Putting 2024 into Focus
In 2022, TIIP released the report, Approaching the Tipping Point: Recommendations for building the marketplace for system-level investing, which focused on actions investors and other market participants can take over the coming years to quickly equip the financial industry with tools and strategies to manage existing systemic social and environmental challenges and drive broader industry transformation.
In particular, Approaching the Tipping Point outlines a two-phase plan for meeting the financial industry where it is and equipping investors with tools and strategies to manage systemic social and environmental challenges. It first focuses on building awareness for system-level investing before turning to enabling widespread adoption of the approach.
TIIP has been laser-focused on pursuing these two objectives ever since, with 2024 being a pivotal year of continued progress.
Recap: 3rd Annual Symposium on System-level Investing
TIIP’s 3rd Annual Symposium on System-level Investing on “Aligning Investor Policies, Programs and Practices to the System-level” took place on April 10, 2024 in New York, with the support of our cohosts, the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, and Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and sponsors, Domini Impact Investments, Orrick, and the High Meadows Institute.
The room was filled to capacity, and another +250 registered to attend via Zoom. Attendees joined from all over the world, including Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The noted industry experts below shared their expertise:
The future of system-level investing is implementation
In 2025 and beyond, TIIP will lean into our focus on offering practical guidance for investors to equip the financial industry with the tools and support needed to move the market from awareness of system-level investing to action.
Our goal remains the same, despite any perceived or actual geopolitical headwinds: as a field, we need to bring system-level investing to the mainstream, provide the financial industry with the tools and support needed to scale the approach, and, ultimately, start to change industry culture, no matter who is in office in whatever country investors operate. If anything, the urgency of this mission has only increased in this state of polycrisis.
4th Annual Symposium on System-level Investing Tuesday, April 8, 2025
TIIP’s 10-year anniversary celebration and 4th Annual Symposium on System-level Investing will be held on April 8, 2025.
Interested in becoming a sponsor for next year’s gathering? Reach out to Monique Aiken at [email protected] to explore.
Click the here to add your name to the notification list to be the first in line to receive further details.
SAIL Updates
We continue to find was ways to make SAIL even more useful for investors seeking support for implement system-level investing approaches.
Last June, TIIP launched SAIL (the Systems Aware Investing Launchpad), a SaaS platform containing practical system-level investing implementation support and tools comprised of three components:
- Launchpad: A strategic planning tool that equips investors to develop or otherwise adapt institutional policies, investment belief statements, programs, products and procedures to chart their course to become a system-level investor;
- Benchmark: A customizable database that supports deep due diligence to help investors manage their managers, providing insight and comparisons into which of their managers, and others in the dataset, are utilizing system-level investing techniques (in addition to sustainable and/or impact investing strategies) and how a manager is progressing over time; and
- CoPratice (CoP): A community of practice aimed at driving broader industry collaboration, coordination and transformation.
In 2025, TIIP will add even more features to the platform, based on subscriber feedback. Our goal is to solve current investor pain points, while supporting investors across the typical 6-steps in any investor’s process in extending their practice to the system-level.
Our annual update is underway and we will be adding two new issue areas in 2025 to Launchpad, racial inequity and LGBTQ+ inequity as well as refreshing the existing two issue areas (i.e., the “issue agnostic” and income inequality verticals).
Due to the success of the inaugural SAIL cohort in 2023 and increasing interest from partner industry associations and investors worldwide, TIIP has held six versions of its investor training program to date, supporting the learning of over 150 participants.
In 2024, the five investor trainings were as follows:
- March 12: Zoom-based training with 19 participants recruited through IEN, ICCR and UN PRI
- June 17: Zoom-based training for 40 Japan-based investors in partnership with the Japan Impact Driven Finance Initiative
- June 18: In-person 1-day training in Melbourne, Australia, with 25 attendees in partnership with University of Melbourne
- June 20: In-person training in Melbourne, Australia, with 40 attendees in partnership with Impact Investing Australia and UN PRI
- July 11: Zoom-based training with 12 participants recruited through IEN, ICCR, Racial Justice Investors, Impact Capital Managers, Women Investing in the Sustainable Economy, and UN PRI
A selection of participants in TIIP’s training programs is below*:
Ask us how to subscribe to SAIL at our pre-update promotional rate!
Want access to the just to CoPractice (which will always remain free) or receive a live demonstration? Contact TIIP at [email protected].
