 Good morning, everyone. I'm so glad that we got to start this morning hearing from Donna. I had the privilege, was it yesterday, of being on a panel with her that we playfully called Money Devas, and I think you could hear from what she was saying that she is indeed a Money Deva. Now I have an interesting task in front of me, and that is introducing a conversation between, dare I say, two old farts. My husband is one of them. That's why I can say it. And the other one is probably the most, if not, one of the most, if not the most successful long-term visionaries in the impact investing world. And he was referenced in Donna's talk. I have no idea where this is going to go, which has been indicative of the last 43 years of my life with Kevin. But I'd like to welcome to this stage right now Kevin Jones and Joel Solomon for... What are they going to do? Thanks. Thank you. We were trying out some of the pips moves from one of Gladys Knight's songs that we know we didn't think we knew it well enough, so you're not going to see that. So why don't we talk about your book instead? All right. So I grew up in the 50s and the 60s, Jewish in the South, a lot of questions. I was diagnosed with a family genetic kidney disease. You might live long, you might die soon, there's nothing you can do about it. Combination of those factors caused me to think a lot about the history of how the world got to how it is, best I could, and figure out what I was going to do as the child of an increasingly affluent family going through the 70s and 80s. And I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do with privilege and power was to use it and not squander it, use it for something that matters. I had the opportunity to work with an extraordinary woman named Carol Newell who inherited a large chunk of money and decided that the majority of it should be deployed toward social and environmental goods now. We worked on thinking about 500 years, how did we get here, a 50-year strategy and an integrated capital deployment of resources in every way you can think of focused in a region and thinking about our personal networks as local and regional. Four strategies invest in for-profit sector that would be do-good businesses into the charitable sector and supporting activism and change agents. Third is the, okay, non-profit sector, activist sector, and inner skills, personal leadership skills, a place called Hollyhawk was a campus in the islands of British Columbia that we inhabited and helped infuse and support activists, entrepreneurs, and just people trying to figure out how to do better and be better. The fourth area was politics and power, essential that we pay attention to public service and power and do not walk away from it. Ecosystemic work, culture changing, social change investing. I was fortunate that one of the founders of Hollyhawk gave me her kidney 10 years ago. I lived through it. I've written a book in which I talk about these origins, tell stories, secondly, because I have been around a long time just due to desperation to figure out where there were people that could talk about these topics and help me out. I've talked about the building of this movement and done a taxonomy as I experienced it of the different organizations that grew out of things. And to make the message clear that this has been going on for a long time, it's still tiny. It will not stop. It is a huge momentum. It's going to grow bigger and bigger. The demand to know if our money aligns with who we are as people. Finally, the third section is the moral and ethical call to action. We know that the world faces serious crisis. We know that $50 trillion is going to pass hands from people our age to younger people just in the next three decades, only in North America. There's probably at least $100 trillion that's going to move. Values can change. We believe, I believe, that there's a new generation that it's our job to support to help do this differently. It's urgent. We need to move capital in every way. We need to stop thinking about how we grow it and grow it and grow it. We need to figure out how we redistribute it, deploy it, change public policy and our attitudes about capital and what its purpose is. We are the ancestors of what's coming. The purpose of capital is to serve them and support them in the best possible way so that they have a chance at some of what we've had. My book is called The Clean Money Revolution, Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism. There's a few left at the bookstore. I'll be there and greet you and talk about it if you like. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Joel. That was great. There are a lot of books out now. Some of them are how to think about impact investing, who's left behind, who's left out. Why was the generational focus where you went? Well, impact investing is a really important incremental step, and it's helping raise consciousness for us. The book is necessary, as are the whole set of books that are coming out right now and the things that are getting on stage here, because we got a lot of people to help show the way or raise questions with and ensure that they ask the right questions. So I felt that it was my duty and obligation as an ancestral responsibility to share what it is I've gotten to benefit from and whatever I've possibly learned that can be passed on. That's why the book and the book, The Times Are Urgent. Times Are Urgent. And why was that your message particularly? How long have you been thinking about that book? Because you haven't done other books, but why was that your message? Because I believe that money is a representation of spirit and energy embodied. It is the extraction of human labor and planet. We have forgotten our responsibility and our connection to that money, where it came from. I got some in my pocket right now. I got some credit cards here. There are probably slaves, babies being poisoned, and wars being started with my money a few steps down the channel of where it is right now. Yeah, the cobalt on our phones is slavery on the other end in Congo. As SOCAP and as impact investing scales goes mainstream, you have some big names here that are big funds, what do you think is the risk from somebody who thinks it's a spiritual expression to go mainstream? What's the risk? What's the risk to the