The Sustainable Finance Podcast Paul Ellis

Today’s SFP guest believes that in the future energy will be clean, resilient, abundant, and free. Harnessing that energy will allow us to preserve wild places and protect the magic of our natural world, while propelling us to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond. Nick Davis, CEO at GridMarket.com, believes that we all have a role to play in the giant leaps that AI and energy abundance will produce for humanity. Nick also believes that harnessing the power of GridMarket’s subscription service in partnership with companies like GRP/Wegmanm will redefine clean energy projects, embracing state-of-the-art technology and AI to pinpoint, optimize, and execute renewable energy solutions with unmatched precision.

Andrea Longton is an award-winning author and professional social justice investor. She has raised over 1 billion dollars for social justice investments in the United States and has advised on another 1.5 billion dollars worldwide. Andrea’s new book is titled The Social Justice Investor: Advance Your Values while Building Wealth and will be released this month on April 23rd. Her professional experience includes positions at Opportunity Finance Network, Freddie Mac, Capital Impact Partners, which is now Momentus Capital, and Delphos International. Andrea holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation from the CFA Institute and has worked in structured finance investments, capital markets and change management.

Today’s podcast guest loves to speak with investors and asset managers interested in the sustainable food space. Shila Wattamwar, Founder and CEO of Radiant Global Advisory, is an adviser to companies that are optimizing logistics, reducing supply chain costs and emissions and fostering community engagement as sustainability goals they expect will produce greater ROI and profitability and help them become preferred companies to work for in their industry. She is a Fast Company Impact Council member and a contributing writer on sustainability themes. In a recent article Shila highlighted her framework that maps activities to positive actions, rather than just the issues we face, with the intention of making daily sustainability-focused action more tangible for consumers as well as investors and asset managers.

Tee Ganbold is Co-Founder and CEO at Improvability AI, the Generative AI improvement engine for sustainability. She was Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Clear AI, optimizing supply chains for sustainability utilizing knowledge graphs. Improvability AI enables companies to enhance their sustainability focus and increase profits through the power of AI automation - intuitive AI agents and applications that automate tasks and workflows to lower costs in the business model and supply chains. Clients use the Improvability AI RAG Platform to automate reporting, insights and research based on their private data and documents. They also work with Improvability AI to create their own platforms for clients or teams.

Sustainable Impact investing is at an inflection point in 2024, so where do Radhika Shroff and her Nuveen Private Equity team see value in this type of investing? Their investment thesis is rooted in addressing two critical and inextricably linked problems — inequality and climate change. They believe these problems create attractive impact investment opportunities outside of traditional developed markets that offer investors stability, competitive returns and liquidity for the right asset manager. Climate change knows no boundaries and will impact communities with varying levels of resilience. Nuveen also believes that by targeting the emerging low-income consumer segment, and providing that consumer with goods and services that mitigate carbon emissions and build resilience, they will select companies best positioned to grow and lead in the decades to come.

Many claim that ESG is dead. Our SFP guest today said that “ESG is broken” at NYC Climate Week last year. But ESG teams need ESG software in the same way that finance teams need finance software. Makes sense, but where should businesses start on this software adoption journey? Today followers of the SFP are going to hear from Marjella Lecourt-Alma, CEO and Co-Founder of Datamaran about “Smart ESG”, how it differs from other approaches and what are the benefits for businesses of different sizes and industries? Datamaran is the only software analytics firm in the world that can monitor external risks and opportunities (incl ESG) in real-time. The development of their patented technology is expert-led and fully transparent. Marjella and the Datamaran team believe that companies who care about their success - in an ever evolving world - incorporate material ESG risks and opportunities from the top down.