Outside In with Jon Lukomnik : Recent Episodes
Spark Network
Well-known institutional investor and author Jon Lukomnik hosts Outside In, the interdisciplinary podcast for financial professionals who value different thinking. We interview fascinating people – from Shakespeare scholars to financial data scientists – to see what the financial community can learn from non-traditional sources and from traditional sources thinking in non-traditional ways. We’re breaking down the silos which too often surround the financial community. Come listen to the sounds of the walls collapsing.
Joe Ferullo is CEO & Publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, an independent non-profit news organization founded in 1964. NCR leads the field in reporting on one of the world's most influential institutions, and its impact on US laws, society and culture.
Prior to NCR, Joe was an Executive Vice President of Programming at CBS, where he oversaw several long-running programs - including Entertainment Tonight and Judge Judy - and helped guide his division's transition into digital & streaming media.
Joe worked for several years as a producer for NBC; he was on the management group that oversaw NBC’s merger with Universal. As a Dateline NBC producer, he received an Emmy award as part of the team that covered the events of 9/11; an Emmy nomination for his story on Vietnamese war orphans; and an Education Writers’ Award with Maria Shriver for their look at inner city schools.
His special hour celebrating the series “Friends” scored NBC’s highest Wednesday prime time ratings in five years. Joe spent a month at sea at the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic, producing a series of specials for NBC and Discovery. He’s also developed and produced pilots for public television.
Joe began his career in print journalism: he was a staff writer at Rolling Stone magazine and a reporter for Hearst newspapers. He’s written for the New York Times op-ed page and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.
As a screenwriter, Joe has written for Universal, USA Network, and Michael Douglas’ Stonebridge production company. His script “Gridlock” became an NBC movie special. He also performed narration for programs on NBC, MSNBC and Discovery.
Joe was on the dean’s advisory board at Hofstra University’s Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, and served on the governing board of MEND, an advocacy group for low-income families in the San Fernando Valley. He has been a frequent guest lecturer at Syracuse University’s L.A.-based media program.
Joe is a graduate of Columbia University; he was editor-in-chief of the university’s independent daily newspaper. Joe was born and raised in The Bronx, where his family ran a small Italian bakery.
If you're involved in corporate law or corporate governance, or just care about business and society, Charles needs no introduction.
He is seemingly ubiquitous and has been for four decades. He is the Executive Editor of Directors & Boards. He's the retired Edgar S. Woolard Chair in Corporate Governance and the founding director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
His other academic credentials include more than a decade as a law professor at Stetson, visiting professorships at the law schools of the University of Illinois, Cordell and Maryland. He was also a Herbert Smith Freehills Fellow at Cambridge University in the UK. He has written extensively on boards of directors, served on advisory boards for both the National Association of Corporate Directors and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
He is and has been a director at myriad of companies. His hard work and thought leadership has been recognized with honors from Directorship, Treasury and Risk Management, Global Proxy Watch and Ethisphere, Charles is also public spirited, having served as a trustee for such non profit organizations as the Big Apple Circus, Tampa Museum of Art, Delaware Museum of Natural History, Museum of American Finance and the Brandywine Conservancy.
Chris is an American singer songwriter who has opened for Neil Young, BB King, Seal, and a host of others. He recently gained additional worldwide prominence with “We Can Always Come Back to This”. His hit song aired on 3 episodes of the #1 NBC primetime series ‘THIS IS US,' then went on to #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart.
Other recent highlights include: a solo concert at The Kennedy Center, a duet with Sara Bareilles, a sold-out concert with Allison Russell, and performance/interviews on NPR’s WORLD CAFÉ, MOUNTAIN STAGE, AMERICAN FOLK SHOW, SoCAL SOUND, and more.
His 2021 album, 'AMERICAN SILENCE' garnered critical acclaim from NPR, Rolling Stone, NoDepression, SiriusXM, The Bluegrass Situation, AmericanaUK, Acoustic Guitar and others. PopMatters named ‘AMERICAN SILENCE ’THE #1 Best Folk Album of 2021 and FolkAlley named "Residential School" from AMERICAN SILENCE one of the 100 Essential Folk Songs.
His highly anticipated album titled ‘LET ALL WHO WILL’ was released on September 1, 2023, with critical acclaim from NPR, NoDepression, American Songwriter, Hi Times and more.
Chris Pinney, is President and CEO of High Meadows Institute. Chris analyzes and writes about the role of business in today's world and in tomorrow's. While most of us accept our daily interactions with companies like Google and JPMorgan Chase, Chris thinks about the fact that these firms and many others have more impact on our day to day lives than government. He then analyzes the implications both for those businesses and for society.
Prior to High Meadows, Chris held a string of positions where he also looked at business and business leadership from a variety of angles. He was president of the Boston-based Alliance for Business Leadership, a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, Director of Research and Policy and Executive Education at the Boston College Carroll School of Management's Center for Corporate Citizenship, and Director of the Imagine Program, a Canadian initiative focused on business leadership.
Monique Aiken is the Managing Director at The Investment Integration Project, an applied research and consulting firm with a recently launched SaaS platform called SAIL, the Systems Aware Investing Launchpad. Monique is co-founder of Make Justice Normal, a nonprofit collective focused on narrative change, and host of their podcast, “Into the Record”. She is also cofounder of the ReStarter Fund, an economic and climate justice initiative aiming to be a small business lifeline in these unique times. She is also a Contributing Editor at ImpactAlpha where she is a biweekly host of the “Briefing” podcast and past host of ‘The Reconstruction’, a 24-episode long form interview podcast series.
Monique has been guiding investors in aligning their social impact and investment objectives for over a decade, after nearly 15 years in financial services with Bank of America, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank. In addition to TIIP, her +10 years of impact experience includes time as Vice President of 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. Monique serves on the Investment Committee for the NYU Impact Investment Fund, the Steering Committee for the Intentional Endowments Network and the Board of Responsible Alpha. She also serves as a Board Member of the Institute for Nonprofit Practice and on the Advisory Board for the Global Bio Fund, a gendersmart biotech and wellness ecosystem and venture fund.
A proud Toigo, CGSM, SEO, and INROADS alum, Monique earned her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business where she specialized in Financial Instruments and Markets, and a B.Sc. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Monique is a first-generation Jamaican-American, plays the tenor saxophone (badly), loves coffee, tea and travel (pre-covid at least) and is conversant in Spanish, Portuguese, and un petit peu of French. Monique is also a newly minted children’s book author and lives in +100yr old fixer-upper in New Jersey with her husband and their delightful preschool aged son, who is her inspiration.
If you want to understand, learn about, or even rationally criticize impact investing, Fran Seegull is the person to know in the United States. Fran is president of the U. S. Impact Investing Alliance. She helped incubate the Alliance at the Ford Foundation in partnership with Darren Walker. In 2023, John Palfrey, President of the MacArthur Foundation succeeded Walker as Alliance Advisory Board Chair.
Fran is also executive director of the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing, a donor collaborative in the field. She was previously Chief Investment Officer at ImpactAssets. which includes The Giving Fund, now a $3 billion impact investing donor-advised fund. She served on the G7 Working Group on Asset Allocation, worked for PwC, and taught at the USC Business School, where her course was named the best graduate level elective course at the school.
Fran has an MBA from Harvard, but somehow she's managed to stay grounded and be a problem solver in the real world. Fran is smart, funny, realistic, high powered, and the person to know if you want to know anything about impact investing.
Matt Moscardi is one half of the podcast, Business Pants, which makes business and investing news suck less for real people and the investor-curious. His day job is as the founder of Free Float, which provides an incredibly complete data set and analysis of the directors at public companies. Matt knows whereof he speaks. He spent almost a decade at MSCI helping to develop that financial service behemoth's ESG ratings model. He chaired the MSCI ESG Research Editorial Committee, sat on the MSCI Research Editorial Board, and wrote more than 100 investor papers, industry reports and profiles while there. Prior to that, he worked at the sustainability NGO Series where he was part of a team providing resources, thought leadership and data to pension funds with cumulative assets of some $10 trillion.
