 I think we're live. Can you hear me okay? Am I mic'd okay? That's fine. Well, hello everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Dimitrik Duckett. I'm the Associate Director for Capital Innovation at Living Cities, which is based out of New York and also has offices in Washington DC. Some of you may know us from prior experience we're a collaboration of 18 of the largest foundations and financial institutions in the U.S. And in our work, we believe that all people in U.S. cities should be economically secure in building wealth. And one of the ways that we believe that can happen from our effort is by engaging in work that serves to close racial income and wealth gaps in the U.S. in urban centers. And so the conversation today that centers around the journey from neutral to racial equity and inclusion is one that we hold very near and dear to the work that we do and our core beliefs and values. So I want to say thank you to the people at SoCAP for having us today. And I also want to thank my fellow panelists for joining me. Two of them are actually members of the Living Cities Collaborative. So that's always exciting. And we're also joined by a dear friend who brings a perspective from the private equity side of things as well. So I'm gonna give them a chance to introduce themselves shortly. But what I'd like to do is just provide a few brief thoughts on how we'll proceed today. We have about 53 minutes left. And how I'm hoping that each of you can find a way to engage in the conversation in a way that allows you to walk away with some new thoughts, some new ideas, and if at a minimum at least some new inspiration for your existing belief in work. So we'll go through just a little bit of framing. We'll do introductions of the panelists. I'll throw out a few questions to them that I hope can sort of get you guys warmed up in order for you to actually be able to ask us some questions. I tend to find that you are a real body of collective wisdom and interest. And so however you would like to see us guide this conversation will certainly be used to help inform how we proceed. So framing, race neutral to racial equity and inclusion. There is nothing more interesting in the US when you're talking about sort of purpose and mission and direction than to add race into a conversation. And living cities being a collaborative of giant foundations. For many years we focused on low income population outcomes and we felt really good about the work that we were doing which often happens in philanthropy. You know we're good people doing good work to create good outcomes. Well having a private sector experience myself principally in large corporate international banking everything for me is some form of measurement. Well in living cities and our work we began to do more measurement. So we really care about these educational outcomes and the place. How are the people faring? Well if you think about it the way you think of consumer products you break it down by demographics. And what we started to see was that the more we start to break apart and disaggregate data around outcomes the more we could see that many of the very disparities that we thought we were addressing were still being perpetuated by the very structures that we were funding and supporting. So I hope that in this conversation you'll be able to see yourselves, your work and your interest from that perspective. Is the work that you're doing are the things that you're interested in helping to create actual solutions to resolve disparities or are they serving to perpetuate systems that you may or may not be aware of. And it's not about intentionality in terms of outcome necessarily to date but it certainly needs to be about intentionality when you walk out of the room. Are you helping to solve disparities or are you engaging in work that perhaps could be perpetuating systems and structures that were built intentionally to leave certain people out? So one of the ways for us to engage in the conversation in the framework today is the person role system model. So I am Dimitri Kdukker. As a person I am a southerner. I was born in South Carolina. I'm a man of a certain age of African American heritage. In my role I'm the Associate Director for Capital Innovation and Living Cities. And within that role I get to make all kinds of choices depending on what the organization wants me to do. I think of myself as working in the system of philanthropy and impact investing. So I'm the system who are we as a collective in impact investing? In my role what am I doing to contribute to the outcomes in that system? And as a person how am I using all of the potential of my role, my experience, my education to create the outcomes in the system that I believe should really happen. Really straightforward, right? So with that I'm gonna ask our panelists if they would start us off and provide a brief introduction of themselves, frame it in terms of person role system and please choose whatever system level you'd like to identify with and feel free to share some insights on the why you think of yourself within that system. Would you like to start, Kristen? You want me to kick it off? So hi, I'm Christine Looney. I work at the Ford Foundation. Grew up in Boston in New Jersey, a woman of a certain age. I kind of like that framing. I've been working at the Ford Foundation for the last 15 years. Ford's a social justice philanthropy so institutionally we come at this with a long history in working in issues of racial equity and racial rights in the United States and globally where we have offices. And importantly, I sit on our impact investing team and back going. And since we started our program related investment fund about 50 years ago, that portfolio was really kicked off investing quite a bit to take on issues of racial inequality in the United States. But as we kind of continue to advance our work in impact investing in general, we've been looking much more at the systemic issues and how capital is allocated. And I'll be happy to kind of talk more as I think about that. But I think in terms of role, as a foundation, obviously philanthropy has a role to play in taking on issues of racial equity and as an investor and asset owner, we do as well. Great, thank you. Thank you, thank you everybody. Thanks everyone for being here. My name is Marcos Gonzalez. I'm the founder and managing partner of Vamos Ventures. Vamos