 Back to when you were leaving Goldman Sachs and making the leap to become TNC's leader, can you reflect on that a little bit and talk about what did you think were going to be your big challenges and then what what actually have you seen unfold and just reflect on that a little bit it'd be, I'd love to know. Well it goes back a ways. I left gold, it was announced I was leaving Goldman I think in mid-July 2008 and most people said, most of my friends or clients said why would you ever leave Goldman Sachs to go to the nature conservatory? They didn't get the name right. I was July 2008. Then by September 2008 Lehman Brothers, AIG etc had all blown up and those same people said hey Mark, nice timing. But then I got to TNC and the financial crisis for us was sort of a big deal. So my early period was with a great team, everything's a team effort at our good organization. We had a deal with that. I think we did it, unfortunately we had to shrink so we had to say goodbye to some of our good colleagues so that was terrible. But we shrunk in a kind of smart way. We doubled down on our areas of strength and so then less than one year of completing that restructuring we had regrown to be bigger than we were prior to that. But we shrunk by about 25%. I sure didn't see that coming. Otherwise you know people say gosh it must be weird to go from investment banking to the world of conservation. You can tell from my remarks, I mean I don't think I said anything in my remarks that sounded alien to people doing conservation in a modern way but nor would those remarks seem out of place at a Wall Street firm. So the two businesses are not that different in certain respects. You know you have smart entrepreneurial people all around the world hustling to solve big problems in a creative way and bringing people together to do so. Now Wall Street's doing it to maximize profits and we're doing it to you know save nature for future generations and to protect other species so we have we can sleep better at night. Yeah and I also see the the data driven similarities on both sides. That's a nice compliment for you. That reminds me so I was chatting with somebody with Gretchen beforehand. I'm sorry I forget her name. A scientist at Minnesota in charge of water, former Stanford person. Oh Kate Brauman. Kate are you in here? There she is. So we were talking about TNC's water funds which we're very proud of in our pretty good modern conservation projects but Kate was saying you know and I was suspecting the data is not even for mighty TNC. The data isn't always as precise as it should be and we kind of finesse stuff like when it doesn't work well. We want so badly to succeed and raise more capital that we exaggerate what works. We kind of obfuscate what's not working. You can't do that at Wall Street. You can do that you do that on Wall Street you get fired and we in the conservation community can learn that from the world of business. We're not you're not helping anybody by being anything other than utterly truthful about what's working what's not. It's usually the most interesting stuff too when you see why isn't something working the way you thought it would. That's worth exploring so that would be my big ask. It's always what I say at TNC and I said it in my remarks and last year or at least at some point I spoke here and that's all I talked about. The truth will set us free and the business world gets that. Yeah and that reminds me I heard Jorge Leon's talk this morning who's TNC and he gave a very a rare thing a sort of a negative result on what were the the benefits of certain investments in nature after a certain point. It's very important to do that like you said. So given that and what you're saying about we have to be truthful with with data what do you think about for this community TNC and universities what are the the training needs or what do you recommend for undergraduates graduate students postdocs. What should they be getting training in what should they be learning before they come out in the world and try to solve these problems you're seeing. Well I think you know that here we are at Stanford and Minnesota's here and other you know universities. We need you guys all to be experts in the stuff you're supposed to be expert experts in and we need expertise. So I don't think anything is broken there at all but we also then as I try to emphasize we have to be even better at collaborating and working with diverse groups so environmentalists have to get along with bankers have to get along with government officials have and so the the thing to keep in the back of your mind even as you build expertise I think is we have to all me too we all have to work on our skills at understanding other people listening well finding common ground building trust environmentalists you know we screw up a lot on this front like we should resist I think I get why of course there are bad actors out there and our and there are some headwinds we face so I think it's why people are frustrated and it's tempting sometimes to kind of blast people who don't seem to be exactly on our page but I think we should be very careful about doing that and TNC is well set up in this respect in the we're global but in the US we're organized state by state so just like the Congress we've got blue states and red states and the in-between kind and and and so I have had to learn how to get along with everybody I'm kind of a you know east coast left leaning person so it's easy for me to get along with people like that but that's not my job my job is to get along with you know strong Republicans who care about conservation in red states I have to get along with them too and what I found is it's not that hard but you have to like you know meet them