Greg is the Founder and Executive Director of Start.coop. Greg brings a powerful background of financial strategy, tech, and entrepreneurship to growing the cooperative landscape. Greg's work has ranged from business development to strategic planning for multiple cooperatives.Prior to launching Start.coop, Greg founded and led the Bike Cooperative, a division of CCA Global Partners, and also helped to launch the nation's only purchasing co-op for craft breweries. Greg also previously served on the board of the Cooperative Development Institute for 10 years and was board chair for 3 years.Greg also convenes the Equitable Economy Fund, a $2 million pilot fund convening angel investors to scale shared ownership. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University.
If you're an investor or just interested in a smooth functioning economy, Sandy Peters is an unsung hero. She heads CFA Institute's advocacy and regulatory affairs efforts globally relating to the information needs of investors for investment decision making. This includes corporate disclosures, financial reporting, accounting, ESG/sustainability disclosures, and how the information is assured and audited. She also looks at how technology creates new forms of information and how that information is integrated into the capital markets.
Sandy began her career at a “Big Four” accounting firm, KPMG, then went to MetLife where she was the corporate controller. So she has the perfect background to be the watchdog over information for one of the most influential professional investor organizations in the world, having worked as an investor, a corporate preparer, and an auditor.
As a producer and senior editor of NPRs "All Things Considered" for more than a decade, Alison helped shepherd that show's coverage of one financial crisis, two wars and three presidential elections.
She then became NPR's storytelling guru which meant she guided some of the best radio and podcast talents in the world to become better at narrative storytelling. Today she is a sought after freelance audio editor whose work could be heard on such in-depth journalistic podcast series as "The 13th Step", which tells of how women seeking to overcome drug addiction routinely became victims of sexual abuse by the very residential treatment staff that were supposed to help them, and the podcast, "544 Days" about journalist Jason Rezaian's imprisonment in an Iranian jail while international real politics swirled around his life or death situation.
Alison works behind the scenes, she's rarely on mic but that hasn't stopped her talent from shining through. She was awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard and "Believed", the podcast she worked on about Larry Nassar, the former Olympics and college gymnastic coach who abused hundreds of young women, won the Peabody, duPont-Columbia, Scripps-Howard, and Dart awards.
Greg previously served as the CEO of Glass, Lewis & Co., an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Securities, a lawyer and a hedge fund portfolio manager.
Greg has been on all sides of activist investing over the last 20 years: he has advised companies responding to activists; he has been an activist investor at more than 40 companies; he has advised investment funds leading proxy fights; and he has been the Chief Executive of the country’s second largest proxy advisory firm, Glass Lewis, helping to provide voting advice to institutional investors in proxy contests.
Before forming Spotlight Advisors, Greg was the President of the Clinton Group, a multi-strategy hedge fund that engages in activist investing. While there, Greg guided the firm through four proxy fights (three of which Clinton won) and to a dozen settlement agreements with public companies. Previously, Greg was the Chief Executive Officer of Glass, Lewis & Co., an independent research firm that assists institutional investors in making more informed investment and proxy voting decisions. While Greg was the Chief Executive, Glass Lewis covered more than 13,000 public companies from 65 countries and sold research to more than 350 institutional investors that collectively managed more than $13 trillion.
Prior to co-founding Glass Lewis, Greg was an investment banker. He provided strategic and financing advice to public and private companies, principally in the technology and telecommunications industries. Greg was a Vice President at Goldman, Sachs & Co., a Director of Epoch Partners and a Managing Director with Banc of America Securities.
Holly Gregory is at the pinnacle of America's top corporate lawyers. She co-chairs law firm Sidley Austin's global Corporate Governance practice and also co-leads its Chambers-recognized ESG and Crisis Management teams.
She's won just about every honor available to her. She chaired the American Bar Association's Corporate Governance Committee. The National Association of Corporate Directors named her one of the hundred most influential people in corporate governance 16 straight years. Ethisphere calls her one of the Attorneys Who Matter. She's been recognized by Euromoney and by Legal 500. The National Law Journal says she was a "white collar regulatory and compliance trailblazer". Corporate Secretary Magazine gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Holly played a key role in drafting the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and advised the Internal Market Directorate of the European Commission on corporate governance regulation. And while most service assignments at Sidley are confidential, those that have been made public are eye-opening.
She advised the Business Roundtable on its 2019 Statement on the Purpose of the Corporation, advised ICANN, the international Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (so you can thank her for the fact that your URL still works). She advised the Board of The Pennsylvania State University on governance reforms in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal.
Holly always has a sharp eye for current culture and a wicked sense of humor. Her video breakdowns of the law and corporate governance practices underlying HBO's "Succession" have made her a social media star, and on top of all that, she plays a mean Bluegrass mandolin.
Adam Barsky is the New York Power Authority's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, he joined the Power Authority in 2019. He is an accomplished senior executive who brings more than 30 years of dedicated experience in management, finance and public policy.
Adam previously served as Chief of Staff and Special Counselor at the Port Authority of NY and NJ. Prior to that he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer of IDB bank NY from 2006 to the 2017. In that senior role, he oversaw all aspects of risk management for the bank including credit, market and operational risk, and strategic and reputation risk.
Adam has held numerous positions in state and local government including Deputy Secretary to the Governor of New York for Public Authorities, Financing and Housing and New York City Issues.
Before that, he served as Budget Director and Chief Financial Officer of the City of New York and as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Operations. Adam also worked as Chairman of the New York City Employees Retirement System, Chairman of the New York City Transitional Finance Authority, and Chairman of the NYC Municipal Water Finance Authority, Acting Commissioner of the New York City Department of Finance, and Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Professor Uri Gneezy is one of the world's leading behavioral economists. He holds the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics at the University of California San Diego, and is also visiting professor of Economics at Amsterdam University.
Uri is the author of "Mixed Signals", the well received book about how incentives designed to get people to do one thing, sometimes send unintended signals that confuse people about what they're supposed to do, or worse. In some ways, "Mixed Signals" is the logical sequel to his previous book, "The Why Axis", co-written with John List. In both books as well as in his academic papers, Professor Gneezy focuses on putting behavioral economics to work in the real world.
Amongst theater people, Estelle Parsons is revered as an actor's actor. She won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in "Bonnie and Clyde", another Academy nomination for her work in "Rachel, Rachel". Five Tony nominations, a BAFTA award, an Obie, a Theater World Award, and has been inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
She created a memorable character as Bev Harris, Roseanne's television Mom. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of Estelle's acting or directing credits. As a director, she has staged works by Shakespeare, Brecht and Oscar Wilde amongst others. She's a former artistic director at the Actors Studio and is still a stalwart at that esteemed institution.
She is, she says, most alive on stage in front of a live audience. Anyone who's ever seen her in "Miss Margarida's Way" or "August: Osage County" understands intuitively and completely what she means.
Paul Clements-Hunt invented what might be Investing's most controversial three letters - ESG. He literally invented the phrase in a Geneva office building nearly 20 years ago.
Paul ran UNEP FI, the United Nation's signature program for financial institutions. He helped create and then was a founding board member of the Principles for Responsible Investing, which today is backed by more than 4500 investment institutions with about $US125 trillion in assets under management.
He was a journalist in the UK, even doing time at the tabloid flagship, the Sun. He founded an environmental advisory firm in Bangkok, worked for the International Chamber of Congress in Paris, and was a senior advisor to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Since 2012, he has built The Blended Capital Group, which is a key behind the scenes player in many joint government business investor collaborations. These are for-profit ventures that also benefit tens of thousands or even millions of people. For example, in Brazil at the edge of the Amazon, Blended Capital provides affordable credit to off the grid farming, fishing, and mining communities, as well as the basics to empower and enrich them.