Ventures is a social impact investment fund based in Los Angeles. I came to Vamos Ventures because I think of, partly of who I am, I'm from Los Angeles, born of Mexican immigrant parents, came to this country in the late 50s. Siblings and I are all born in Los Angeles, grew up there. And I think that having an experience growing up in the 70s and 80s in Los Angeles, really informed who I am and how I see myself in my community and Los Angeles broadly and as an extension of the US. That led me to Vamos Ventures after a long career in private equity investing, strategy consulting, and tech entrepreneurship after living in Boston for many years and Washington DC as well. And my role within Vamos Ventures relates to direct not only the strategy, but how do we address social impact and parallel with making investment decisions. So clearly it's possible to make investment decisions completely devoid of any consideration of social impact. And it's completely possible to do a lot of social impact work without doing any investing. So there's an overlap there. My job is to keep us in that intersection and everything we do, whether it's investing or making just hiring decisions. The system we work in is really those two, the capital markets, in this case the private capital markets, so not public, which is a very inefficient market that leads to a lot of challenges, but also opportunities, and also the social impact system in trying to really find our role there and where we fit in to move the needle forward as an investor that ultimately is an investor. So that's how I define, it's really a combination of two. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Nadia Brigham. I am a Program Officer of Racial Equity at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. I am solidly a Midwesterner and the older I get, I'm a woman of a certain age, I suppose. The older I get, the more I appreciate being from the Midwest and can see the difference across the country of what makes the Midwest unique. I've already mentioned that I'm a Program Officer at the Kellogg Foundation in that role. What we do at the Kellogg Foundation is to try to invest in those programs that are helping to move the needle on child level outcomes for children that we term as vulnerable children, but we know that they're made vulnerable by systems. And we do that through what we call our DNA, racial equity, leadership, and community engagement. I consider myself as an agent working inside the system of philanthropy and really trying to leverage philanthropic dollars to change systems and to create sort of a catalytic effect in the private sector as well as public sectors for doing this work and really caring about humanity. Well, thank you. Great group. So one of the questions that comes to mind, we say racial equity. At Living Cities, one of the things we do in holding data at the core of our work is we recognize that in the U.S., which is where we're focused, by 2044, our population will be made up of a majority of people of color. When we then look at existing household wealth across those racial demographics, we see really substantial disparities. So that's one of the reasons we come to the notion of racial equity so that there's an intentionality in our work. When you hear racial equity, and let's start with you, Nadia, when you hear racial equity, what does that mean for you, both personally and in your role, and why do you think it matters? So personally, I mentioned that I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up during, in the 90s, I'll try to make this as short as I can, in the 90s during the crack epidemic that ravaged my community and parts of my family. And that became important because in the 90s, I was in a desegregation program. So that meant, like in the 90s, in the Midwest, in Michigan, in a desegregation program, busing to school. And in that journey to school, every single day, 20, 30 minute ride, I saw the landscape of the community change. And I recognized that what I was living was not what was being experienced by the students for whom school I was being bused to. And that difference was very impactful on me in terms of little things like trees or grass or stores or grocery stores and neighborhoods, businesses, parks, all of those things were noticeable or the absence of those things were noticeable as I went from one community to the next. And so it got me thinking about this notion of racial equity, like everybody's not living in the same situation. It got me thinking about what I wanted to do in my life. For me, racial equity comes down to humanity. It really is about creating space, creating cultures, practices, policies that allow people to tap into, all people tap into their true humanity and that includes white folks. So as much as we believe that white privilege is an asset and a positive thing, it actually harms white folks from being able to tap into their true humanity as well. And so for me, racial equity really is about, and for the Kellogg Foundation, it's about that aspirational pursuit that's insisting that we create equal opportunity for all people in a just society. All right, Mark, that's one of your thoughts. Ditto. Go with that. No, no, I think that it's similar in the sense that I view it in two ways. As a human being, I believe that it's about fairness, justice and opportunity. I think having seen growing up in a very segregated Los Angeles, where if you're from the east side, you're from the east side. And I recall going to an admit party when I got into college, for example, and it was in Bel Air. And driving down Wilshire Boulevard, I don't know if anybody here is from Los Angeles, my dad and I were in the pickup truck and we're going down Wilshire Boulevard. I'm 18 years old and I'm looking around thinking, where are we? I've never been here. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. So it's, I think when you see then you have various experiences, you very early on have a sensitivity to it and it becomes part of who you are. So for me as a human being and as a Latino, it means respect, it means fairness, opportunities and so on. As an investor, when I hear equity, I think about capital. And so that's the other hat that I have that I can't let go. And for me, it means having the resources at hand that allows for self-determination. So for me, what I see in my community and the African American community and other diverse and vulnerable communities is what's missing is the ability to have self-determination. If you want a library, you got to be able to do that. If you want a clinic, how do you do that? If you want a playground, how do you do that? It comes down to capital, it comes down to equity. So that's the other way I think about it as well. So I have those two. Christine, what would you like to offer? Yeah, I mean, I would say institutionally, the Ford Foundation is very aligned with the Kellogg Foundation in terms of approach and with a goal to have equity among all races and a just society. As investors, we've been very intentional about looking at where there are the most persistent racial wealth gaps and directing our capital that way. And so looking at the representation of African American venture capital fund managers or Latino fund managers and looking at the discrepancies among how capital is being allocated. So we're very intentional, I think, directing our capital where we see the greatest need as a capital allocator. So I hear you mentioned capital. I've heard you say humanity. I heard you say self-determination. One of the things that often shows up in the space that we inhabit is the moral imperative for change, the moral imperative for a racial equity inclusion lens or whatever it is that we do. And yet, Marcos, I know that you have a very specific perspective on the economic imperative as well. So share with us your thoughts on how you balance the two and what the various aspects of sort of importance of focus should be between us. Okay, I think that for us specifically and for myself, there's a balance between the emotional, to use a word, but merely moral kind of argument that it's the right thing to do is certainly valid to an extent. To the extent that whoever you're speaking with actually has similar values. If not, you're in trouble. So you really do need to match that, I think, with the kind of economic imperative. So for us, when we sit back a few years ago when we started Vamos Ventures, we kind of sat down and we thought, okay, we look at California. California is the largest economic state in the United States. 40% of the population is Hispanic. The birth rate of Hispanics in California is 50% today. That is the future of California. And in many ways, also in Texas and New York and Illinois and Florida. And when we look at that, I think as a business person, investor, we need to think about, are these folks gonna be skilled enough to take on jobs, to be community leaders, to create new businesses, to generate jobs, to contribute to the tax base, to afford homes, to buy our products. So from a purely economic perspective, a selfish perspective, so to speak, from a business or an economic point of view. I think there's plenty to argue. I think the challenge is getting the data and communicating it effectively to the right folks in making the business case of why we need to invest not just in the Hispanic community, but really in diverse communities, as you were mentioning, really diverse communities are gonna become, pretty much the majority already in many cities today and several states as well. So that's how I look at it in that sense. Great. So Christine, I would ask you, sort of connected to that same line of thinking, from a Ford Foundation perspective, your philanthropy. Marcus is referencing the larger marketplace and how it sort of embraces what I would almost call forms of risk. At least that's what we often hear around the moral imperative versus the economic imperative. I don't know if I know those people. I know what I know. I sit where I sit. How do you see, and so people will assume a form of personal risk, which may fit within their perception of the role. How do you at Ford Foundation, from your perspective, look at what you do in terms of helping to change minds, particularly as it relates to notions of risk? As an investor, or as an... As an investor with a racial equity lens. So when Ford took on a bigger commitment within impact investing, we thought a lot about how to engage what the broader capital markets look like as an institution taking on issues of inequality, what that would mean for us. And we quickly identified a need to include and almost mandate a lens of diversity, equity and inclusion in all of our work. And that was both how we engaged from a field building perspective, as well as an investor. And I think as we made this decision to allocate up to a billion dollars for our endowment, we said, how can we most be effective? And where is the systemic challenges here? And so as a team, we really said to be most effective, we need to take this on as asset owners in investing our dollars in fund managers with diverse teams. And we really are looking at ownership who's making investment decisions. So the investment committees of fund managers, the governance and with the theory of change that by doing that and what we know from research is that those teams in turn will most likely invest with a more diverse strategy, allocating more dollars to more diverse portfolio companies who in turn will be developing products and services that will reach a broader marketplace. So we've really been starting to take on that strategy. And I think as a team what we've grappled with is do we only allocate dollars to diverse teams? Is there an influence role that we can take? And what we found is, yeah, I think there's an incredibly important influence role that foundations that asset owners can take in this space. And we've had some of our most interesting conversations with incredibly homogenous teams that haven't thought this through. Talking to them about our values, why we think this is incredibly strong business practice and an investment practice, our team is diverse. So we think that's kind of, so I think we can come out to the market sharing why we think it's important, our own values as an institution, our own values as individuals. Maybe I'll stop there. That's fantastic, thank you. So Nadia, you've worked with a number of organizations looking at racial equity and inclusion. You hold that as a principle body of work for Kellogg. What can you share about what you've seen? Thinking about philanthropy and the work of a Ford Foundation, looking to create the proof points and set examples for the private sector, what do you see as what it takes for philanthropy and your