where they are find common ground that kind of stuff that would be the the thing that I think everybody in the environmental business should that'd be the area we should all try harder I know today 2018 maybe this is the wrong time to make that point but even today I think that's the case even today and that actually reminds me I think maybe this will be my last question so we can let others go but I was pleasantly surprised to see you on the cover of mindful magazine which if you guys don't know this I'm a yoga practitioner as well but it's about meditation practice and in that article mark you talked about how conservation and meditation are actually linked and can you elaborate on that I mean this is not my area of expertise it was nice of this magazine to put me on the cover and I think it was good for TNC we always there's no such thing as bad press but I emphasized in the article and the reporters seem to agree with me that I'm a humble beginner in this field so but the first part of this for me is how did I get into this meditating thing when I joined TNC I described it was kind of a stressful time and so I was a little stressed out and I had been trained in Wall Street where we were all like super direct and so I could tell on the interpersonal front I wasn't getting it completely right and I you know I wanted to do my job well so then a friend of mine who was a coach agreed to coach me for free and he identified these things that I needed to try to improve on it's kind of embarrassing to say this because they all sound rather obvious listen better don't be so critical be more positive and he helped me understand yes it would really be better if I would try to do those things but I learned it's not as easy to change these bad habits as you think just wanting to do it is not the same thing as doing it then for some reason or other I started meditating and it helped me do those things so that's how I got into meditating I'm still a beginner but then as a environmental guy and thinking about our need to find common ground and build majority political coalitions or work with businesses who's perhaps in the past their environmental track records have been poor etc or to engage with the tough critics we have that who are good people too and we need to engage with them I did come to understand that the meditation and the kinds of things that go with that I think at least for me and I think even for T and C given the way we try to do our work it's really helpful and so it's a little bit related to what I was just saying I think we would all be better off if we would just sort of lower our confidence a little bit in our in our certitude about everything and being more open to other people's points of view and and and starting relationships or or dialogues with all the things you have in common rather than the perhaps small number of things you strongly disagree on yeah that's I that's great that's a really nice comment and we've heard that a lot the last couple days here people talking about humility and listening and meeting people and you know and to do deals so like you know we're so blightfully talking about these deals T and C we brag about these deals you know I actually didn't name that many six we've been at this for years it's kind of slow going and then if you and then some of them haven't worked and some haven't even closed and so these same skills are really important so if you try to do a deal with a group of hotel owners in Mexico government people in Mexico swiss re the insurance company marine scientists financial types you know for sure like most of those people don't agree with each other on most things and so you need to be a little zen like to try to make these things happen so yeah that's great okay that's a great takeaway and a good segue I think I'd love to open it up and we have about 10 15 minutes for further conversation with mark before we we um end our day Jim please hey mark hello so you uh you spent the the most of your working career buying and selling companies and a lot of that is identifying the comparative advantage of that particular the highest value looking at nat cap you've been working with nat cap for a long time how would you characterize nat caps comparative advantage in the conservation field which is a very crowded very crowded space yeah I think a great question and I think it's an important question too because the hardest part of about trying to run tnc is is we have all this incoming worthy opportunity of additional things to take on and of course you can't do everything you'd spread yourself too thin so I think we all need to kind of play to our strengths as best we can nat cap is certainly if not the best among the very best at precisely quantifying the benefits of nature both what it will cost to obtain some service from nature and then what that service is worth and so if we again we want to if we want to crowd in private investment that's really important and valuable and then so that's the data part of it but then you have to figure out just because you have it doesn't mean it will persuade the kind of engineer engineering types who make these decisions and so that's probably the area where we all have to get better it's speaking so probably this would be a better conference if there are a bunch of engineers here from the private sector and from government agencies now that I think about it yeah yeah that's good we had a discussion yesterday about gaps and that's another good one that did not come up and I really agree with you so John had oh sorry go ahead thank you hi I'm from a company called wildlife works we are a conservation company private sector so we really appreciate this conversation my question is what do you think the