Carole Laible is the CEO of Domini Impact Investments. She has over twenty years of impact investing experience, having joined Domini in 1997. Ms. Laible is responsible for the overall research and mutual funds operations of the firm. She also leads institutional client service and marketing initiatives, and collaborates with Amy Domini, Chair, in the development of overall business strategy and business plan implementation.
David Bank co-founded ImpactAlpha to cover impact investing as a serious beat in the expectation it would become one – and it has. A veteran journalist, he has spotted big trends at The Wall Street Journal, the San Jose Mercury News and other publications, breaking stories on technology, social innovation and finance. Harvard Business Review and Amazon.com called “Breaking Windows,” his book on Microsoft, one of the ‘best business books of the year.’ A 1996 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University,
David has an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
David Webber is the author of the critically-acclaimed book, The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon, published by Harvard University Press. Webber toured extensively for the book and published op-eds about it in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times,and elsewhere.
In 2022, Webber published scholarly articles in the Harvard Business Law Review, the University of Chicago Business Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Business. His co authored article, “Shareholder Value(s): Index Fund ESG Activism and the New Millennial Corporate Governance,” was selected as one of the top ten corporate and securities law articles of 2020 in a national survey of law scholars by Corporate Practice Commentator.
Webber is the winner of Boston University School of Law’s 2017 Michael Melton Award for Teaching Excellence, and the dean’s award for service to the law school in 2020 and 2021. He also co-teaches the Pensions and Capital Stewardship course for the Harvard Trade Union program at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Columbia and NYU Law School, where he was an editor for the law review.
Doug Chia is a corporate governance expert. The National Association of Corporate Directors and the GC Powerlist describe Doug as being among the most influential people in corporate governance. He is a sharp-eyed observer of, and player in, how America's great corporations are run. After a career in corporate America,
Doug runs his own consulting firm, Soundboard Governance. Doug is a former Corporate Secretary of Johnson & Johnson, Assistant General Counsel, Corporate of Tyco International, Executive Director of The Conference Board ESG Center and Chair of the Board of the Society for Corporate Governance, president of the Stockholder Relations Society of New York, and a member of the New York Stock Exchange Governance Commission. While he was in college, Doug was an intern at the White House helping write speeches for George Bush Senior. Today he holds fellowships and or teachers at Rutgers Law School, Fordham Law School, the Aspen Institute at the American College of Financial Services.
On this episode of Outside In Doug talks with Jon about governance, empowering boards, shareholder resolutions, quasi-governmental corporations and racism.
Bruce has been trying to change how businesses spend money to affect elections and policies for 20 years. That seems particularly appropriate today, in mid-spring 2023, at a time when business is either, depending on your viewpoint, caught in a political crossfire or throwing fuel onto the bonfire of American political polarization or perhaps both.
Bruce is the founder and president of CPA, the Center for Political Accountability, the country's leading resource for investors and businesses which want to engage with our democratic institutions responsibly. CPA has established best practices for disclosure, decision-making and board oversight of corporate political spending. With prospects close to nil for governmental action at the national level, this work is more important than ever.
Bruce also co-authored the Conference Board's Handbook on Corporate Political Activity, and has been quoted or written op-eds for every place from the Harvard Business Review to the Financial Times, Washington Post and Reuters.
Prior to establishing CPA, Bruce spent more than a quarter century reporting on business, congress and politics for The Hill, The Wall Street Journal and others, and then actually helping to legislate as chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee, staff director to a House subcommittee and as a congressional aide. In other words, when it comes to trying to make sense of business, politics, government, and money, there just is no one else as knowledgeable.
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is co-founder and CEO of Trust across America-Trust Around the World, a leading consultancy focused on helping leaders and teams build trust. A former McKinsey consultant, Barbara has developed a host of tools designed to not only build trust, but also to measure it so investors can profit from investing in the most trustworthy companies.
Barbara's work on trust has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Investor's Business Daily, Thomson Reuters, BBC Radio, The Conference Board, Global Finance Magazine, Bank Director and Forbes, among others.
On this episode of Outside In Barbara talks with Jon about the different types of trust, how leaders can engender trust both internally and with stakeholders, why trustworthiness improves outcomes and her five indicators of trustworthy business behavior.
Jennifer Taub is Professor of Law at Western New England University School of Law, but is perhaps better known for her book, 'Big Dirty Money: the Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime', and for her media appearances analyzing corporate governance, white collar crime, and banking and financial market regulation issues. Jennifer is a vigorous legal scholar and researcher with a myriad of peer reviewed articles to her credit. Her first book, 'Other People's Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business', followed the financial crisis, and was called a must read by no less an expert than Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General of TARP, the government's main program that prevented a general financial system collapse.
Jennifer's research is methodical, but anything but dispassionate. To read Big Dirty Money is to become angry. To quote one review "Be prepared to blow your top. It's likely that you'd be familiar with most, if not all of the crimes that Taub details, but having them all in one place is like eating a plate full of habaneros. You'll get red face bug-eyed, sputtering, and pretty righteously hot under the collar".
On this episode of Outside In, Jennifer talks with Jon about how big a problem white collar crime is in the US, the class based legal system and why she wants student loan forgiveness.
ETF industry pioneer Dave Nadig is the Financial Futurist for ETF Trends and ETF Database. Nadig comes with 25 years of ETF experience, most recently as Managing Director of ETF.com, where he helped grow the business and provide expert commentary for the past decade. Before that, he managed mutual funds at startup MetaMarkets.com, and was a Managing Director at Barclays Global Investors in the 1990s. He’s widely leveraged by media and institutions as a key expert in the field. Dave has been involved in researching, reporting and analyzing the investment management industry for more than 20 years, and recently co-authored a definitive book on ETFs, “A Comprehensive Guide To Exchange-Traded Funds,” for the CFA Institute.
On this episode of Outside In, Dave talks with Jon about deconstructing today's reality to see where future change will come from, how the fundamental nature of democratic capitalism is in danger, quantum physics, AI and much more.
Dr Ellen Quigley is a Senior Research Associate in Climate Risk & Sustainable Finance at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) and the Special Adviser (Responsible Investment) to the Chief Financial Officer, both at the University of Cambridge. Her work centres on the mitigation of climate change and inequality through the investment policies and practices of institutional investors. She is from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and holds an AB in English literature from Harvard College, an MSc in Nature, Society, and Environmental Policy from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in economics education from the University of Cambridge. Her article, Universal Ownership in Practice: A Practical Investment Framework for Asset Owners, won the GRASFI Paper Prize for Potential Impact on Sustainable Finance Practices in 2020.
On this episode of Outside In Ellen talks with Jon about systemic risk, existential risk, and why divestiture and or exclusion doesn't make a difference in her opinion. They also discuss universal ownership and the importance of coordinated engagement around systemic risks.
Eva Haller is a Hungarian-American philanthropist, activist, and executive. Her service includes Trustee of the University of California, Santa Barbara, co-founder and President of the Campaign Communications Institute of America, Visiting Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University, Board member of Counterpart International, Sing for Hope, and Creative Visions. Born in 1930 in Budapest, Hungary, she was hidden among students at the Scottish Mission, which was raided by soldiers when they discovered that the Institute was hiding Jewish students. Eva convinced a Nazi officer that she was too young and too beautiful to die and to let her escape; she remained in hiding throughout World War II. Eva eventually reached New York, where she cleaned houses and concurrently earned a master's degree in social work from Hunter College. In 1965, she joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Selma march. Along with her late husband, Murray Roman, Eva co-founded the Campaign Communications Institute of America, a marketing and research company that revolutionized the use of telemarketing in political campaigns. In 1968 Murray and Eva Roman set off to volunteer with UNICEF in Southeast Asia for close to a year. The couple returned to the United States with a renewed commitment to social issues. She and Murray re-opened their business, which became one of the first to advocate for women’s rights. With help from the proceeds of their successful business, they continued the pursuit of their philanthropy. Eva married Yoel Haller in 1987 and has continued to pursue her philanthropic career. Eva is widely revered and honored with numerous awards.