experience to move from neutral to racial equity? What's been your experience in that space? I think the first thing that I would offer is that the idea of a moral imperative versus an economic imperative is a false notion. I think that there's space for them to operate together and I actually think it makes it much more powerful if you make both arguments in doing your work and that's what I hear you saying. I also think that for the Kellogg Foundation, our special sauce in this work and what I've seen that has had a lot of power in terms of how to sustain this work over time is the racial healing component. It is important, it's often thought of as sort of soft, fluffy, hard work and I would argue that it's human work and it's important in order to challenge the narratives and notions that we have. So if you're around that and you rattled off a number of them earlier on of thoughts that people have around these tables about those people and why they wouldn't do this work and why there's no value or that they're risky and I would argue that it's through our racial equity work that we're pushing to see fund managers of color, for example, not as a risk, but as inherent assets to a part of this work. So that would be another piece that I would offer. And then the last piece is the notion of why we do this work to begin with and I think this sort of blends the first and second points. There's interest in making resource, there's interest in providing opportunities, self-determination, which is about power and being able to direct one's life. But if it's not about, if impact investing is not connected to racial equity, then what is the point? And I think that that's when I'm in community, we are working through issues around whether children are ready for school, whether teachers are ready for children, whether hospitals are offering or communities are offering ways for children to have first milk, whether there are blockers to employment for families. It is about power. It's about self-determination. It's about being able to be seen and heard and offer or at least creating a system where people can make their contributions and those things can live in community. It's not that folks don't know or they can't do. It's that there's a structure that is intentionally designed for fund managers of color not to be a part of the system. For certain communities to be looked at as having insurmountable risk associated with them. And that comes down to narrative and relationship and proximity, right? And so if you don't know any, then of course you're gonna think these things and why would you take what you see as a risk? Other folks know, have always known that there's tremendous value. Like communities of color start businesses at a disproportionately higher rate than any other communities, yet they don't succeed, why? And so for me, that's moral and economic coming together. And I think for us in terms of how we do our work, it's the racial healing component that allows you to not only get there but sustain it over time. Thank you for that. So Marcos, I actually wanna toss it to you following on Nadia's comments. One of the things we know is that there are incredible disparities in terms of funds raised in the venture capital world and cross-racial demographics. There's a lot of moving pieces on data, but roughly speaking in the last major round of VC funding, at least as measured by some notable institutions, the average rate for a white male was about a million, two, 1.17, I think that's the number. And yet for an African-American female, the average was 36,000. So when we start to think about who's getting funded in that space, it makes it seem that people wanna keep going back to what they think they know. And if the other of those people are people that come from sort of a white, wealthy lens on the world, the question becomes what changes? How does the principle of what you know apply in your work with your focus on Latino founders? And what do you think people should be taking away in terms of what the world could be doing differently and how it can change? Reminds me of our purple people conversation. Okay, that's a lot. You just said, I'm gonna try to remember that. First is great points, Nadia, I completely agree. We're talking about deployment of capital right now, but I think what's important is that we can all do something along racial equity in whatever role we have in this audience. Just a quick note is that we have the Vamos Ventures Pledge. When we invest in a company, we say we have a pledge that you need to take. It's not legally binding, but basically you commit to interviewing women-owned, veteran-owned, disabled-owned, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Service providers, contractors, consultants, team members, et cetera, et cetera. We don't even get done with that before everybody says absolutely. That's part of our value system. So all of those things we do all the time, no matter what our role is. So I think that we can start to at least do these kinds of things. When it comes to deploying capital and how we see it, I always say that it's great that a lot of folks are focusing on diverse founders, but that's not enough. We need diverse investors. And we need folks that come from those communities that already, at the very least, intuit. Intuit that there's an opportunity there that is being overlooked, wasted, and so on. Why is that? Because when we were growing up, we saw it, right? We saw the creativity, the resourcefulness of our parents, of our uncles, aunts, et cetera, doing amazing things with nothing. So we know this exists and we're driven to kind of address this. And I think that's an amazing experience to bring to the table that others may not have. Not saying don't have, it just may not have. But certainly if you grow up in it, you have that piece. So I think that's very important. Regarding the purple people, you know, part of this, I think that there are a lot of VCs out there that I talked to early on who said, "'Marcos, my job is not to diversify tech. "'My job is not to diversify investing." And I get it, that's not their job. But it's a long leap for most folks to go from this is my strategy to stop and let's change strategy. So I struggled with a lot of folks early on who I still call friends, because they're good guys. But there's no way that they're gonna stop a strategy and all of a sudden start looking at different folks and different strategies when their number one priority is generating as high of a return as possible. And the best example I have is that one of the guys said to me, "'Look, Marcos, I have 10 guys here "'and they're all guys who have made money for me.'" So you, Gonzales, walked through the door and let's just say you're from Texas and you went to UT Austin, great. I'm not gonna invest in you. Why? Because these guys are proven and I will always invest there first. And if I have any money left, I'll invest in one of their brothers because I know they're backed by one of these guys. So it's very, very difficult to break through that. