Randall Strickland, Director and Investment Advisor, Cornerstone Capital Group

Neda Nobari, Vice Chair of the Foundation Board, San Francisco State University

Libby George, Director of Investments, North Carolina State University

Tim Coffin, Senior Vice President, Breckinridge Capital Advisors

Brandi Colander, Principal, Diverse Asset Managers Initiative

Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, Founder and CEO, Red-Horse Financial Group, Inc.

Dianne Dillon-Ridgley

Date: August 26th, 2020 

Jeff Mindlin, Vice President of Investments, Arizona State University Enterprise Partners

Liz Clark, Vice President for Policy and Research, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)

Ken Redd, Senior Director for Research and Policy Analysis, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)

Randall Strickland, Director and Investment Advisor, Cornerstone Capital Group

Moderator: Alice DonnaSelva, Managing Director, Intentional Endowments Network

Randall Strickland, Director and Investment Advisor, Cornerstone Capital Group

Randall is a Director for Cornerstone Capital Group, a financial services firm offering investment advisory, thematic research, and strategic consulting services to endowments and family offices in the field of Sustainable/Impact Investment. He is responsible for supporting the firm's investment advisory clients in the areas of investment policy planning, environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact investment integration, investment manager and strategy selection, and impact measurement. He brings over 25 years of experience in the asset management arena.  Randall also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Sustainable MBA program at Bard College and the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University, teaching Sustainable Finance and Impact Investing.

Prior to joining Cornerstone, Randall served as a Sustainable Investment Specialist at Sentinel Investments, where he was a member of the firm’s sustainable investment team. Randall’s experience also includes senior positions at City National Bank of New Jersey, ImpactAssets, Principal Global Investors, Commonfund and TIAA.  He serves on the board of Net Impact, the HBCU Green Fund, and the Global Leadership and Achievement Foundation of Kappa Alpha Psi, Jersey City (NJ) Alumni Chapter.  He earned a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University and a Master of Arts from New York University.

Ken Redd, Senior Director, Research and Policy Analysis, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)

Kenneth E. Redd is Senior Director, Research and Policy Analysis for the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). At NACUBO, Ken manages the annual NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments, the NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study, and other research reports on higher education finance, enrollment, and student financial aid issues. He came to NACUBO in 2008 from the Council of Graduate Schools, where he was director of research and policy analysis.

In addition to his work at NACUBO, Ken also serves on the board of trustees for the Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, IL, and the board of advisors for the Frank J. Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia. Ken is also a member of the investment committee of the Unitarian Universalist Common Endowment Fund (UUCEF), and is a member of the board of directors for the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).

Ken has a master’s degree in public affairs from the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and a bachelor’s degree in English and political science from Tufts University, Medford, MA.

Liz Clark, Vice President for Policy and Research, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)

Liz LaPolt Clark is Vice President for Policy and Research at the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), a membership organization representing more than 1,900 colleges and universities across the country. Liz leads the team responsible for analysis of federal regulatory and legislative actions, research, and communications at NACUBO. She has been widely quoted in the press and is a sought-after speaker on how Washington politics and federal policies impact higher education. Liz got her start on Capitol Hill in 1999, running Cornell University's first Washington, DC-based federal relations office, and in her career has led federal affairs for the State University of New York (SUNY) System and for Oregon State University.

A native of Liberty, NY, Liz is a graduate of Binghamton University (SUNY) and received a Master’s degree from Cornell University.

Over the past academic year, student teams from across the U.S. participated in a first-of-its-kind student investment competition hosted by the Intentional Endowments Network (IEN). A panel of judges selected the team from the University of California, Berkeley as the inaugural winners of the SIILK Corporate Engagement Competition, for preparing the strongest investment recommendation and shareholder engagement strategy to improve company performance (and investment returns) through better environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices.

“The competition gave us an opportunity to think about strategies for engaging with management and practice crafting a shareholder resolution,” said Katharine Hawthorne, a member of the winning team. “Highlights of the competition included learning how the other teams integrated financial and ESG considerations and seeing the different approaches to shareholder engagement for driving corporate sustainability.”