On this episode of Outside In, Eva talks with Jon about her driving forces, why she's an instinctual survivor and to whom and what she owes her philanthropy,
Bruce Dubinsky is one of the foremost forensic accountants in the world. He has been an expert witness more than a hundred times in his career and has been involved not only in Department of Justice enforcement actions, but also cases brought by the SEC and the IRS.
He's been integral to investigations into Bernie Madoff, Enron, a contested International Brotherhood of Teamsters election, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the Parmalat fraud. Now the owner of the eponymously named Dubinsky Consulting, Bruce was global leader for forensics at Duff & Phelps. He's a CPA and holds certifications in Fraud Examinations, Anti Money Laundering, Valuation and Foreign Financial Forensics, as well as a master's degree in Tax Accounting and a certificate as a Master Analyst in Financial Forensics. Bruce is so respected that he was elected chairman of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Board of Regents.
On this episode of Outside In Bruce talks with Jon about the mind of the fraudster, the granularity of the Madoff fraud investigation, spotting the warning signs of fraud and why the wise warrior avoids the battle.
As ICCR’s Chief Executive Officer since January 2016, Josh Zinner oversees programs and operations for the organization, and is the lead external organizational representative. Josh has more than 25 years’ experience as a non-profit leader, coalition-builder and policy advocate. Josh is also a long-time public interest lawyer who has spent his career working to promote social and economic justice and corporate accountability. For the eight years prior to coming to ICCR, Josh co-directed the New Economy Project, an organization that works with community groups on economic justice issues and is at the forefront both locally and nationally in the fight against discriminatory financial practices.
On this episode of Outside In, Josh talks with Jon about shareholder advocacy, ethical values and financial value, systemic risk and universal ownership. Jon and Josh discuss how transparency and disclosure is still critical but why ICCR is looking more and more for companies to put in place principles and governance mechanisms to align their political spending and their lobbying with their stated core values.
Zach Stafford is an award-winning journalist, Tony Award-winning Broadway producer for the play A Strange Loop, Podcaster, and currently columnist for MSNBC. Zach combines his lived experience as a black gay man with superb reporting and storytelling skills to provide a voice that's uniquely his. He's the former editor in chief of The Advocate, and his work has appeared in everything from The Guardian and the New York Times to the BBC and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. One of his more recent endeavors is as an advisory board member for Colorful Capital, which seeks to bring capital and support to enterprises, founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQ+ community. He is also the co-editor of the book Boys, An Anthology, the co-author of the book When Dogs Heal, and the executive producer of the documentary BOYSTOWN.
On this episode of Outside In, Zach talks with Jon about finding underdogs, failing and winning (failure is where real knowledge is gained), thinking outside the box and why a good story never dies. They also discuss "border walkers", stepping into a room where you're not comfortable to see what you learn and supporting enterprises founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQ+ community.
Julie Bell Lindsay is CEO of the Center for Audit Quality, a nonprofit public policy organization representing U.S. public company auditors.
Previously, Julie served as Managing Director and the Deputy Head of Global Regulatory Affairs at Citigroup, where she worked to formulate and execute regulatory policy strategy. Lindsay also managed Citigroup’s $20 billion TARP repayment and $58 billion exchange offers in 2009. Julie previously counseled on Sarbanes-Oxley and other public company disclosure requirements at the SEC and in private practice. She holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Vanderbilt School of Law.
On this episode of Outside In, Julie talks with Jon about what the accounting and auditing profession gets right, what it gets wrong, making it relevant for the future and attractive to the next generation. They discuss fraud and the CAQs public mission.
Brandon Rees is the Deputy Director, Corporations and Capital Markets for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
The AFL-CIO is a federation of 56 labor unions who represent 12.5 million members. Union sponsored and Taft-Hartley pension and employee benefit plans hold approximately $540 billion in assets.
The AFL-CIO Office of Investment promotes the interests of workers’ funds in the capital markets by leading corporate governance shareholder initiatives and advocating for legislative and regulatory reform. Brandon Rees is also a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s standing advisory group. He received his B.A. in Economics and J.D. from U.C. Berkeley.
On this episode of Outside In, Brandon talks with Jon about the importance of proxy voting, why Americans are overworked and the retirement savings crisis. They also discuss why 2022 was the year of the anti-ESG backlash and aligning the long-term investment horizons of retirement savers with their investments.
Sara E. Murphy is Chief Strategy Officer at The Shareholder Commons which she joined in 2020 after 22 years working in sustainable investing and environmental and social advocacy. Sara began her career working for NGOs in the international development and disaster response fields. In 2001, she transitioned into Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) research for the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), where she specialized in bioengineering and defense contracting research. After leaving IRRC, she spent several years at The Cadmus Group, an environmental consultancy. In 2005, Sara moved to Frankfurt, Germany to work as a senior sustainability analyst for Fortis Investments’ SRI fund management team. Fortis Investments was acquired by BNP Paribas Asset Management during Sara’s tenure. She moved back to Washington, DC in 2011, where she launched her independent consultancy on sustainable investing and corporate responsibility.
Sara grew up in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, which fundamentally shaped her understanding of the business world’s long reach and influence. On this episode of Outside In Sara talks with Jon about challenging capitalism to work to its full potential, why, in some cases, companies should forfeit a certain amount of value if that value comes at the expense of broader portfolio value, keeping the baby of price discovery and throwing out the bathwater of externalized social and environmental costs. Sara also discusses her many reasons for remaining so optimistic.
Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson director of research at the CFA Institute Research Foundation, senior advisor to OCP Capital LLC, and an independent consultant, writer, and speaker specializing in investment management.
Laurence is a respected thought leader at the intersection of finance and economics and is the author of 'Fewer, Richard, Greener' which at one point was the No. 1 economics book on Amazon.
On this episode of Outside In, Laurence and Jon break down 'Fewer, Richer, Greener' to understand why he is optimistic about the future. They also discuss how finance has evolved during his lifetime and the role of capital markets in the energy transition.
Sarah Bloom Raskin is the Colin W. Brown Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at Duke University Law School. She has served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for the United States, the second highest official in that cabinet department under President Obama. As Deputy Secretary, she focused on the resilience of the country's critical financial infrastructure and elevated cybersecurity to the level of providence it has today.
Professor Raskin also served as a member of the Federal Reserve under then chair Ben Bernanke, where she helped set monetary policy as a member of the Open Market Committee and oversaw the nation's payment system. Finally, she was Maryland's Commissioner of Financial Regulation during the global financial crisis.
In all those positions, she brought a strong public policy perspective, which included consumer protection, economic justice, diversity and inclusion, and public service excellence. In other words, she sees the role of the financial system as serving society rather than being the master of it.
On this episode of Outside In Sarah talks with Jon about the state of economics today, how climate risk has become falsely controversial in the U.S. and the importance of asking the right questions. She talks about how businesses and households build a capacity for ruggedization and making policy tools for a changed earth. Sarah talks openly about loss, grief and the power of love.
Jeffrey Cruttenden is the co-founder of Acorns and Say, two FinTech success stories. Acorns, the first micro investing platform, created to simplify and democratize investing, which is now a decade old, has helped 9 million customers invest some $15 billion Into diversified portfolios, Say, a technology platform for open communication between companies and their owners, is transforming stock ownership by connecting shareholders and empowering them to access their full ownership rights.
Jeff has now teamed with partners to form Treasury, which in a very short time has become the go-to private equity firm for startup and early stage financial technology companies. Treasury has funded companies seeking to disrupt everything from how people vote at corporate annual general meetings to how we prepare our taxes.
Jeff graduated Magna cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Mathematics from Lewis & Clark College. He was a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree in 2016.
On this episode of Outside In Jeff talks with Jon about building Acorns, the importance of the sense of shared ownership for investors and backing the ambitious FinTech founders shaping the future of financial services. Jeff also talks about clearing the mind, the importance of friends and family and how not to let working on the most important things in the world distract you from the most important things In life.