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There are exceptions, but it's very difficult. So that's, I think, the value of having diverse managers, African American managers, women, Hispanic, of course, and I see other groups out there now too. I think it's super valuable for what we wanna do. Number one is a society and number two for economic returns. There's a lot of talent there. So the point of what I hear you saying is you can understand how on some level white males holding the decision-making power can feel most comfortable going with the horses they've won on. And then some of them, others might look at us and say, well, Marcos, you focus only on Latino founders or 99% of Latino founders. How is that different from what I'm doing? And how would we ever see a difference in the world if we all do that? What would you offer to someone with that argument? That's a good question. So the way I see that is, hey, you have investors that focus on currency trading and you have others that focus on real estate and others do commodities and others do other things. In the investment world, in the capital markets, you focus on areas where you see value in assets in a way where you have an insight and an advantage and that's what drives it. So I'm not a commodities trader because I don't know much about commodities but I know a lot about the Latino community and we have very deep relationships there throughout the country and there's value that people don't see just as if I were a real estate investor looking at property that other people just don't see the vision. So I think that that's part of the answer and the second part would be that things will change over time as we show success. When we have a successful entrepreneur independent of the background but it's a diverse team and we can take it to Floodgate, we can take it to Greylock, we can take it to these other folks, they're gonna see a real business that's moved along, that's growing, that has real investors behind it and they'll look at it and once they start seeing success I think it opens doors. They start to develop these relationships too. They start to see some of these deals too and I think over time we might be working our way out of a job, right? But I think it'll be a long time before that happens. So Christine, looking at your perspective from the Ford Foundation and the way you guys are thinking about your billion dollar MRI and approaches to creating new proof points, what are some of the points that you can share from your experience and your journey at Ford from neutral end to this awareness around racial equity such that it supports what Marcos just referenced. But he focused on Latinos, hopefully there would be others focused on specific areas and then also the roles up into a better outcome for the population in general. Oh, I'll touch on a couple of things. When we started we had two verticals that were approved. One was affordable housing and the other was financial inclusion. And as a mandate though within our investment policy statement we had a mandate to advance diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the strategy. And I think the state of the impact investing market right now is it's more homogeneous than we'd wanna see it. And so we kind of went back to our board and we said we can continue to push this or we can kind of advance the strategy a little bit more and say what would it look like if we said diversity in and of itself is an impact and as a foundation that's rooted in taking on issues of inequality we're gonna start directing some capital to diverse management teams that maybe don't self identify as impact and maybe have ESG friendly practices because we're that committed and we think it's that important and we wanna make some changes. And so our board was incredibly supportive. I think right now we're just trying to figure out how best to execute that but we're in early stages of developing that as its own vertical which I think is incredibly exciting for a foundation to take on. Our endowment and other endowments have definitely I think had some diverse manager strategies but not with any like real I think huge allocations. I think they've been more small programs and so this is an exciting way for us to take this on in a bigger way so we'll be advancing it not only in these kind of sector impact sector verticals but in and of itself. So we're in early days I think you know Dimitrika is probably asking me I think some of the you know we've definitely come across some legal issues and in getting this started it's hard to allocate dedicated pools of capital that are taking on issues of race in the United States right now and so we're navigating how best to execute this as a foundation but I think we found a good path forward and working with partners on the platform, Living Cities, Kellogg, Prudential, Sirdna like many others we're kind of excited to take this step. Thank you. So Nadia I'd like to sort of pose a question to you that touches on the power dynamic within philanthropy and this impact investing space particularly as it relates to views on capitalism. What can you share about your lens on power dynamics and what we should be holding in terms of progress toward racial equity and inclusion? So I think Marco's brought up earlier this whole notion of self-determination and I associate it with power because I think communities I think any human being wants to have enough power to decide what's gonna happen in their lives and the lives of their families and communities. I think that philanthropy is situated, what I'm reminded of is a quote from Dr. King that says philanthropy is commendable but the philanthropists must not forget the economic injustices that