limitations are for conservation funding that you know why isn't it why can it get to scale right now what are the limitations on the finance side and on the conservation side and what do you what opportunities are there do you think to scale that so that we can close that gap yeah I'm kind of optimistic that we'll be able to raise a lot of capital it's just like you know the same thing was true on Wall Street when I remember when junk bonds were invented by Drexel Burnham it's kind of controversial but they only could happen in certain circumstances they were only a couple of years you know it takes a while for the flywheel if they get turning so my name you know TNC's got six of these things under its belt and a bunch of big ones in the pipeline other NGOs are working on it some private sector players are and so those are the early pilots that begin to get the flywheel turning so I think that's encouraging we know we need all this evidence and data but that's coming so that's encouraging one challenge is this notion of my little toll booth example it's a little bit tricky to generate cash flow out of nature so that's where we'll have to see how creative we can be the debt for nature swap was a really cool innovation along those lines but there that might be a gating item and then the other thing will be it's just the infrastructure challenge mostly what we want to do is is green infrastructure and you know certainly in the US but all around the world China is showing itself to be an exception we're under investing in infrastructure so we've got to persuade governments mostly because it's usually a public good to invest more in infrastructure and then we in particular this community have to be really effective at at green infrastructure getting its fair place at the table but I'll tell you there's reason to be encouraged there even the Trump administration seems to be open-minded about green infrastructure so we've been a little bit frustrated by our efforts to work with the Trump administration and I don't know where whether their infrastructure plans will ever come to fruition or not but in the early days they had a few high-level meetings where all the the famous characters who were part of the team at the beginning some are gone we're in the meeting and they invited TNC and to talk about how green one green infrastructure cannot perform great and we think they got it we think they understand it now I don't know whether they'll act on that but we're going to have to that's going to be really important going forward getting more infrastructure to be more infrastructure investment underway and then for green infrastructure to be the choice when when it works best yes you want to step up to the mic here that's great oh and then john you're next and then we'll go in order here so john's next and then you're after him yeah good afternoon sir yeah um my question is how do you feel about um i've had of a notion in which um it's possible for developing countries to raise funds and all of that with their natural assets maybe to borrow from from the lenders and all of that with their natural assets to carry out some certain developmental project and all of that i would like you tell me about your own position i would address back to this sir yeah i'm again i'm kind of optimistic about the ability to raise capital secured by natural assets in all parts of the world including the developing world so i mentioned this but very briefly in in my talk um at least from my seat i think the most important opportunity we have at tnc right now is for massive restoration of nature with the primary purpose of sequestering carbon but recognizing many co-benefits for biodiversity watersheds communities etc so the best example would be forests and so think about uh places in the world where there are degraded forests that could be restored and then the question will be how do we pay for that and and how will the host country be rewarded for making that effort as part of the global climate solution and i don't think this will be very easy to do but i think um if we're clever financial engineers we'll be able to do it and and if we can't we're really we're going to be in a heap of trouble because it's hard to imagine climate solutions being achieved without that we mentioned these water funds a few times uh all we mean by water funds is getting users of water usually city water companies to pay for the restoration of a forest that's the source of their water quantity quality or quantity that's going pretty well and is scaling um you heard you know we have at least one case of monetizing a coral reef for coastal protection um i think there's there's reason to be encouraged but we're gonna have to do all those things i talked about to make this happen and we're all gonna have to work together hi i'm john mon from the green growth knowledge platform um i have a lot of questions but i wanted to pick up on one of your points uh because i found it's a refreshing uh which is being able to reach out to different groups and particularly today as we're very divided in this country but i now live in geneva and it's very divided in europe as well uh but i come from one of these purple states which i'm in a crowd that knows about minnesota i'm it's purple because it's blue in the in the cities and red in the country i'm from the red part and i have a very close friend who's a extreme conservative you would say um you know he's a marine uh voted for donald trump um has lots of guns at home that kind of thing um um you know he is a person that is still my friend we've been friends since high school and was so angry at developers for cutting down the woods that he used to plan he did damage i won't say what kind of damage to