense of all the options amid an over-abundance of options.

Love & Money: How to Preserve Family Harmony

Presented by:
Michael Cole, CEO, Cresset Family Office

More Than Money provides a high-level, integrated approach to preserving both financial resources and family harmony. Research has shown a failure rate of 70 percent in long-term multigenerational wealth management, and contrary to popular assumption, only five percent of that failure is due to bad investment, poor tax planning, or inadequate performance by legal and financial advisors. The number-one reason family wealth management fails is the family itself; poor communication, lack of trust, divergent visions, and a failure to prepare succeeding generations will tear down the resources the family has worked so hard to build. Traditional wealth management cannot fix this.

Lunch