James Shinn, Digital Currency Economist, Executive Director at Bitt, is a special level of polymath. He has filled his life with four successful careers in technology, finance, academia, and government. Read on for a brief highlights tour.
Technology
Following time at AMD, Jim co-founded Dialogic, one of the first telecommunications firms using digital signal processing. Ultimately, it was sold to Intel. He was then an advisor or co-founder for various tech startups, including cybersecurity firm Haystack Labs, and data analytics firm Predata.
Government
Jim was the Assistant Secretary of Defense where his responsibilities included some of the United States of America's most global complex issues, including North Korea and China. He was also involved in developing DOD's policies for the war in Afghanistan, for which he gained the reputation for realistic analysis as well as the Defense Department's highest civilian medal. Jim has also worked at the CIA and the Office of the National Director of Intelligence. Most recently, he focused on the question of technology issues and China from a national interest point of view for the State Department.
Finance
Jim's career started as a commercial banker for Chase. He continued to add a number of FinTech companies to the list of startups that he co-founded or advised, including Longitude, a derivatives trading platform and Kenshō Financial, a financial data analytics firm.
Academia
Jon first met Jim 20 years ago when he and his co-author Peter Govi, were examining corporate governance issues following the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. The book they wrote brilliantly analyzes the links between governance, finance, and politics. Jim has also written books and articles with such stars as Jeffrey Garton, Richard Arbitrage, Harold Brown and Bob Zelnik. Jim was a visiting lecturer at Princeton for eight years.
His latest undertaking is helping central banks develop digital currencies which he talks with Jon about on this episode of Outside In. They also discuss geopolitics and US foreign policy monetary policy and the digital economy and self sovereign identity for Web3.
Charlie Ruffle, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Kudo, a private equity firm that is changing the economics of the investing business by taking long term, passive minority stakes in successful, often boutique investment management firms. Kudu now has stakes in 23 businesses with assets under management, depending on the day, of about $60 billion. Before that, Charlie spent decades studying and reporting on the asset management and wealth management business as co-founder and CEO of Asset International. He successfully sold the media company in 2010.
He's an incredibly astute observer. Perhaps it's his training as a journalist, or maybe it's his passion for fly fishing where he observes trends, context, conditions, and subtle changes in water and air in some of the more remote corners of the world.
In this episode of Outside In, Charlie talks with Jon about the importance of trust, the future of finance and his passion for fly fishing.
Alan has enjoyed an eclectic career as a lawyer, an investment banker, an independent film producer, and now film and television distributor. In each. he's been an overachiever. As a lawyer, he was General Counsel to a global fast food company and personally responsible for strategic acquisitions in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. As an investment banker, he did deals totalling billions in real estate related finance, working with such marquee names as Soros Capital, Apollo Partners, Sterling Equities, and KKR.
Seeking a major life change, he became a movie producer, and his films have won awards at Sundance and Austin Film Festivals. Now as a movie and television distributor, he's built FilmRise into the world's leading advertising on demand streaming service, as well as the provider of some 40,000 titles to everyone from Amazon to Netflix to YouTube.
On this episode of Outside In, Alan talks with Jon about not being happy and not being afraid to do something about it, throwing grenades back at the Grim Reaper, financial scars, wooing stars and skating where the puck is going.
As a senior director on the Reimagining Capitalism team, Chris leads Omidyar Network’s strategy and portfolio focused on Corporations, Capital Markets, and the Common Good. He also oversees the organization’s impact investing field-building portfolio.
Chris serves in advisory and/or governance roles for the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), Blue Haven Initiative, the Catalytic Capital Consortium, Novata, Social Finance US, and the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing.
Prior to joining the firm, Chris was director of global partnerships at the U.S. Agency for International Development. He also was a partner at Accenture and director of global programs for Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP), the firm’s not-for-profit international development consulting practice.
On this episode of Outside In Chris talks with Jon about reimagining capitalism. They discuss the purpose of the economic system and the need for an updated form of economic thinking to address the realities of 21st century challenges.
Bill Coffin is Editor in Chief of Ethisphere. Ethisphere is dedicated to promoting standards of ethical business practice, specifically those which encourage marketplace trust and business success and is known for its annual report on the World's Most Ethical Companies, and its 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.
Bill was previously Editor in Chief of Compliance Week and has a special understanding of finance having worked for some of the largest insurance companies in the world.
His writing has appeared in all the major financial publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune, and he has received an arm load of journalistic awards, but intriguingly Bill also has a second career - he's a successful fantasy author, most notably of the Dark Britannia Trilogy and is the creator of a number of fantasy role play games.
On this episode of Outside In, Bill talks with Jon about compliance and the science of ethics, his double life as a successful fantasy author, his marvellous gesture for an injured comic book writer and role-playing the impossible moments that we face in life. They also discuss the cross pollination between the fantasy role-playing worlds and morals, ethics and power in the real world.
Andres Vinelli is the CFA Institute’s Chief Economist, an expert in financial markets and in the analysis of highly regulated markets who leads the Research function, which is foundational to developing the organization’s advocacy positions, standards, and codes.
Andres also guides economic market analysis and the creation of derivative products to inform and support policy positions and the development of industry standards. As a member of the Research, Advocacy and Standards Leadership Team, Andres works to augment cross-departmental and cross-functional original research.
Before his service at the CFA Institute, Andres was the Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress where he spearheaded the strategic direction of economic policy for the organization. Areas of focus included macroeconomic recovery and the COVID-19 pandemic as well as incorporating Environmental, Social, and Governance considerations in financial market regulation and in corporate governance.
Andres is also an Adjunct Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where he teaches the MBA course “Financial Markets and Crises."
On this episode of Outside In, Jon talks with Andres about short-termism, regulation, capital markets and standard setting.
Barbara Novick, Co-founder and former Vice Chairman of BlackRock, was one of the eight original partners who founded BlackRock and took it from an idea with zero assets under management to the largest investor in the world today. BlackRock has assets under management depending on the day you tune into this podcast of some $10 trillion or more.
And while Barbara would be the first to tell you that she had great teammates at BlackRock, the fact is that many of the factors which made BlackRock the success it is, reported to her. She headed the Global Client Group and oversaw global business development, marketing, and client service for the first two decades of BlackRock's existence, She was the architect of the One BlackRock ethos that put clients first, front and center. Barbara tried to retire in 2008, but the global financial crisis caused her to reverse fields and create BlackRock's Global Public Policy Group to provide a voice for investors. It's incredibly influential, not just within the walls of Congress and with US regulators, but in the centers of government around the world.
For obvious reasons. Barbara frequently appears on the list of the most powerful people in finance, She is, as they say in Boston, wicked smart. More than that, she asks questions and she listens. The result is that she's situationally aware of the environment she's operating in and the direction and pace of change. That enables her to apply those smarts to the real world.
On this episode of Outside In, Barbara talks with Jon about diversification, technology, her passion for mentoring and focusing on opportunity. They also discuss her concerns about the politicization of regulation and markets, and "The Goldilocks Dilemma".
Bruno is a finance and technology entrepreneur, leader and innovator. He co-founded Global X in 2008. Recognized as one of the most innovative and fastest growing firms in the exchange traded fund sector, Global X grew to over $10 billion in assets under management under his stewardship as CEO & Chairman, with close to a million clients globally. Mirae Asset Global Investments bought Global X in 2018.
Bruno was an investor and board member at 55ip, a wealth and asset management fintech company sold to J.P. Morgan in December 2020. He is Chairman of Certa, the leading no-code platform for vendor onboarding and is an Advisor & Capital Partner to The TIFIN Group, a fintech company shaping the future of investor experiences, and a board member at Trioteca, leading the digital mortgage transformation in Spain.
On this episode of Outside In, Bruno talks with Jon about FinTech investing, the importance of being client centric and his spiritual journey.
Mindy Lubber is the CEO and President of the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres. She leads an all-women executive leadership team and more than 160 employees working to mobilize the most influential investors and companies to solve the world’s greatest sustainability challenges. She has been at the helm since 2003, and under her leadership, the organization and its powerful networks and global collaborations have grown significantly in size and influence. On this episode of Outside In, Mindy talks with Jon about acting on climate and water and making carbon a real part of the economic equation.