movement for this to go mainstream and the Wall Street folks to come in? Well, I've fortunately been involved in things that are usually discounted by the mainstream early on. I've lived long enough to see that change. So there will be discounting, there will be debates, there will be competition just like humans do around everything. But it's crucial that we talk about the deepest part of it, because otherwise it's a game of how much money do I build up and how much do I need. We forgot to consider what's enough. I live in British Columbia where there's an indigenous culture that once you build up a certain amount, you have a big party and you give away most of it or all of it. I think money is an incredible privilege. So the field will debate and it will argue. And if I say this is a spiritual revolution, which it is, we've got to re-figure what the meaning of life is. People are going to debate it and criticize it and poo-poo it, and that's okay. Yeah. And you know, one thing I don't hear enough, I like that, and one of the things I don't hear enough about it is the way I see it. Impact investing changes you existentially. When we first tried to start pitching our fund to an ultra-high net worth tech investor in the Seattle area, he stood up and he said, I have two pockets. One I want to put all the money in the world in, and the second I want to put some money in to do some good. And if you see there's a philanthropic lens around investing, you have to leave. And we got kicked out of two different billionaire's offices. So we created a market so they could see it rather than think about it. It's sadly really limited in simplistic thinking that I do not understand how intelligent, accomplished people who've had access to all the education in the world can separate those two and not see that money is one substance. You can use it in diverse and interesting and impactful and important ways, and you should. You know, nobody's, to me, the existential part is that you're investing in all of us and investing yourself, what we need to do is invest in all of us. It's not just money for your storehouse, you're also investing in the commons. So you're different. It used to be you invest and take it home, and I give and do good. Do impact investing. You're investing in all of us and yourself at the same time. You're a part of the commons. And none of the metrics seem to touch on the existential change that should happen when you think about your money that way. And to be clear, I'm a pragmatic dreamer. And we manage an investment fund. We call it Mission Venture Capital, Renewal Funds. We invest in organics and environmental technologies, because it takes every step of this ecosystem to help move billions of people. So do that and then also get as rigorous as possible. And also get money out the door into activism and change. And Joe and I are co-investing in a deal that we did, and we're about to exit the first venture backed fair trade company that's in its negotiations. It's going to do well, but it's a company that got better as it went along. It was fair trade and organic, and then it was carbon negative with offsets, and now it's carbon negative with insets. So the groundwater is improved by commercial farming, and the packaging has gone to biodegradable. So you can get better as you get bigger. The ingenuity and innovation that humans can do is unbelievable. Use it for what matters. Yeah. And we're also, as I've looked, we're the oldest guys that have been on stage, and there won't be anybody older than we are after this on stage. So we're two old white guys saying to listen to us. And it seems to me we have a responsibility as old white guys to downsize the footprint of the alpha ego in order to be listened to in the changing world. I wonder how you think about that. Men, it's been a raw deal that we've developed over a few millennial, and it's time for us to look deeper, maybe study a little feminist analysis, race, class, look at all of it, listen, ask questions, lifelong learning. There's a lot we can do. We're quite capable of lots of things. We got to use that to support the whole. And we got to get over ourselves. Maybe a therapist could help. Maybe you could do maybe some support groups, maybe some weird stuff out in the woods, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, do better and be better. Yeah, you know, I did some weird stuff out in the woods and I was 40. I, you know, I know that. But you know, and everybody had kind of gotten lost in the middle part of their life. And a guy had started out, you know, he'd been at Woodstock and he ended up at lobbyists for AT&T and he said, how the heck did I do that? He said he had an infinite budget to stop anything new that did good. And, you know, he stopped, but he had to reconsider his life. So again, why should old white guys like us be listened to by folks who are skeptical of old white guys and the patriarchy and all that stuff? Well, I think we ended up coming through with some pride and some sense of responsibility despite all the other stuff. Pride, maybe it's the wrong thing, but I think we have it. So we're going to be, we're being watched right now by future generations. They're scratching their heads in the sense, what was going on? How did you guys let this get carried away so badly and put everything at risk? They're watching. We need to care about that. When we're on our deathbeds, what matters? What we've done on behalf of beauty, love, and continuity of all this? What do you want people to do as a result of your book and are you looking, are there workbooks around it? Is it going to be a practical guide or just a way to think about things? What do you want people to do? I want us to look at our money, think about, track it, know what it's doing to people and places right now, and think about our values, our meaning and purpose in life, and do everything we can to move the money into alignment with what we most believe in and care about for the future and proselytize it. And you also work on public policy things. What do you think is a couple of the biggest rules that need to change? Fair taxation, protection of the commons, long-term thinking, and a whole bunch of other policies that we end up affecting, and particularly mostly old white guys with a lot of money, and we have forgotten