Week 2: Finance System Change

How does the financial system work? How on earth to change it?

Hello all, thank you for your participation in Week 1 . We had almost 90% of you join for one or both of our intro calls. We hope you have also had a chance to navigate our Fellowship Playbook and join our WhatsApp group. Do you have any questions? Drop us a line.

Week 2 is about getting into the meat of this sector. We have 3 learning opportunities to go deep into understanding the current system and what needs to be addressed for the financial system to become sustainable. James Vaccaro will join us for a community call on Thursday to explore the cracks in the foundations of finance. James works with high-level financial leaders to help them better understand the systemic nature of the challenges we face for over 20 years. His work challenges the status quo and provides solutions to use finance in a way that goes beyond the bandaid. The skill sessions this week, on the other hand, will equip you with some new foundations: the foundations of sustainable finance & impact investing.

Jenny Coombs' presentation to the Spring 2024 Cohort provided a helpful summary of the main issues and frames of thinking about sustainable finance and impact investing. This time, she will go deeper into what she shared with us in spring and provide us with recent updatesfrom the field. Watching the Spring session can give you more context and help you get familiar with the terms and the principles of sustainable finance.

Carlos Vargas, a really great professor at Harvard, will zoom in further on Impact Investing principles. This is a great way for you to get acquainted with the topics in the space. His work is very engaging, and he provides a very down-to-earth explanation of complex topics. His recent textbook is one of the best-selling and most helpful out there for an approachable and relatable intro to the field. If you want more content from Carlos, check out our past event with him. It is another great introductory webinar on the topic and may give you further context on the range of topics in the space.

This skill session by Carlos Vargas is a public event in collaboration with the Harvard Extension School Sustainability Student Club (HES3C)- you can invite people from your network to join. This might be a chance for you to promote the Fellowship to your community and also share a really helpful learning opportunity and a chance to network. You need to register ahead of time. Feel free to repost our sharing on LinkedIn. -> Register here - https://rb.gy/3712q5 <-

Resources on Sustainable Finance (addition to Jenny's & Carlos' Skill Sessions)

https://youtu.be/cLje7G_dK5M

📹 Intro to Sustainable Finance and Impact Investing w/Jenny Coombs (Fellowship session Spring'24)

📖 Sustainable Finance Fundamentals - Carlos Vargas (Textbook)

📹 The State of Sustainable Finance - what you need to know to navigate the field w/ Carlos Vargas (video)

Additionally, we’ve been invited to some great partner events from Island Innovation, the CFA Institute, and the Intentional Endowments Network. Be sure to check out our Fall Events Overview for a current listing of all events we’ve created and curated for you (the recordings are linked here as well).

Intentional Endowments Network - The Impact of Climate Engagement: A Field Experiment

Our friends at IEN have given us special access to their webinars. Normally, you would need to be a paying member to join these calls, but Georges Dyer has given us access to complement your learning. Their session this week looks very interesting as it explores how successful shareholder engagement has been. Session title: The Impact of Climate Engagement: A Field Experiment.

Sign up here

CFA Institute -The Basics of Finance

CFA Institute makes available to us and the public sessions on the basics of finance but also on very specific topics related to sustainable finance and sustainability issues. We will highlight sessions that should be of interest to you and your work.

For example, this week, there is a session titled: How Climate Matters in Investment Decisions.

Sign up here

Island Innovation - Virtual Island Summitt

Island Innovation hosts its annual Virtual Island Summitt that brings together 150+ policymakers, development partners, entrepreneurs, academics, and NGO leaders to share their expertise and knowledge on island communities. Islands nations will be some of the most impacted places because of climate change. These communities are testing grounds for the solutions to climate change. This series of panels, webinars, and lectures bring examples of innovations, case studies, and good practices from around the world. 2023's event attracted over 10,000 attendees from more than 500 islands worldwide and included keynote addresses from the Prime Ministers of Curaçao, Grenada, the Chair of AOSIS, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and other stakeholders. There is a range of really cool sustainability topics and a few on finance. I would highly recommend the whole conference because it really is the voices of the Global Majority and these island communities are powerful examples of what can be done to make change happen. Plus, the topics are really, really interesting.

• Check out the full calendar here: LinkedIn Registration.

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📹 Week 2 Recordings

Community Call 2: Letting the Light through: Cracks in the foundations of Finance w/ James Vaccaro

📹 Watch https://youtu.be/QEf0avdolfA`

📓 James' Slides - Google Drive

🙆‍♂️James' Bio: James Vaccaro - Chief Catalyst, Climate Safe Lending Network / CEO, Repattern

James is a sustainability strategist and systems thinker with a background of twenty-five years’ senior management experience in sustainable finance and business. He has provided leadership for organisations and projects and served on a wide range of business and charity boards and governing bodies.

James is CEO of RePattern.org, supporting organisations and their stakeholders in effective ecosystem innovation and strategy for sustainability transformation. He is the Chief Catalyst of the Climate Safe Lending Network – a multistakeholder initiative to catalyse the decarbonisation of the banking sector. James is also a Senior Advisor to TOPO Finance on sustainable finance initiatives, building on the insights from the Carbon Bankroll report revealing the climate impacts of cash held by companies. He has recently joined the Expert Network for the Design Council, the UK’s national strategic advisor with a design for planet mission.

Through RePattern, James is a strategy advisor to a number of regenerative agriculture-tech companies and has led the development of the WWF Nature-based Solutions Accelerator. James was previously Group Director of Strategy for Triodos Bank – Europe’s leading international sustainable bank and investment manager). In his career at Triodos, James set up and managed the UK investment business comprising corporate finance and crowdfunding services, venture capital fund management and fund distribution.

James served on the Global Steering Committee for the UNEP Finance Initiative and was one of the founding developers of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking launched in 2019. He is on the advisory panel for the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), the delivery group of the UK Government’s Transition Plan Taskforce and on the advisory group of the Horizon Europe landscape restoration project, NATURESCAPES. James is a Senior Associate of the Cambridge Institute and senior fellow of the Finance Innovation Lab having previously served as the Chair of the Board of Trustees. James is a non-executive director of Regen and a Senior advisor for Club of Rome. He is also an advisor and investor in the Cambridge-based climate solutions venture-builder, Carbon-13. He is the author of several reports and papers on sustainable finance and impact investing (including the UN’s Global Environment Outlook on Sustainable Finance), a regular speaker at events and conferences on sustainable business and positive impact finance.

Skill Session: Intro to Sustainable Finance w/Jenny Coombs

📹 Watch https://youtu.be/VhcJoTpmVvM

📓 Jenny's Slides

📚 Jenny's Resources

Skill Session: Intro to Impact Investing w/ Carlos Vargas

📹 Watch https://youtu.be/2mdl-ozOMDQ

📚 Additional Resources - https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1R-L5JYE47zTXScrExj4yMgFKP191kLtf