Janine Guillot is Special Advisor to the ISSB Chair at IFRS Foundation. Janine was the Chief Operating Investment Officer for CalPERS. She was Chief Operating Investment Officer, Global Fixed Income, at Barclays Global Investors and she's a 12-year veteran of the Bank of America, where her last position was Executive Vice President for Consumer E-Commerce. Janine can walk the walk with the world's largest banks and investors and talk the talk with the world's academics and regulators. On this episode of Outside In Janine talks with Jon about risk and return and understanding the impact of sustainability on enterprise value. They discuss food systems and Janine's passion for sustainable agriculture.
Alex is responsible for leading the strategy and overall management of BetaShares. Prior to co-founding BetaShares, Alex was closely involved in the establishment and development of several leading Australian financial services businesses including Pengana Capital and Centric Wealth. Alex is a director and principal of Apex Capital Partners, a financial services focussed investment firm. He is also a director of Toranotec Ltd, a Japanese asset management firm that delivered the country’s first smartphone-enabled automated investment service.
On this episode of Outside In, Alex talks with Jon about fintech innovation and coordinating humanitarian aid for his native Ukraine. They discuss what's right about Capitalism and Alex's growing obsession with synthetic biology.
Rosanna is much more than just one of the foremost executive compensation experts. She's a sharp eyed observer of American capitalism who has had more than three decades of corporate governance experience at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Change to Win.
Rosanna is Wage Justice & Executive Pay Program Senior Manager at As You Sow where she's the author of the As You Sow foundation's The 100 Most Overpaid CEO's annual report.
On this episode of Outside In she talks with Jon about executive compensation, income inequality, her Mennonite upbringing, the different kinds of smart and her book Weaving A Family.
Said Business School professor Robert Eccles, is a leading authority on the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in resource allocation decisions by companies and investors, as well as the world’s foremost academic expert on integrated reporting. Bob is the author of a number of books on integrated reporting, sustainability and the role of business in society. He is a leader on how companies and investors can create sustainable strategies. He was the founding chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).
On this episode of Outside In, Bob talks with Jon Lukomnik about the power and limitations of sustainability disclosure, his Topology of Hate for ESG, a passion for Stockholm and the sheer exhilaration of deadlifting 400 lbs.
Georgia grew up in Edinburgh and studied Climate Change and Conservation under a Natural Sciences degree at Cambridge. While at university, she campaigned to transform how Cambridge’s £6B endowment pot was invested, calling for transparency as well as shareholder engagement on critical issues like gender and climate change. She has worked for Jupiter and Alliance Trust on sustainable asset management, as well as Fauna and Flora International on natural capital.
Georgia co-founded Tumelo in January 2018 with a mission to help every investor have a positive impact. Tumelo gives investors visibility over their underlying fund holdings and a shareholder voice on issues they care about at companies they own. Their white-label software plugs into existing investment platforms and pension portals, driving positive engagement between investment providers and their clients and, ultimately, influencing better stewardship across the asset management industry.
On this episode of Outside In, Georgia talks with Jon about shareholder democracy, the power of our money, sensible valuations and getting life right.
Jamie Kitman is a lawyer, rock band manager (They Might Be Giants, Violent Femmes, Meat Puppets, OK Go, Pere Ubu, among his clients past and present), and veteran automotive journalist whose work has appeared in publications including _Automobile Magazine, Road & Track, Autoweek, Jalopnik, New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The Nation, Harpers, and Vanity Fair as well as England’s Car, Top Gear, Guardian, Private Eye, and The Road Rat. Winner of a National Magazine Award and the IRE Medal for Investigative Magazine Journalism for his reporting on the history of leaded gasoline, in his copious spare time he runs a picture-car company, Octane Film Cars, which has supplied cars to TV shows including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Americans, Halston, and The Deuce and movies including Respect and The Post. A judge on the concours circuit, he has his own collection with a “friend of the friendless” theme that includes less-than-concours examples of the Mk 1 Lotus-Ford Cortina, Hillman Imp, and Lancia Fulvia, as well as more Peugeots than he is willing to publicly disclose. On this episode of Outside In, Jamie talks with Jon about big bad Oil, America's relationship with the automobile and the paradigm of modern pollution.
Ted Seides, CFA created Capital Allocators LLC to explore best practices in the asset management industry. He launched the Capital Allocators podcast in 2017 and the show reached ten million downloads in April 2022. Brunswick Group named it the top institutional investing podcast, and Barron’s, Business Insider, Forbes and Value Walk each named it among the top investing podcasts. Alongside the podcast, Ted advises both managers and allocators, compounding his knowledge and relationships to help them make more money. In March 2021, he published his second book, Capital Allocators: How the world's elite money managers lead and invest that distills key lessons from the first 150 episodes of the podcast.
From 2002 to 2015, Ted was a founder of Protégé Partners LLC and served as President and Co-Chief Investment Officer. Protégé was a leading multibillion-dollar alternative investment firm that invested in and seeded small hedge funds. In 2010, Larry Kochard and Cathleen Rittereiser profiled Ted in the book Top Hedge Fund Investors. In 2016, Ted authored his first book, So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund: Lessons for Managers and Allocators, to share lessons from his experience.
On this episode of Outside In Ted talks with Jon about waiting to find that manager who so blows you away on every level, learnings from his bet with Buffett, the purpose of investing and charity.
Jan van Eck, CEO of VanEck, is an innovator. entrepreneur and podcast enthusiast with firsthand knowledge of today’s markets and the complex web of information that investors encounter on a daily basis.
Furthering VanEck’s mission to anticipate asset classes and trends, Mr. van Eck has created strategic beta, tactical allocation, emerging markets, and commodity-related investment strategies in mutual fund, ETF, and institutional formats. Mr. van Eck founded the Firm’s ETF business in 2006. One of the world’s largest ETF sponsors, the Firm offers ETFs, branded VanEck, globally across equity and fixed income asset classes.
Mr. van Eck holds a JD from Stanford University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College with a major in Economics. He has registrations with the National Futures Association and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Mr. van Eck is a Director of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. He routinely appears on CNBC and Bloomberg Television, and was a 2013 Finalist for Institutional Investor's Fund Leader of the Year and a 2019 finalist for ETF.com’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
On this episode of Outside In, Jan talks with Jon about reading the signs of change, being American today, blockchain transparency, "Helicopter Ben" and his love of electronic dance music.
Born Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, by now much has been made of Negrito’s own unique story—his early years growing up in an orthodox Muslim household, the doomed major label deal that turned him off of the music industry altogether, the near-fatal car cash that permanently damaged his guitar playing hand—as well as the remarkable redemption arc that began in 2015, when he won the first ever NPR Tiny Desk Contest.
In the years that followed, Negrito would go on to take home three consecutive GRAMMY Awards for Best Contemporary Blues Album, tour with everyone from Sturgill Simpson to Chris Cornell, collaborate in the studio with the likes of Sting and E-40, launch his own Storefront Records label, perform at Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, Newport Folk, Bryon Bay Blues, and nearly every other major festival on the map, and found the Revolution Plantation, an urban farm aimed at youth education and empowerment.
On this episode of Outside In, Fantastic Negrito talks with Jon about his father's fabricated existence, a most unexpected ancestry, Oakland, healing and being raised on the streets by a family of eclectic wolves.
Jonty Hurwitz is an artist, engineer, and entrepreneur. Heavily immersed in the world of tech and AI, he is also internationally recognised for his pioneering work in merging art and science. He deeply believes that our human relationships with technology are entering a new era and more than ever before, the ethics of our tools need to be at the heart of our work.
On this episode of Outside In Jonty talks with Jon about his anxiety - sharing that fact that he has suffered with it all his life - his creative process, nano sculptures and the performative element in his art. Jonty also talks about his latest FinTech project Daizy, the coexistence of multiple realities and what it means to be human.
