Investment Practice Track

The Investment Practice track features discussion at the cutting edge of the investment industry through peer-to-peer sharing among Confluence Practitioners. This year’s sessions look at inclusive decision making, the unique challenges of small foundations, and more.

Welcome Intensive (Tuesday, February 25th | 9:00 AM)

Recommended for New Members and Gathering Newcomers!

The Welcome Intensive provides an introduction to the concepts of values-based investing in an expert-led, small group setting. This program is intended for asset owners new to values-based investing and offers a unique opportunity to dive into the Confluence community with a cohort of new peers and allies.

Facilitators will lead a morning discussion group about fiduciary duty, engaging investment advisors, and other topics critical to new investors. The Welcome Intensive will conclude with a special lunch hosted by the facilitators and Confluence staff.

Trainers:

• Katherine Kroll, Sustainable Investing Analyst, Brown Advisory

• Tom Mitchell, Managing Director, Cambridge Associates

Creating a Healthy Decision-Making Culture (Tuesday, February 25th | 2:00 PM)
Organized with Syntrinsic Investment Counsel 

Historically, foundations have siloed the management of their investments and their grant-making, effectively relegating the expression of mission to just 5% of the endowment. The past decade, however, has seen an uptick in the push for foundation boards and investment committees to consider a more synergistic and impactful deployment of their full weight and resources. Guided by advisors steeped in this dialogue, this session will explore the building blocks of fostering a healthy decision-making board culture that nurtures critical discussion and enables the emergence of shared values toward the alignment of mission and fiduciary responsibility.

Speakers:

• Ben Valore-Caplan, Chief Executive Officer, Syntrinsic Investment Counsel (Moderator)

• Susan Dorsey, VP for Finance and Administration, Gates Family Foundation

• Kristi Petrie, Executive Director, AJL Foundation

• Bill Repplinger, CFO, General Service Foundation

Plenary: Using Systems Thinking to Embrace the Whole (Wednesday, February 26th | 10:15 AM)
Organized with Climate Interactive and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Many would say that the challenges that we face today are a function of system failures. Poor political leadership, the economy, corporate governance, high personal debt, race relations, international trade, and un-controllable weather events… Whew! Sometimes we fixate upon parts of the system and miss the whole. How can impact investors hold more of a systems view when making a simple investment decision? In this session, we will hear from systems modelers about how we can use systems thinking to craft holistic approaches to the multitude and magnitude of the questions that we grapple with. Crisis is both challenge and opportunity. How can we steer toward goals like justice, equity, and a stable climate amidst all this complexity?

Flashtalk by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Climate Interactive

Panel Speakers:

• Santhosh Ramdoss, Principal, Skoll Foundation (Moderator)

• Rachel Payne, Managing Director, FullCycle, and Founder, The Tree Pledge

• Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Climate Interactive

• Erica Barbosa Vargas, Director of Solutions Finance, McConnell Foundation

Money Psychology + Family Philanthropy (Wednesday, February 26th | 2:15 PM)

Organized with Penney Family Fund and Abacus Wealth Partners

Join members of the Penney Family Fund and impact advisor & author Brent Kessel for a real-world case study of how our biases and beliefs around wealth, giving, safety, and investing influence our effectiveness and communications. Using the framework of Brent's eight financial archetypes, participants will learn what their dominant financial tendencies are, where they most influence their actions, and how to cultivate a more aligned impact strategy with a spouse, family members or organizational colleagues. This session will be highly interactive, including the Penney family sharing how they've navigated this terrain in the past, exercises (bring your phone or tablet), and Q&A with audience members. 

Speakers:

• Brent Kessel, Founder & CEO, Abacus Wealth Partners

• Jordan Keny-Guyer, Trustee, Penney Family Fund

• Sarah Malachowsky, Trustee and President, Penney Family Fund

• Diana Trump, Trustee, Penney Family Fund and Confluence Board Member

Evolving the ESG and Impact Conversation: What Must Change in How Allocators of Capital Make Decisions (Wednesday, February 26th | 2:15 PM)
Organized with Development Capital Strategies and Surdna Foundation

To date, existing ESG and impact metrics frameworks focus primarily on companies. However, practices at the fund manager level can undermine positive impacts at the portfolio level. To reduce systemic market and societal risks such as income inequality and climate change, asset owners need to take a holistic view of investment approaches. This means not only focusing on the portfolio companies to which they're exposed, but also the ways these investments are structured and managed. For instance, high compensation for large alternative asset managers can exacerbate systemic wealth inequality. Funds and companies domiciled in tax havens can have negative development implications for the economies where they generate most of their profit. In private markets, deal structure can push significant risk onto workers and communities. This workshop aims to explore such issues in more depth. Discussion will also include whether there should be ESG and impact frameworks developed for asset manager structures, and if so, what next steps might look like.

