President, Zevin Asset Management, LLC
Sonia Kowal Conscious Business Show
Transcript (6 segments)
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Host0:44
Welcome back to Radio Entrepreneurs, the Conscious Business Show. Today we have Sonia Kowal, who's president of Zevin Asset Management. She's with us to share her personal journey into her role at the asset management firm and also talk a little bit about the Conscious Capitalism principles that have evoked the purpose and mission of the asset manager, especially given the social responsibility and environmental, social, and impact space where Zevin Asset Management currently participates. Sonia, I wonder if you could take a little bit of time and tell our listeners about yourself. You have a very interesting background in terms of your own personal journey into your role today at Zevin Asset Management, but also just in life itself. So I wonder if you could take a few minutes and take us through your personal journey to the point that you are today in your life.
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Sonia Kowal1:41
Sure, happy to do that. Thanks, Jeremy. So I came to the impact investing space in a roundabout way. I studied zoology in Scotland. I wanted to be David Attenborough and play with lions, but I found instead that I spent most of my time in a basement lab collecting data for my thesis watching worms through a microscope. And it wasn't really the glamorous career path I envisaged. So when I graduated, I went to work for a large traditional investment management firm where I learned the rules of finance. I became a portfolio manager and managed a lot of money, probably about a billion dollars before I was 30, but was becoming increasingly disillusioned. I agreed then, I sought out a better way to use these skills, and eventually I landed at Zevin Asset Management and the work I do now in socially responsible investing, which I'm much more comfortable with.
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Host2:42
How long did it take you to find the right niche and obviously where you are today at Zevin?
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Sonia Kowal2:52
Yeah. So I didn't even realize the socially responsible investment industry existed at that time. Anyway, it was a lot smaller then. So once I was turned on to the fact that there was such a thing, that people looked at indigenous rights or human rights or the environment as a stakeholder in a business, you know, I definitely found where I want to be and how I can use my skills for a better purpose. And to be honest, I think when you think about these issues, you make better investment decisions because you see the world more holistically, rather than this false way of just looking at financial data. Because at the end of the day, all these things come home to roost. It's important as an investor to be cognizant of all those things.
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Host3:40
Well, it's an opportunity, right? And I think you're smart too coming out of the investment side but then also building the bridge into investing with what you're passionate about, really understanding the values and the value drivers of investors or an individual, it's a human being, it's a human spirit. You talked a little bit about stakeholders, and obviously a lot of the work on the investing side having to understand what companies are doing, what they're delivering, is the management team delivering on what they're saying, and certainly understanding their space. There's certainly elements of Conscious Capitalism that come on the table, understanding the principles of the purpose of an organization, the stakeholder relationships, really understanding that you can have profit and purpose and that can be an intersection. When you think about that through for your own firm, where do you begin to instill that, and where does some of your work today with business leaders but also within your organization dovetail into some of these principles around Conscious Capitalism?
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Sonia Kowal4:51
Yeah, so we became a B Corp a few years ago because we wanted to walk that talk. The same intersection that you just discussed, we thought was important for us to prove to ourselves and to our own stakeholders, to our employees, to our clients, that these issues weren't just for somebody else to improve on. It's for us also. In the work that we do, investing, it's exactly as you said. We're here to remind companies to be conscious of their responsibilities to their stakeholders, to their investors, their employees, the communities where they operate. And so that is really the key to what we do. We still make money for our clients, right? So we have a dual purpose at our firm at Zevin: to provide clients with long-term financial results that match their goals, but also to use our voice as investors to contribute to environmental and social change through corporations. So it's quite a unique dual purpose. Alongside protecting investments and growing the assets of clients, we need to be conscious of the activity that we're involved in, the impacts of that funding activity, and that's in keeping with our fiduciary duties to our clients, protecting their risk and return.