An exciting development

A week and a half ago, I had two interviews. They couldn’t have been more different. Standard Life, an asset manager in Edinburgh, wanted to know about my experience writing about different asset classes for different audiences. Preventable Surprises, a London-based campaign working on aligning corporations with the climate change agenda, wanted to know what I thought about the COP21 talks in Paris.

The Edinburgh job is full-time and highly paid. The London job is part time and poorly paid. The Edinburgh job is in a beautiful old building on an elegant street in the old part of Edinburgh. The London outfit doesn’t have office space. The Edinburgh job is permanent. The London job is for three months and will continue if they are able to get funding for the position. The Edinburgh job is doing what I’ve done before; it feels very safe. The London job is not only working for a campaign, something I’ve never done, but also for a campaign that is not really established. There are two employees: the chair and the CEO, who work out of their homes.

Do I take the safe job (it cracks me up that the company is called “Standard Life") and rebuild my savings? Asset managers are much further along in the UK than the US in incorporating climate risk into portfolio decisions, so it isn’t totally a cop out. Or do I respect my idealist side and go with the nonprofit? Preventable Surprises offered me the job off the bat; I didn’t hear anything back from Standard Life, so it may not really have been a contest.

I called a woman at a much more established NGO with whom I had interviewed for a job. She had offered to be a sounding board. When I told her of the two (potential) positions, she said that Raj Thamotheram, CEO of Preventable Surprises, is highly respected in the responsible investor community. He has a long track record of successfully advocating for ESG (environmental, social, governance) filters at large asset managers. However Preventable Surprises is an upstart in a very crowded space--there are many NGOs working on ways to pressure corporations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement. Not all of these NGOs look favourably on each other, so going with the wrong one can hurt me in the future both with asset managers and with other NGOs. She saw my choices as helping to shape the agenda at Preventable Surprises or to work within the system, being an ESG advocate at a major asset manager.

Long story short, I accepted the job with Preventable Surprises and flew to London yesterday for my first meetings. I got up at 5 a.m., took the bus to Belfast airport, flew to Luton airport, took another bus to London, took the subway to Waterloo Station and ran across Waterloo bridge. Many photo ops were flying by (the view from the bridge is fantastic), but I had to maintain focus to get to a restaurant near the bridge at 12:45. I was one minute late and sweaty--it was over 90 degrees in London yesterday. I had lunch with Raj, Carolyn Hayman (the chair), and one of their advisors, a former investment manager at Invesco who is committed to sustainable finance. After lunch, we went to the London School of Economics for a meeting with 12 economists, scientists, investment consultants, asset managers, and index providers (MSCI, S&P). It was tres exciting to be part of this conversation after being on the outside looking in for so long. Part of the conversation was around how the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (housed at LSE) can help influence the debate. The embarrassing part was that I had a hard time staying awake. Right after lunch and I’d been traveling all morning. So frustrating to not be able to prevent nodding off (I was notorious for sleeping through meetings at Vanguard, so this is nothing new--but doesn’t help with first impressions).

From there, a brisk walk (me gawking at the Royal Courts of Justice and Kings College) to a subway station, two train rides later (hot!!) and we are at the offices of Principles for Responsible Investing for another meeting. I had applied for several jobs here and, after the meeting, I was glad I didn’t get them. They are funded by the asset owners and asset managers who are signatories to the principles. Which means they are in a ticklish position when it comes to taking on their signatories, some of whom are laggards in promoting policies that recognise a 2-degree scenario (i.e. reducing emissions such that global warming is limited to 2 degrees celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution).

From there, more brisk walking, more subway rides, until we reach Carolyn’s home in Kentish Town. We are joined by two more board members and have a lovely dinner in Carolyn’s back garden. Followed by a board meeting at 8 p.m. I like how this group operates. Friendly, informal, informed, passionate. I spend the night at Carolyn’s and today took a train, a bus, a plane, a bus, another bus, getting home around 4:30 pm absolutely exhausted.
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