Giants of Social Investing: John Streur and Jack Robinson
New book by Bruce Piasecki
We live in a time of social unrest, when the ability to listen deeply and resolve matters of import are often lost in wheel spinning. Over the last five years, after my bestseller Doing More with Less: The New Way to Wealth, began introducing me to an array of incredibly interesting money managers, and social leaders, I wrote five short biographies to chronicle and to dramatize in everyday language the origins, ambitions, and results of these exemplar lives, sort of what Freud, Churchill, and Emerson did in far better ways in prior decades. But I used them as my models to capture the essence of these lives and their social contributions.
Curiosity led me to investigate these lives of social consequence. Although this book is about money and its social impacts, it is not simply about money-making; it is about becoming like Ben Franklin all over again,— inventive, diplomatic, supportive of others, and about social value.
Why a book about the John Steuer, CEO of Calvert Investments? And why a book about Jack Robinson, the founder of Winslow Investments (meaning Win Slow), and eventually the Vice Chairman and portfolio lead at Trillium Investments? These folks have made their clients rich, as they have influenced the bigger fish on Wall Street.
These two “giants” are recognized by Bloomberg, the SEC, and the investment community as leaders in mainstreaming Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) into the capital markets.
In fact, leaders in ESG now at Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Brown Advisory have been mentored by these giants. This goes well beyond the letters of intent stated these days by Blackrock’s Larry Fink, as these universal owners do not differentiate the kinds of winners before Jack and John.
I focused my attention on people who I felt served the greater fabric of society in ways that were often overlooked by mainstream praise. I have been fortunate enough to interact with interesting people throughout my firm’s 42 years, and am thrilled to introduce you to them. This excitement brought me to writing about sustainable fashion icon Eileen Fisher, expert on social cohesion Linda Coady, and now this exciting new release regarding our two friendly “Giants of Social Investing”.
What is ESG Investing?
Readers of GreenMoney know what ESG and social investment entails. But what does it look like from those originating the push? It is in a way getting into their characters that matter most. While John Steuer has plenty of issues he still wants to fix in world markets, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new appetite under the Biden Administration for ESG data, what he has done to date matters. While Jack Robinson has watched ESG go from nothing to a third of all dollars in deals, he is not done with this battle as he is deeply focused on climate change investments. Now.
In my book, Giants of Social Investing, I argue that recognizing ESG trends is recognizing success in capital markets.
The book offers you insights into two exemplar lives. Jack Robinson and John Streur helped build the social impact investment world over the last thirty years, changing the very nature of capital markets. While they are both Americans, their influence in this study is shown to be global, reaching the largest Pension Funds in Japan and others on each continent. You see this ESG movement in the behavior of the major credit worthy institutions like Standard and Poors, where S&P purchased specialty researchers like TruCost to keep up to the trends first noted by Robinson and then Streur. There are now, on Bloomberg, over 30 followers to Jack and John listed in this Giants book. For those looking for grounds for hope in the search of social equality, diversity and responses to climate change and clean energy challenges, this book explains how their life work has helped investors discern reliable firms in clean energy, social inclusiveness and the social need for mobility past the combustion engine.
More on John Streur and Jack Robinson
My company was recently honored by Mr. Robinson spending four hours with us. We heard about his genesis, his career trajectory, and his advice. Over the course of those two Web Ex days we not only learned a great deal from Jack, but also from everyone in the audience. If you want the summary slides of the discussion with 70 investment heads, contact me at Bruce@ahcgroup.com, but first arrange for a qualifying discussion thru Marti Simmons, Marti@ahcgroup.com.
If you are interested in joining us for our four-hour conversation with John Streur, scheduled for this September, contact marti@ahcgroup.com for more information on how to RSVP.
Next Steps…
Giants of Social Investing is available for purchase on Amazon and at- https://store.bookbaby.com/book/giants-of-social-investing
Internationally, it is available at www.bokus.com.
Amazon has a fine description of the book here, and you can preview some of book there as well. I invite you to comment on these themes on my Medium entries at- https://brucepiasecki.medium.com
Article by Bruce Piasecki Piasecki has written 16 books since his 1990 Simon and Schuster book. He and his wife have also recently announced their annual $5,000 award, The Bruce Piasecki and Andrea Masters Annual Award on Business and Society Writing. For more information see here or email AWARDS@ahcgroup.com. If under 36, please submit for this Award by August 1, or sooner. For a look at Bruce’s management firm, ACH Group. Inc go here.
“This book offers clear-eyed portraits of two successful and intriguing major world investors. We have seen this kind of penetrating case work before in Emerson, Freud, and Churchill. These profiles offer the immediacy of oral history, the hard-won knowledge of lived experience, with direct quotes from the major investors. This covers world history as their investments influence the over 5,000 companies their careers have influenced.”
–Paul Grondahl, Director of The New York State Writer’s Institute, and author of this history of Erasmus Corning.