Speakers:

• Delilah Rothenberg, Founder, Development Capital Strategies

• Shuaib Siddiqui, Director, Impact Investing, Surdna Foundation

Small but Mighty (Wednesday, February 26th | 2:15 PM)

Organized with Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and Sapelo Foundation

Small foundations (less than $250 million in assets) serving predominantly rural and small urban areas recognize that investing in their communities looks different than in large cities. These areas are full of need: over 80% of persistent poverty counties are rural. But that's not the whole story. Rich culture, tenacity, and a strong commitment to places permeates such locales. So, how do foundations do this work? Join us to explore how we are learning to work effectively within these communities. Come prepared to share your own struggles and victories, your expertise and burning questions, as we talk together about how to do this work in the places we call Home.

Speakers:

• Andrea Dobson, Chief Operating & Financial Officer, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation

• Christine Reeves Strigaro, Executive Director, Sapelo Foundation

Total Portfolio Activation, Now What?! (Wednesday, February 26th | 2:15 PM)
Organized with Tiedemann Advisors and The Russell Family Foundation

If investing is a journey, not a destination, what happens after you’ve gone “all in?" This intimate and interactive session will bring asset owners together for a generative conversation about truly achieving a fully activated portfolio. How can this community continue to inspire, empower, and engage leading investors to remain at the forefront of this evolving field? Bringing together a small group of advisors and dedicated investors, we offer candid conversation aimed at overcoming potential fatigue and pursuing evolution in a rapidly growing field. To get the most out of this session, attendees are encouraged to actively participate in the discussion by sharing about their portfolios as well as successes and challenges.

Speakers:

• Dan Chu, Executive Director, Sierra Club Foundation, and Confluence Board Member

• Brad Harrison, Director, Tiedemann Advisors

• Timothy P. O’Donnell, CAIA- Senior Vice President, FEG Investment Advisors

• Kathleen Simpson, CFO & Interim CEO, The Russell Family Foundation and Confluence Board Member

Empowering Gatekeepers to Unlock Catalytic Capital (Wednesday, February 26th | 2:15 PM)
Organized with Bonwood Foundation

In group discussion we will identify the barriers to values aligned movement of money with brainstorm and role play. There are no wrong answers! Next, we will imagine how we lower those barriers to create a marketplace where asset owners readily participate as empowered investors. Then, stepping forward into pragmatic action we will identify ways in which we can work with partners to bring this vision to life.

Speakers:

• Catherine Burnett, Chief Impact Officer, Phillips Foundation

• Matt Patsky, CEO, Trillium Asset Management

• Eric Stephenson, Director of Client Service, Align Impact

Leveraging Foundation Capital (Thursday, February 27th | 9:00 AM)
Organized with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Mercer

To achieve a just, equitable, and more sustainable future for all will require substantial private capital—most of which is located primarily in developed economies, while the need for that capital is centered in relatively low-returning assets (e.g., developed-market renewable energy) or high-risk jurisdictions (e.g., emerging and frontier economies). Blended finance approaches have been increasingly used to facilitate investments into both developed and emerging economies by reducing risks and/or enhancing returns for investors; however, more catalytic capital is needed to both unlock and scale up impact investments to the level needed. In this session, panelists will discuss potential ways to better coordinate the provision of catalytic capital from foundations, family offices, and development finance institutions with significant investments by relatively impact-agnostic asset owners in deal structures that advance a range of investor and stakeholder interests. Our goal is to help everyone to find their role.

Speakers:

• Christine Bradford, Principal and Senior Investment Consultant, Mercer (moderator)

• Adam Connaker, Principal Innovative Finance, The Rockefeller Foundation

• Adrian Franco, Ph.D., Officer & Director of Community Development Finance (CoDeFi), Federal Reserve Bank of New York

• Lori Scott, Chief Credit Officer, The MacArthur Foundation

Shades of Grey: Investing for a Paradigm Shift (Thursday, February 27th | 10:45 AM)
Organized with Nia Community Foundation

As the impact investing space grows and moves mainstream, how can we ensure we are having the desired effects? This session features Confluence members that have moved the financial system by investing in diverse teams that direct money to entrepreneurs, and to segments of our economy that have previously been neglected by the current economic system. We will discuss ways to evaluate potential investments with a social justice lens that pivots paradigms. Our speakers will share stories, techniques, and examples of investments that have shifted the investing landscape in big and small ways. This session will offer unique viewpoints and illustrate varying types of investments among asset classes that redirect the economic outcomes toward inclusion and sustainability.

Speakers:

• Kristin Hull, Founder, Nia Community Foundation (Moderator)

• Jim Chowdry, Program Manager, Confluence Philanthropy

• Tracy Gray, Trustee, California State University Dominguez Hills Foundation (CSUDH)