The pilot year of this competition put a new spin on the traditional approach to investment competitions by focusing on the responsibility of investors to directly engage company management on the risks and opportunities they see. IEN invited students to not only produce an investment recommendation in a publicly traded company, but also to include in their recommendation a shareholder engagement strategy for improving the company’s business performance and impact on society. Teams from four universities - Arizona State University, Bryant University, Yale University, and the winning team from the University of California, Berkeley - participated in the competition as a real-world introduction to sustainable investing.

“We launched this competition to bring more awareness to the immense opportunity to create impact through shareholder engagement in public equity investments. The scale and influence of such a mainstream asset class makes it tremendously important for students interested in entering the investment field to be able to spot opportunities to actively engage as shareholders,” said Nicole Torrico, a Program Manager at the Intentional Endowments Network.  “By growing this skill set, students now and in their future careers will be able to achieve positive impact at scale while improving the financial performance of their investments.” 

Each student team worked throughout the year to write an investment recommendation that included an investment thesis, financial model and valuation, quantitative ESG research and analysis, market and sector analysis with comparison to industry peers, risk identification, and a proposed shareholder engagement strategy to address an identified risk area.

While each team’s written recommendation was impressive, the judges noted that identifying a company with financial growth potential that is well positioned for ESG opportunity, not just risk management --  and focusing on SASB as a framework for ESG analysis -- made the University of California, Berkeley’s investment recommendation stand out as exceptional. Additionally, focusing on a company that is smaller in size and at the beginning of its ESG journey provides an opportunity for more significant and impactful shareholder influence. IEN released a video announcing the winning team here.

“I was very glad to participate in the inaugural competition, and was blown away by the shareholder engagement recommendations in particular,” said Gabe Rissman, co-founder and president of YourStake.org, and one of the competition judges. “ The student teams presented engagement theses that will create positive societal impact and enhance shareholder value. Corporate management should listen closely.”

Shareholder engagement has become a greater area of focus for IEN. In addition to hosting this competition, over the past year, IEN re-launched a shareholder engagement working group and collaborated with Warren Wilson College on an engagement strategy that resulted in the co-filing of 3 shareholder resolutions by the college. “Increasingly, college and universities are interested in dialogue, engagement, and proxy voting as a means of effecting more forward thinking company strategy around the climate and inequality challenges we face,” said Alice DonnaSelva, Managing Director of the Intentional Endowments Network.

This competition is part of the ongoing programming efforts of IEN’s SIILK Network, a peer learning network of students, faculty, and staff involved with student-managed investment funds and finance curriculum focused on sustainable, ESG, and impact investing. SIILK members connect to scale the uptake of sustainable investing education at colleges and universities across the country, build strong bridges between endowment investing and student-managed funds, and grow the talent pipeline, with an emphasis on bringing more women and people of color into the industry. 

For more information, visit SIILKnetwork.org or contact Nicole Torrico at nicole@intentionalendowments.org.

Founded as The Investment Fund for Foundations in 1991 by a network of foundations with the express purpose of serving the investment needs of the non-profit community. As of March 31, 2017, TIFF served around 550 non-profit members who entrust about $7.0 billion in assets, including committed capital, to the firm. TIFF now serves foundations, endowments, and other charitable organizations. 

TIFF's mission is to seek to enhance the investment returns of non-profit organizations, to reduce the investment and administrative expenses of non-profit organizations, to broaden the universe of investment choices available to non-profit organizations, to assist non-profit organizations in deploying their assets in a manner that will support charitable expenditures while preserving the purchasing power of their assets, to help non-profit organizations monitor and evaluate their investment performance, and to promote within the non-profit community an understanding of investment management.

https://www.tiff.org/

TIFF Insights: TIFF's Commitment to Sustainable Investing, Chris Matteini Fall 2020

To view recordings from past IEN webinars, click here.