System Change Investing: What, Why, and How?

Registration is closed for this event. If you are interested in attending, please contact [email protected].

How can institutions and individuals go beyond conventional investing and rethink how investment decisions can better address complex problems such as income inequality and climate change on a deep, systemic level? Join us to hear from leading thinkers and authors at the frontier of investing and impact who will introduce the concept of system-level investing, and share context, tools, and approaches for the California philanthropic and financial community.

Lisa Kleissner has spent time thinking deeply about systems, in this current moment. Over the course of her laudable career, she has had in co-creating or leading the KL Felicitas Foundation, Hawaiʻi Investment Ready, Toniic Institute, The Philanthropy Workshop, and Social-Impact International.

Bill Burckart and and Jon Lukomnik will share what system change investing means for investors, asset managers, asset owners, and others in the financial ecosystem.

Bill and Jon will be joined in conversation with Lisa, who will help illuminate the ways foundations and other kinds of investors can put theory into actions.

Target Audience

This program is open to members of Catalyst, Northern California Grantmakers, and Southern California Grantmakers.

If you require any accommodations to fully participate in this program, please contact [email protected].

Speakers

Monique Aiken, Managing Director, The Investment Integration Project (TIIP)

Monique Aiken is also a Contributing Editor at ImpactAlpha, a digital news magazine for the impact investing sector, where she hosts “The Reconstruction”, a podcast about moving capital towards justice. She is passionate about social and systems change and positive impact and has been guiding investors in aligning their social impact and investment objectives for over a decade.

Her experience includes time as Vice President, Programs, at Mission Investors Exchange, a 250+ member network for outcomes focused practitioners in impact investing; Director at Tideline, a boutique strategy consultant in impact investing; and Project Manager for No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project at the Clinton Foundation. Prior to that, she spent nearly 15 years in financial services, including with Bank of America’s Loan Origination group, Citigroup’s Debt Capital Markets team, and Deutsche Bank’s Commodity Derivatives group.

William Burckart, President, The Investment Integration Project (TIIP)

William Burckart has advised a range of clients, including investment management firms, private foundations and endowments, government and major industry bodies, working with them to integrate impact and investment goals through the development and implementation of 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), and helping to write the “Status of the Social impact investing Market: A Primer” (UK Cabinet Office) that was distributed to policymakers at the inaugural G8-level forum on impact investing.

Lisa Kleissner, Co-founder & President, KL Felicitas Foundation

Growing up in Hawaiʻi, I learned to how to “dance” between the indigenous and western cultures of my Hawaiian father and my Haole mother. The indigenous concepts of reciprocity, abundance and scarcity, and how these concepts play out in a remote island economy, inform my local and global work, both with how I am present in that work and how I influence the investment of my familyʻs assets. Island economies are the “canary “in the global coal mine. Our ancestors showed us how to live sustainably on our planet. How can we acknowledge and honor their wisdom in our daily practice?

Organizations I have had a hand in co-creating and/or leading: the KL Felicitas Foundation, Hawaiʻi Investment Ready, Toniic Institute, The Philanthropy Workshop, and Social-Impact International. I am an Advisory Board and Investment Committee member of Aqua-Spark, and board member of Real Good Fish. Advisory roles include Criterion Institute Gender-Based Violence Advisory Committee and the Industree Foundation. In my hometown, I serve as the Treasurer of the Community Association of Big Sur.

Jon Lukomnik, Author, Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters

Jon Lukomnik’s new book, “Moving Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Investing That Matters” (www.BeyondMPT.com) is co-authored with Jim Hawley. Their work focuses on MPT’s inability to deal with systematic risk, and how investors can and do mitigate risks such as climate change, income inequality, lack of diversity, and anti-microbial resistance. In the process, they are redefining what it means to “invest”.

The managing partner of Sinclair Capital LLC, a strategic consultancy to institutional investors, Jon Lukomnik served for more than a decade as the executive director of the IRRC Institute and is a former Pembroke Visiting Professor at the Judge Business School at Cambridge. He co-founded the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) and GovernanceMetrics International (now part of MSCI). He has been the investment advisor or a trustee for more than $100 billion (including New York City’s pension funds) and has consulted to institutional investors with aggregate assets of $1 trillion dollars.

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