make philanthropy necessary in the first place which really goes back to what it makes me think of actually are those folks who are involved in philanthropy after five but from their nine to five, they are part of a system that is about exploitation of the little guy and I think that I don't think it's quite as sustainable as we think it is. Even if the capitalist makes as much money as they can that one person for generations and denies access to not only resource, opportunity, health, quality of life to others, it's just not sustainable over time and so when I think about power, I think about what are the ways in which we can rethink a system that doesn't exploit. I'm not a communist, I'm not a Marxist, I'm just asking a question, what are the other ways and I often ask myself these questions when I'm riding through communities and thinking about across the country and thinking about man, that place doesn't look the same way it did a year ago when I was here. Oh, it's being gentrified. Do we have any other solutions to that? Do we have any other solutions to how you help people make enough resource? Like make some money, no one's saying don't make money. Like how much do you need and at what expense and cost to everyone else? I think about it when I think about electricity, we were having this conversation the other day, electricity and how some countries have to turn, have power outages daily. And shut down so that we can have these nice fancy lights shining on us, right? Like it's nothing against SoCAP, it's just, what is the system that we wanna create and what's the sustainable system that will keep us as a species for as long as we can. All of that has to do with power. And I just think we have to be much more thoughtful about who holds power to what extent, to what end and be willing to come to the table and think about new solutions that we've never thought about because we've never had them. We've never not had capitalism. And for some it works beautifully, but there are a whole lot of people for whom it doesn't work and what are we willing to do about that? Thank you. So one of the things we talk about in Living Cities, okay, there we go, perfect. So I'll throw up this element, open it up for questions. So one of the conversations we often engage in senses around capitalism. And we wonder sometimes within the world of philanthropy, how willing are we to remember that we were actually created through capitalism. It's just over 100 years ago that the US levied for the first time personal income tax was roughly around 1913. And for those of us who remember American history, we had quite a few robber barons around that timeframe who were what we would call the super billionaires of the era. So you can imagine about to move into the First World War, the US instead of this living business tax was now living personal income taxes. Wonder how foundations became created as a tax deduction. And so all of this time later, 100 years later we sit here connected to philanthropy and we think of capitalism as an evil. Or easily can many of us can think of capitalism as this bad thing. So then we ask ourselves, when we look at huge holdings, like I often say within our 18 member collaborative, if you were to directly add up endowment holdings or extrapolate based on those of the financial institutions and their giveings is roughly $100 billion in assets held in endowments. So if we keep investing that money through hyper capitalist structures, which pays our salaries and yet we're anti-capitalist, where is that cognitive dissonance coming from? How do we have our own sort of come to Jesus moment with how capitalism works in the US and think about how power dynamics have decided who holds it and who's left out? And then can we ask ourselves if we were able to rebalance the power of capitalism in opposition to this historical outcomes, would people of color with greater access and control of capitalism engage differently than their other counterparts have done so far? Who knows? That's the question I would have and I would love to talk to anyone afterwards about your thoughts on that. But right now I'd give you a chance to ask us questions. So where should we start? Do we have a microphone? We do. I see a hand. Just back here. Yep. We'll start there and then we'll come to you. Hi, thank you all so much. I really appreciated your comments. And in hearing about shifting narrative, I'm wondering about how we rethink the language of diversity that inherently positions white men as the standard and diverse people as other or women and people of color that discursively erases women of color. And then from there, how does that play into outcomes and measuring outcomes? So in education, for example, is progress when the black kids achieve the white kids' score? Or how do we think about how language plays into the outcomes that we're looking for? What does that progress look like? So who'd like to respond to that? How language plays into it? Not yet. So essentially narrative issues. Narrative. So narratives are critically important and one of the things that we often talk about is the fact that we don't have language to talk about racism and racial equity even though we talk about it all the time, every day, all day. And maybe it's just the filter that I see the world through, right? But I think that narratives are important. Part of the, and language is important. Part of why the Kellogg Foundation really leans into racial equity as opposed to diversity, inclusion, equality is because we're after a particular set of outcomes and you can have diversity which basically just means a variety of things. You can have cucumbers and lettuce and they're vegetables. You can have different color people and they're people, right? You can have inclusion which basically means you're inviting somebody else to your already formed table and saying come in but sit down, speak like we speak, dress like we dress, do what we do. I think that the value proposition for racial equity is to really create space for people to show up fully with their cultural assets intact and leveraged for this new space. And in that sense, the white male in the example that you gave is no longer the standard and so the measures then become can be twofold either against those folks. So if black boys aren't reading at grade level, I'm going to measure them against themselves over time or against