Fiona Reynolds is the CEO of Conexus Financial. She served as the CEO of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) for over nine years. As part of her role in the UK, she was on the board of a number of organisations including UN Global Compact, Climate Action 100+, the UK Green Finance Institute, the Greening the Belt and Road Global Committee, and the Asset Owners Net Zero Alliance
Fiona has 25 years' experience in the financial services and pension sector. She joined the PRI from the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST), where she spent seven years as CEO.
Fiona was named one of the 20 most influential people in sustainability globally by Barron’s magazine and has twice been named one of Australia’s one hundred women of influence by the Australian Financial Review.
Fiona also serves on the Board of Frontier Investment Consulting, the investment Committee of the Laudes Foundation and Advisory Boards of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, PWC, Affirmative Investment Management and the Advisory board of BASF.
On this episode of Outside In Fiona talks with Jon about her unconventional start, a failed coup at the PRI, '80s rock and balancing people, profit and planet. Fiona also discusses how responsible investing has gone mainstream on her watch, with the resulting increase in risk to ethos and ethics, and how she has followed the money to change the world.
Michael J. Abramowitz is president of Freedom House. Before joining Freedom House in February 2017, he was director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education. He led the museum’s genocide prevention efforts and later oversaw its public education programs.
He was previously National Editor and then White House correspondent for the Washington Post. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former fellow at the German Marshall Fund and the Hoover Institution. A graduate of Harvard College, he is also a board member of the National Security Archive.
On this episode of Outside In Michael talks with Jon about why democracy is important, avoiding complacency, the need for tech transparency and sober dialogue.
Barbara Zvan is the President and CEO of the University Pension Plan Ontario (UPP) and former Chief Risk and Strategy Officer for the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Recognized as a leading voice on sustainable investing and a tireless ambassador for defined benefit pensions, Barbara brings institutional strength to complex challenges while forging new collaborative pathways for innovation and growth.
She's a member of the Government of Canada's Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance and serves on the Board of the Responsible Investment Association and the Advisory Board of the Institute for Sustainable Finance. A trained actuary, with a Master's Degree in Mathematics, Barbara has Chaired both the International Center of Pension Management and the Sustainability Accounting Standard Board's Investor Advisory Group.
On this episode, Barbara talks with Jon about taking an idea and turning it into a $12 billion Institution from scratch. during COVID! She talks about the importance of people and culture and seizing the opportunity that is the Net Zero Transition.
Peter McKillop is the founder of Climate & Capital Media, a mission-driven information platform exploring the business and finance of climate change. Peter founded Climate & Capital Media following a long career as a journalist at Newsweek and as a communications expert at financial institutions including BlackRock, KKR, UBS, JP Morgan and Bank of America. On this episode of Outside In Peter discusses ESG policy at BlackRock, breaking the Ginsburg pot smoking scandal and the importance of engaging within our communities.
Karina is an independent director of the Italian multinational energy company, Eni. She also chairs the Governing Board of the Climate Governance Initiative and is a Governor of the CFA Institute where she chairs the ESG Working Group of the Investment Sub-Committee and serves on the Governance Committee. She is best known as a corporate governance expert but not many corporate governance experts become an independent director of a major multinational energy company. She's a climate activist but not many climate activists serve on the board of an oil and gas company and succeed in changing its culture. On this episode of Outside In she talks with Jon Lukomnik about these achievements, having her freedom threatened by a corrupt prosecutor, spending her intellectual focus on the existential crisis of climate risk and giving emotional support to refugees fleeing conflicts in broken states.
Ambassador (Rtd) Howard Gutman is the Managing Director of The Gutman Group. His career has spanned the public and private sectors, both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the political aisle, from K Street, to Silicon Valley, to Wall Street, to Hollywood, then to Brussels, the heart of the European Union and NATO, where he was dubbed by European press as “The Ambassador Who Makes Us Love America Again“. Howard talks with Jon about standing up for decency, fighting the damaging Foreign Dredge Act and his passionate pursuit of a solution for coastal protection, He discusses a very personal formula for moving on from atrocities, how he connected with an entire nation and his strategy for overcoming scandal.
Jon Hale is Global Head of Sustainability Research at Morningstar, Inc. where he focuses on ESG thought leadership and product strategy. Jon discusses the cause for the recent explosion in ESG, the various strains of ESG and how investors should think about it. He outlines why it's not a foregone conclusion that we're going to get a more favorable permanent regulatory regime in the U.S. despite the favorable action the Biden administration has taken.
Renaye works at the cutting edge of organized labor, public policy, and finance and her impact has been felt across all three. A former field organizer for the AFL-CIO, she is Deputy Director for the Service Employees International Union Strategic Initiatives Department, where she works with pension trustees who sit on 67 pension funds with collective assets under management of approximately a trillion dollars. In terms of public policy, she serves on the Biden-Harris transition team focusing on the financial regulatory landscape. She has previously served on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's advisory board on Small Business, Agriculture and Labor.
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS.
Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance. He is Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Financial Management Association.
He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.
Alex serves on the Steering Group of The Purposeful Company, a UK consortium of leaders in responsible business, and on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee. The UK government appointed him (jointly with PwC) to study the alleged misuse of share buybacks and the link between executive pay and investment. Alex also serves as Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College, giving a four-year programme of lectures to the public. His series are on The Principles of Finance (2021/2), The Psychology of Finance (2020/1), Business Skills for the 21st Century (2019/20) and How Business Can Better Serve Society (2018/9).
Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and won the Financial Times award for Excellence in Sustainable Finance Education. He is a co-author of the 14th edition of Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen).
Alex was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. He has won 23 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS, won the Finance for the Future award for Driving Change in the finance community, and featured in Thinkers50 Radar.
Ambassador (ret.) Norman Eisen is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, executive chair of the States United Democracy Center, and a globally-recognized authority on law, ethics, and anti-corruption. He served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the Trump impeachment from February 2019 to February 2020. He is the author of A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump (Crown 2020) and The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House (Crown 2018) and the editor of Democracy’s Defenders: U.S. Embassy Prague, the Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and Its Aftermath (Brookings Institution Press 2020). Eisen served in the White House from January 2009 to January 2011 as special counsel and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform, and was the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014.
Danielle Amato-Milligan has extensive experience as a strategic advisor to nonprofit organizations in the areas of arts and cultural organizations, including artist- endowed foundations, and private and public foundations, social justice, higher education, health and human services, environmental and international relief. She advises their boards and leadership on a wide range of issues, including governance, strategic planning, strategic leadership development, organization design, change management, development and fundraising, and capacity building.
She works at the intersection of finance, philanthropy and art. She has been on all sides of those issues working for US Trust, Bank of America, counselling the banks' major endowment clients, and as senior management at such major institutions as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Museum for African Art and The Whitney Museum.
She now runs her own consulting firm, working with national and international nonprofit organizations. She also serves on the boards of the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation and the Holt/Smithson Foundation. She's a member of the Friends of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, of Save Venice, of Women in Development and is a former trustee of Art Table.
Joe Nocera is one of the most accomplished business journalists in the US. He has been a business columnist at Esquire, GQ, Fortune, Bloomberg, NPR and the New York times. Joe is the host and writer of The Shrink Next Door, which was the No.1 podcast in America in 2019. He's the author of a number of books, including "A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class," "Good Guys and Bad Guys" (a collection of magazine and newspaper articles), "All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis" (co-written with Bethany McLean) and "Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against The NCAA" (co-authored with Ben Strauss).
Barry Ritholtz, co-founder, chairman and CIO of Ritholtz Wealth Management talks with Jon about making ADHD his superpower, the reforms he would make if he were king of the capital markets and his strategy for approaching decisions in life. Barry explains why he thinks the US public is not nearly as polarized as the parties and casts some light on our blind spots.
Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise, talks to Jon about his path from minor league baseball mascot to a major league role in Crypto, his gift for making the complicated simple and why NFTs may be the biggest single idea that he's encountered in his professional life.