to the trucks that they were working on it wasn't their fault that wasn't very fair but it always sticks out in my head as an example of a group that seems like an enemy but is actually a natural ally and so i'd like to hear about your experience of of trying to reach out to this this other half and it's a great question i'm i'm no expert and i get criticized for this stuff a lot first thing i would say is there's room for all types in this work so tnc is kind of a centrist organization that brings people together but many of our successes originated with somebody like greenpeace or rainforest action that we're campaigning against a bad actor scaring the bejesus out of the bad actor who then chooses to work with us to get important things done so i respect the zealots and the ideologues and the purists um they do important work too but then when it comes to getting things done in the environmental space and you know there's no rules for any of this sometimes tnc fights too we say there's no room for compromise but i think we under appreciate the opportunity to find a middle ground there's a pretty good article about jerry brown and this week's new yorker i was reading an airplane this morning and he said he described it i i think he called it the canoe strategy he pedals a little on the left he paddles a little on the right and in the article you see he gets criticized um especially from the left but it seems to me he knows exactly what he's doing and you know and he views his job as is getting things done for the greater good of california um i just think the the the environmental community should should try harder there um the other thing i would observe is i mentioned you know um again i'm an east coast person really but only because i have the job i have i have to go to these red states to meet tnc supporters usually the circumstances i've i've said something that has upset somebody so they're sort of pissed off and so i say fine i'll come down and see you so the evening you know it's usually a dinner meeting the evening we'll start kind of you know on edge but they are good people and i end up quickly deciding whether there's much more i like about them than the areas we disagree they seem to feel the same way and it's kind of a better way to live and so it's uh the problem i think we have maybe all over the world certainly in america is the way where everybody's lives have been organized we tend to be with people who are just like us all the time so our skill set and having dialogue with different kinds of people has diminished and we all have to work hard at that and find opportunities for that so tnc we're really working hard at it now we're really trying to be in the us especially an organization where what we do in california massachusetts will also fly in louisiana or oklahoma and we're encouraged by the results and and somehow or other i think we need to do more of that and i think napcap should think about how it can do more of that too because otherwise it's hard to be optimistic about making environmental progress yeah please um oops um so you talked about impact invest investing and innovative financing and that we have to be creative about this which i think is great um coming from an ecological background um and looking at the financing options that are out there i often see that there are certain areas that are very sexy for investing in the environmental field clean energy gets a lot of attention solar wind there are other areas species protection if it's big charismatic megafauna maybe but a lot of areas get left behind and i'm wondering how we get over that hurdle do we we do we have to do a better job at making the non sexy things sexy like i think there was a soil is sexy article actually about tnc in general mills or do we have to assume that we just can't do that and we have to somehow encompass that under these other umbrellas that get the attention because i fear that the impact investing will lead to really good gains in some areas and then other places that just get left out so i i think it's a great question so look we're for we if we see a little out a lot of impact investing renewable energy great right we're definitely for that that that's consistent with our goals but we this community and for sure the nature conservancy we have to be the champions of investments in nature so that that's what i so i was talking about the things you're talking about i i don't know that they're not glamorous enough but it's a different it's a different kind of challenge and so the nature conservancy we want to be an originator of investment deals for nature and so i i named the ones we've done there's there's there are only a couple ways to do this first we've got to ask yourself is there any way we can structure this so that it generates cash flow that's why government policy is so important right so forest offsets green infrastructure offsets in dc they allow you to do investments in in nature and then sell them to recover your capital so one reason why government policy is so important the toll booth idea i think is an interesting one for us to think about but other parts of what we are for they're just a public good and so then we just have to persuade uh society to invest in them and you know that's why we've got to be an engaged again i started i'm purpose i started by saying government policy is more important than everything else i didn't know that when i joined the nature conservancy and as i was beginning to conclude that i was i tried to figure out i figure out a way to conclude i was wrong but the longer i work in the nature conservancy the more certain i am government policy is more important than everything else so what i usually say so i'll say this now