the past and we've forgotten the future and we've got to change that. There's a lot of folks, you know, the conservatives and the folks who are libertarians are really long-term and strategic in a way that we're often not. That's right. The BB&T bank has put up about $30 million recently and they're dribbling it out in three to $500,000 endowments of small business schools where $300,000 makes you kind of set for life. And all you got to do is just agree with the principles of Anne Rand and Libertarian and that, you know, the responsibility of a business is to profit. So, they're proliferating in a long-term strategy and they'll, you know, with these endowed chairs, that means somebody's going to be there, not just tenured, but have a little money. We've gotten circles run around us. Systematic deployment of capital to accomplish an agenda is done by people every day and Kevin's talking about it. I have to admit being inspired by Lewis Powell, the memo that he wrote, the Kochs, the Bradleys, the people that have spent their lives to impose and ensure that what they care about takes priority. And I was inspired by that and so the work that I was able to do with Carol was somewhat of what's a progressive version of this. How can we counteract it? We better figure out how to work together also. We need to do viable businesses. We need to create great not-for-profits. We need to pay attention to politics. How many people in here are going to run for office? Okay. Excellent. Two, three. So, we have got to get smarter and figure out how to be systematic now. I did some undercover reporting on the Christian riot when we were trying to get the Episcopal bishop elected, the first one. And in their sessions, they didn't suspect you. What's that? They didn't probably suspect you. They didn't. I mean, you know, you got to act a certain way. But one of the things they said to do was get on all the boards and do the grunt work, like the buildings and grounds and stuff like that and be a good soldier and then take over when there's enough of us and you're not suspected. I don't think we do anything like that. But they're out there in all these institutions doing buildings and grounds, getting up loyalty, and then they're aware of themselves as conservative moles in the organization. I think you built this organization and devoted your career to being a mole in the financial industry. And I did too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do it by waving my hands in public. We need hidden moles somewhere. I don't know how you do that. And thinking long term, how do you help people think long term when they're stuck in short term thinking? Well, we could use a few new global world religions to help us. This is a spiritual revolution that we need. And if we were to think about what really matters and we once a day for five minutes considered, what matters? Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? We'd have a much better chance to have that spiritual revolution. And how do you get the spiritual acknowledged by folks who just want to be bottom line oriented? Yeah. You just, you model and you be what you believe that should be. And you support each other and one by one by one and transaction by transaction and person by person. That's that's one approach. The other is people have got to step into power and change public policy. And you got to go across society, whatever part of society that is you're drawn to, whether it's religion, business, activism, all of it, every sector. This has to be a global mobilization or at least by those of us with privilege. Lloyd Blankford, not a not a sweetheart of a guy, the CEO of Goldman Sachs says the thing that scares him the most is increasing wealth disparity and as expressed in the racial wealth gap. What kind of risk are we looking at by not taking more action to invest around the racial wealth gap? Most of you watched that we went from 80 people that controlled as much wealth as half the world's population and went down to eight this year. We continue to push tax burden to those who can least afford it. We put all the privileges and gains to those who least need it. If we don't pay attention to everybody and start to understand that we are a species, I think we're screwed. And it's not easy to change patterns. You grew up in the south too. I grew up in the south. It was so embarrassing at the time that you couldn't even understand it. It was just the water that was going on. Really hard to understand. We owe everyone that we need to understand these issues. We need to know how the world works and we need to devote ourselves to a fair, safe, just future. Yeah, you know I'm from Mississippi, which is an effective poverty creation mechanism. I once talked to the head of the economic development there and I said, you know, our motto should be on the bottom and built to stay that way. He said, that's not how you lure industry. I said, well, luring industry is not what we should be doing. But they still stay stuck. But there's an amazing movement in Jackson, Mississippi. It's so broken that this cooperation in Jackson is really changing things. And I wonder if the south is broken enough that something else might happen there. There's a huge re-migration of African Americans back to the south, cost, access, who knows all the I don't know all the reasons. Yeah. But there are so those of us on the coasts, we got it relatively easy. We live in our bubble. Some of us need to be there because there's a lot of power and influence there and we need to affect it. Many of us are going back into smaller cities and smaller places and doing everything we can there to help improve things. Do we have a good chance? Odds aren't good. Could we pull it off? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think about that and then I go back and you know the agreement we have is they take down the flag and I don't talk about climate change. That's the trade-off that makes Thanksgiving work. And you know, I how to get a message across like that? I don't know. It's a difficult thing. It's a thing I think about but have no clue. We've created a really difficult pickle for ourselves. Yeah. We need some really smart, sensitive courage and action. Yeah. Thank you Joel. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. That's good. Thanks.