themselves in different geographic locations, for instance. And I think the same can be true in this sense. The way in which we think about when we have the language and the tools and the resources, the way in which we think about measurements, standards, it all changes because there's room for everybody at that table or in that living room or wherever the container is. Thanks Nadia. Yeah, at Living Cities we're actually engaged in a lot of narrative change work with a group of our members and with a number of significant CEOs across the country. So sort of to the narrative, like people do often default to the white male story or at least some variation on that. And what we see as critically important to continue to push for change is to tell different stories. I often tell my personal stories, born in the 60s in the South and the year in which I was born, everyone that looks like me couldn't actually vote in this country. And I'm not battled even though I say man of a certain age. So when I tell my story, I can point to a number of exceptions that I was able to navigate because of angels in my life, family members, dedications to opportunity. And so I get to be me because there were folks supporting it. And that narrative, that story, is something that can often be very different. I've never been arrested, I've never been in jail. Like I can go down the list, but as a black male in America, there are narratives that like to be attached to all kinds of power dynamics. And I think for us in our work, we have to always be willing to hold up stories that we know differ from those very negative narratives. Not only differ from but outweigh those negative narratives. They're not made up stories. They're true stories. Yeah, thank you for that. I know we had a hand in the middle and then one in the back. Thank you very much for your comments. And full disclosure, this is my first SoCAP conference. So I'm not quite sure what I've walked into. However, and I say that because yesterday in this room, I attended the Total Impact Conference. It was sort of a half day that blended into SoCAP. And I felt as though I had opened the door and gone into a club to which I was not invited. I kind of sneaked in and was privy to conversations of by investors, mostly white and male, because I had to keep looking around the room to see when I would see one or two people who looked remotely like me. But the conversations was about the really great work that they're doing in impact investing, working and helping those communities, underserved, underprivileged, poor people, boys, girls, Latino, black, around the country and around the world. And I was struck by that and I wondered when am I going to see more fund managers? Are they coming to SoCAP? Are they here in this room who are doing the same work? And so my question would be really to Marcos if you wouldn't mind, because I'm really curious to understand how you became a fund manager and investor. What was your road? You talked about growing up in LA, but I didn't hear the process. I didn't hear the challenges and the obstacles that you might have faced to be doing what you're doing now. Sure, thanks for being here. And I didn't know about this event either yesterday. I wish I would have. I would have liked to have been there to see who's there and what they're doing. Because there are diverse managers out there, African American, Hispanic, women and others that are doing great work and I'm happy to share that with you and Kellogg and Ford are very tight with them too. And so they can also share information. But for me, my road just very briefly is that I always thought I would be a lawyer to fight the good fight. And when I interned as a paralegal one summer, I realized that is not what I'm gonna do. And I just didn't know what to do and I saw a lot of my peers going to law school but no one going to business school and I thought I'm gonna do that and I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with it. But so I did, I started to learn a few things. I worked for IBM out of college, of course, in the public sector branch. And I say, of course, people of color understand what I mean. And then eventually I worked at, I was Summer Associate at Goldman, of course in the public finance area. And then I ended up eventually getting into private equity with a fund that was focusing on US, Mexico investing. And that was great except for the fact that my experience in private equity, meaning investing in private companies, was really all about returns from companies that already exist, that are traditional businesses. That for me in the meantime was great experience. How do you look at a business? How do you evaluate it? How do you structure an investment, et cetera. But nothing about impact. And so I bided my time until finally at the last fund, I was like, why are we not investing in the US? And why are we not investing behind diverse founders in tech? That's where the real change happens. Establish companies in private equity, you're either reducing jobs, you're sending them overseas, or if you're creating jobs are probably low-wage. And you're making a very wealthy family, even wealthier. So in venture, in early stage, you have the opposite opportunity. So the only way we could move the needle in that company was to leave. So that's when I left and started almost ventures to do what I thought was meaningful and a great opportunity and could really make a difference. So the path, I'm not sure if I really fully answered that, but it's very, very, very, very difficult to get into the investment management world to be a fund manager. Very, very, very difficult. It's becoming easier today. And so what a lot of my peers, for example, in the African-American community are doing and women as well and ourselves is we're looking for ways to build the pipeline of diverse folks that are exposed to a fund. What does a fund look like? How do you manage a fund? It's not just writing a check, right? And so we all have our ways of doing that. And so we're all very actively involved in how do we open the door wider? How do we kick the door open for folks? Because it's very difficult to get into it. But hopefully that shed a little bit of light, but we can definitely talk after as well. Thank you for the question. Would you like that? I just add that you talked about how very, very difficult it is. And I want to connect