Jim McRitchie, corporate governance advocate, publisher of CorpGov.net and rebel with a cause talks to Jon about growing up in a segregated, sexist, economically isolated bubble, wealth inequality and how he and a small group of passionate, like-minded gadflies are changing corporate America one shareholder proposal at a time.
Berknell Financial founder Dasarte Yarnway talks to Jon about his childhood in the projects of Oakland, California, the son of Liberian immigrant parents, and how losing his father at a young age instilled a drive in him that made him one of the top high school running backs in the state of California and helped land him at UC Berkeley. When injuries cut his football career short, he pivoted into finance, working at wealth management firms before going out on his own as an RIA in 2016 and founding Berknell. Since then, he's ascended in the advisory space, writing three books and hosting the popular "Young Money" podcast. Here, he discusses his life and work, as well as his latest project, Onyx Advisor Network, a service platform for minority advisors which aims to change "the complexion of wealth management."
Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean is one of the world's most respected financial journalists. She has written for Slate and Fortune, where she published a 2001 article critical of the Wall Street darling Enron, helping to eventually expose the company as a fraud. She is the author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, also about the Enron scandal, All the Devils Are Here, about the 2008 financial crisis, and Saudi America, about fracking's impact on the U.S. economy. On this episode, she speaks with Jon about her upcoming book on the impact of Covid on the economy, how a background in math and a prior career as a Goldman Sachs analyst has made her a stronger journalist, and why investors are still putting their faith in CEOs with "big personalities" and a seeming knack for breaking things.
Nic Harcourt joins Outside In this week to talk about his long-spanning career as a radio DJ, during which he's launched the careers of artists including Adele, Coldplay, the Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey and more. The New York Times called him "the country's most important disc jockey and a genuine bellwether," and he is currently the host of "The NIc Harcourt Morning Show" on public radio station 88.5 in Los Angeles. Here, Jon talks to Nic about what it takes to be a great interviewer, why people fall in love with music, and Nic's side career as a musician and songwriter.
Reggie Browne is a renowned financial market innovator, known as an early and influential champion of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Here, Reggie talks to Jon about whether ETFs have become too much of a good thing, the ways that the markets have contributed to systemic inequity and what needs to change, and his passions as a collector of African American art and work on the boards of multiple arts organizations.
Stanley Bergman is the CEO of Henry Schein, the world's largest provider of healthcare products, services, and technology to office-based doctors and dentists. It sometimes flies under the radar, but shouldn't. Stan Bergman took over as CEO of a family-run dental distribution company with revenues of $225 million in 1989, roughly a third of a century ago, and today it has revenues and a market cap of more than $10 billion. Henry Schein is regarded as an exemplar of a company with a purpose and has been one of Fortune magazine's world's-most admired companies for 20 consecutive years. Listen as Stanley, the son of parents who fled the Holocaust, tells Jon about how growing up in apartheid South Africa shaped him as the leader he is today and the importance of returning humanity to health care.
Daniel Roy is one of the world's leading close-up magicians and an expert card manipulator. He's performed on Penn and Teller's "Fool Us" and at Hollywood's premiere Magic Castle. Roy, 25, is also an astute student of neurobiology who has presented at the American Neuropsychiatric Association's annual conference. Listen as he talks to Jon about his origin story, magic, and the human ability to self deceive.
Amy Borrus is the Executive Director of the Council of Institutional Investors, or CII, the prominent U.S. trade group that represents asset owners and managers around corporate governance issues. Borrus, a former journalist for Business Week, talks with Jon about the ways ESG and corporate governance have evolved in the 30+ years she’s been following the industry, the enduring issues with dual-class voting and say-on-pay measures, and what the future looks like for investors.
Women's National Basketball Association Commissioner Cathy Engelbert joins Jon to talk about leaving her post as the first female CEO of Deloitte in 2019, to become the first-ever Commissioner of the WNBA. Listen as she talks about the similarities between basketball and business, the challenges to sports bought by the pandemic and America's continued reckoning with racial inequity and gender inequity, and what's ahead for the growth of the WNBA.
Michael Jantzi is one of the giants of sustainable investing. He is the founder and long-time CEO of Sustainalytics, which was recently sold to Morningstar, and where he now focuses on the big picture as managing director for ESG strategy. Listen as Michael tells Jon how he is broadening the adoption of sustainable investing across multiple asset classes and investor segments and where he sees the future of sustainable investing headed.
Donna Lynn Hilton, artistic director of influential musical theater company Goodspeed, joins Jon this week to talk about using theater to reflect a more inclusive, diverse, and even politically fraught U.S., the future of the medium, and how she navigates the tricky art of managing creative people in a collaborative environment.
Lord Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury, is the master of Pembroke College at Cambridge University and is a former member of Parliament. He’s also a former UK Minister for Culture, Media and Sport and the former chair of the UK’s Environmental Agency. He joins Jon this week to talk about the importance of failing, the future of the UK post-Brexit, Cambridge’s divestment from fossil fuels, and why interdisciplinarity is crucial in all fields.
Dr. Lewis Teperman serves as the Vice Chair of Surgery and is Director of Solid Organ Transplantation at Northwell Health. His interest in medicine started with a childhood hamster who needed an appendectomy, and, later, he decided to organ transplantation surgery after seeing his college roommate lose his mother who couldn't receive a transplant in time. Here, Dr. Teperman, a pioneer in liver transplantation, shares what he's learned about all facets of medicine, including the business side, the patients that made the biggest impact on him, and the future of transplantation.
Rick Funston is CEO of Funston Advisory Services and the author of "Surviving and Thriving in Uncertainty: Creating The Risk Intelligent Enterprise" and was the National Practice Leader for Deloitte's Governance and Risk Oversight Services. Prior to that, he worked for several major public retirement systems, including the New York City Bureau of Asset Management and the California Public Employees' Retirement System. And before that, believe it or not, Funston was a hostage negotiator. Here, Jon and Rick discuss what advisors might learn from shifting their perspectives about risk.
Nell Minow has been an influential shareholder adviser and leader in the world of corporate governance for over three decades. She’s co-authored three books on corporate governance with Robert A.G. Monks, most recently the 5th edition of an MBA textbook titled Corporate Governance, published in 2011. She’s also a movie critic and edits the site, TheMovieMom.com. Here, Nell talks with Jon about the state of capitalism, what she’d like to tell the SEC, and the movies that get the financial world right and wrong.
Author Zach Schonbrun talks to Jon about his book, The Performance Cortex: How Neuroscience is Redefining Athletic Genius, and the powerful connection between the mind and athletic success. Schonbrun, a former New York Times sports reporter, is a senior editor covering business and technology at The Week magazine. Listen as he discusses the unexpected parallels between business and sports and what's to be learned from the compelling new world of neuroathletics.
Howard Sherman is Executive Director of ESG at data giant MSCI, where he is responsible for MSCI’s corporate governance practice. Though ESG has exploded in popularity in recent years, Howard has been involved in corporate governance and sustainability issues for 35 years and his thoughts and opinions have helped determine the direction of ESG. Listen as Jon talks to Howard about the role of data in investing, as well as in ESG and sustainable investing, and the misuses of data that investors and advisors can avoid.
Best-selling author Margalit Fox joins Jon today to talk about her new book The Confidence Men, the incredible true-life prison-break tale of two British WWI officers who escaped from a Turkish jail. Even better, the officers pulled one over on their captors using a homemade Ouija board. Margo is a gifted storyteller, having worked on the New York Times' obituaries section as a senior writer for years, penning wonderfully engaging narratives, and making obituaries into mini-biographies that became viral must-reads. Here, Margo talks to Jon about The Confidence Men and what the business world can learn from this escape story, and how, at the Times, she became one the best living writers about death.
On the debut episode of Jon Lukomnik's new Spark Network podcast Outside In, the noted institutional investor and corporate governance expert talks to Shakespeare scholar Jim Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, about what the financial community can take away from the Bard about business.