the most important thing any of us can do most important anything any of us can do is vote and then maybe you already all vote although in the last midterm election 38 percent of americans voted it's like pitfall but then if you already vote then you have to get out the vote and get more people to vote but a lot of this comes down to politics um you know you mentioned um biodiversity itself and animals you know we have we do community conservation in kenya it's pretty successful we persuaded communities to stop poaching and be anti-poachers graze better do some other things that's brought back wildlife that's allowed for tourism revenue the revenue flows to communities i could have we've that in them i talk that's a pretty good example of doing good conservation in a way that works for communities and in a way that generates revenue to pay for it all thank you okay our last question here from adrian hi thanks so much for your talk it was really inspiring and and the whole idea of the the financing innovations is uh is is really inspirational but i i wanted to bring up i guess the issue of risk and i also love to be optimistic but i want to push a little bit on um if i'm understanding correctly the way that these deals would be set up if you're talking about buying down risk for private investors by backing that with public public investment either philanthropic or through multilateral's or through government investments um the fact is then if if things don't go right if the nature does not provide the benefit that we think it's going to provide and we're constantly trying to improve our science on that but if in the case that something goes wrong um so how are these deals structured in such a way that you can ensure that that risk is is equitably distributed and that the people that may be very poor communities particularly are not left sort of holding taking all the negative impacts of that mistake and the private investors are are you know go on their merry way and they're fine so that's one part of the question and i guess the other part is partly my own response to that is like what how can we help you know what kind of information what kind of data can we help bring to the table there to help inform those deals in such a way that that risk is more equitably distributed yeah um well i i kind of heard two questions so first you asked about local communities um and others who who might be impacted by any conservation intervention yes we're obliged to be respond we're responsible for for doing that kind of work as best we can no matter how it's funded so even if we do conservation the old-fashioned way a hundred percent with a government grant or a hundred percent with philanthropic money we still have the responsibility to do the right thing for local communities and will we be perfect we probably won't be so then we'll have the responsibility to address whatever short comes there so i think that's independent of how you fund the project that kind of issue actually i think the conservation community is pretty responsible in that front personally if we weren't we would like go out of business really quickly but we have plenty of watchdogs who keep an eye on us and we welcome those watchdogs they help us do our job better but i i think that's independent of how we fund projects and in terms of the funding i wouldn't worry too much about the risk provided everybody's like scrupulously honest and and never obfuscates any data that's the only important thing so the investors whether they be government governmental or philanthropic entities that are taking more risk perhaps or less return or pure profit maximizers who are participating they're all you know big boys looking out for themselves and their job is to scrutinize the deal as best they can up front whoever originates the deal armed with napcap kind of science has to provide the most robust data we can and everybody going into that knows that you know nothing's going to work perfectly and then if things go awry you've got to immediately fess up be perfectly honest figure out how the situation be addressed for sure it will not be a good thing if you do a bunch of big deals in a row and none of them work and napcaps you know credibility or tncs is eroded that would be bad so you need to be very very careful in this kind of work but that's not really different than the work we've been doing over the lifetime of our organizations so i don't think you have to worry too much about how the financial risks are portioned out that's just a matter of negotiating each deal we do have to worry about how communities and others are impacted by our projects but that's true regardless of how we fund them yep okay thank you um so we'll close now i just wanted to reflect myself mark i've known you since you came to tnc to be ceo and i've been a tnc board member in washington state and the i see in you that i really really we've been talking a lot about leadership here in this community you are a leader for tnc who's left a major mark on the organ the biggest environmental organization in the world and in two ways that stand out to me and one is that you have taken tnc from a biodiversity focused organization to biodiversity and humans as intertwined systems in a really graceful way and that's the work that we're trying to help support with you and the second one is that i encourage all of you to talk to mark more about is this an example of what you're talking about talking to red and blue states is that you've gotten the organization to talk and act on climate in a really significant way and that is not an easy job so i'm very very proud and humbled to know you and thank you for being here with all thank you mary thank you very much thank you everybody