it to the earlier point about fund managers of color being risky. It looks like they've gone through a vetting process by the time they get there, that feels like opportunity to me, right? So just so you know, it's one of the things we also hold in our research at Living Cities. What does it take to see more fund managers of color and founders of color have better outcomes than they currently have? And so we're very grateful for SOCAP, embracing the notion of equity as one of the tracks here and Kellogg for supporting it with force. And so we hope this dialogue continues. Last year I was fortunate to moderate a panel that looked at venture capitalism and racial equity and inclusion. This year we're continuing the dialogue and just from my little lens I'm impressed that at least it's been woven into the industry and hopefully the field will continue to shift. There was a question in the back. I want to make sure we get you. Hi, I entered venture capital in 1999 and left it because of the issues of women and people of color so I'm raising a fund now and really nothing has, I mean not much has changed especially if you're a woman of color, a fund manager. And I'm wondering if you could speak to, I'm wondering if the people who are trying to solve the problem are actually part of the problem meaning that the endowments that are impact endowments, their consultants are the same type of institutional investors mainly white men who aren't really interested in investing in someone like me or understanding the opportunity. And I'm running into this as I'm raising my fund so I'm wondering from your perspective if you're seeing that out there in the marketplace and how do we even start to change that because that is where the barriers really are in this industry. Thank you. Christine can you take that? Sure, I mean I think it's a great question. We don't use consultants so I think our place to start is having an incredibly diverse team with diverse networks ourselves as an investment team that helps us kind of bring in opportunities that maybe if we had a more homogenous team we wouldn't but I think that's a real challenge. I have seen a number of the consultants who support the impact investing market start to take this issue on. Just like Socap has started to take this on. I mean three, four years ago this wasn't a conversation at any impact investing conference. It's really only been over the last couple of years that it's even hitting panels. I mean which is surprising given the issues we're trying to address but it's the reality. So I think it's slowly changing but it's an absolute challenge for endowments and I think impact teams that are relying on more institutional advisors to guide them. So in terms of solutions I really do think it's up to the philanthropy to kind of require that and ask their consultants. They're not gonna do it on their own. They're going to navigate to their own networks and it'll just continue to perpetuate the challenge. But I don't know if others have seen different things happening. I would echo what Christina's saying. I think that's absolutely right and I credit, I think it's great that Ford is really taking it on just like Kellogg because it really starts at the top. I think if you all signal and make real decisions about allocating capital for diverse managers that's huge and I think advisors and consultants see this on the public pension side that you were kind of alluding to. The state of Illinois for example, they have a program there if you're not familiar. Are you familiar with it? Okay, great. That's a great example, right? These guys started the Growth and Innovation Fund specifically for first time, second time diverse managers in venture. I mean, it's very specific, it's groundbreaking and it signals and I hope that CalPERS, CalSTRS, LA County, Fire and Police, all these folks see this and follow suit just like other foundations. I just, there's a foundation in Los Angeles that I won't name but they fired their advisor and this was probably a year ago and they said you're not delivering diverse managers and after a lot of conversations that you're out, they brought in another advisor and who's a champion in this area. So I think we're starting to see that but I feel you, I'm exactly where you are and we could definitely trade stories later. Thank you. We are actually just out of time so please feel free to come forward to ask additional questions after the session. What I'd like to leave you with is the original framework that I offer, the person role system and so as you go back into your individual, organizations, jobs and spaces, I would sort of ask you as a person and you can see it in this work, what do you believe and why do you believe it and why is that even an important question because as you start to hear these stories connect into a system, you can see that there are ways in which each of us can actually push agendas both through our formal roles and through our informal influence. So when Christine sits in her job, she mentioned they have a diverse team Ford certainly has one of the larger endowments on the planet and so when they start to make decisions using a very different lens, others tend to be influenced and the system starts to change. Marcos has chosen out of his own personal experience to focus on the part of the venture capital space that he understands in a way that perhaps some others have yet to do and so he uses his personal lens to create very specific unwraps and opportunity for Latino founders and then we know Nadia carries within her work at Kellogg this completely and totally dedicated perspective on what it means to understand power dynamics within philanthropy, understand the importance of racial equity as a way of understanding why disparities exist and when we bring all of that together, we get to look at what we get to do and impact investing. The technical piece is easy as math, we run the numbers. The adaptive piece, which is why we say impact, all right, because we used to say investing, investing already comes with measurement, you don't need to add an adjective but we say impact and we say impact because it's intended to suggest that there's something beyond financial returns we care about and so we ask ourselves what are those things? So what do you believe and why do you believe it? Thank you guys for sharing with us today. And we're only two minutes over.