TIIP + Friends About Town
- January
- 1/30 – Bill, Monique and Melissa Eng provide the closing keynote “Systems-Level Thinking for Systems-Level Resilience” at the Impact Investing Institute hosted by the Minnesota Council on Foundations. The talk highlighted TIIP’s report, (Re)Calibrating Feedback Loops. An essential component of the framework is ensuring that an investor’s policies, programs, and practices are aligned with their overarching system-level goals—do all actions work in the direction of a healthier and more resilient system
- February
- 2/6 – Bill speaks at Wespath’s annual Investment Forum joined Alan Hsu, Portfolio Manager, Wellington, and David Loehwing, Head of Sustainability and Stewardship, North America, Impax Asset Management for a panel entitled “The Rise of Systemic Risk and the Impact of Sustainable Investment Strategies”. The session, moderated by Jake Barnett, focused on how institutional investors are working together to address systemic risk in their portfolios through innovative sustainable investment strategies.
- 2/21 – Bill guest lectured virtually at the School of Systems Change.
- 2/29 – Monique joined Majority Action’s webinar, “Equity in the Boardroom: Proxy Voting to Advance Racial Equity, Democracy, and a Thriving Economy for All.”
- March
- 3/6 – Bill and Jon Lukomnik, Sinclair Capital, kick off the 3rd semester of the system-level investing course at Columbia SIPA. Guest speakers including Monique, Piers Hugh Smith, Steve Lydenberg, Jaap van Dam, Fran Seegull, George Suttles, Rodney Foxworth, Jessica Matthews, Mirtha Kastrapeli, N. Maguette Diop, and Anna Snider helped bring to life the theory and practice.
- 3/20 – Bill speaks at the Impact Investment Summit Asia Pacific.
- 3/12 – TIIP CoP conducts a Zoom-based training with 19 participants recruited through IEN, ICCR and UN PRI
- April
- 4/10 – TIIP hosts its 3rd Annual Symposium “Aligning Investor Policies, Programs, And Practices To The System-level” alongside cohosts, the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, and Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). Sponsors included, Domini Impact Investments, Orrick and the High Meadows Institute. There were more than +2,000 registrants from 23 countries for the hybrid in-person and virtual gathering and the 30 speakers represented a range of institutional asset owners, asset managers and academics.
- 4/14 – TIIP announces the release of its latest report, System-level Investing: Case Studies of Investors Leading the Way. With the support of the Surdna Foundation, this report was developed as part of TIIP’s broader response to its industry needs assessment conducted in 2021 and 2022, which made clear that while stakeholders are concerned about the systemic nature of social and environmental issues and their connection to investment, there remains a deep need for more information and evidence to foster an accessible path for institutional investors to adopt system-level investing. The report features: California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), the largest teachers’ retirement system and second largest public pension fund in the U.S. with $315 billion in assets under management. Domini Impact Investments, a women-led investment adviser that focuses exclusively on impact investing, with a focus on forest and land use, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation (SPMF), the largest community foundation in Minnesota with $2 billion in assets under management, University Pension Plan (UPP), a jointly sponsored defined benefit pension plan created by and for Ontario’s university sector with $10.8 billion in pension assets and Wespath Benefits and Investments, a nonprofit pension fund and general agency of the United Methodist Church with over $24 billion in assets under management.
- 4/19 – Monique was interviewed by Social For Good, to kick off their new Social Impact Heroes series. Read the profile here.
- 4/23 – Monique’s vignette on how the name of her nonprofit collective Make Justice Normal, came to be is published in Andrea Longton’s book “The Social Justice Investor: Advance Your Values While Building Wealth, Whether a Few Dollars or Millions”.
- 4/25 – The Freedom Economy Legal Network, a new membership organization launches to equip investors with the legal support they need to continue boldly pursuing justice and sustainability. Learn more here.
- May
- May 7 – Bill and Melissa shares findings from the “(Re)Calibrating Feedback Loops” report on a webinar with IEN.
- May 8 – Bill attends the Milken Conference on a 1-day pass.
- June
- 6/17 – Melissa joined a panel on system-level investing at the GreenBiz conference, and Monique provided a 60-second video (“Big Little Talk”). See the video here.
- 6/17 – TIIP CoP conducts a Zoom-based training for 40 Japan-based investors in partnership with the Japan Impact Driven Finance Initiative
- 6/18 – TIIP CoP conducts an in-person 1-day training in Melbourne, Australia, with 25 attendees in partnership with University of Melbourne
- 6/23 – Monique speaks on a panel at the JFF Horizons conference entitled “How Impact Investors Can Drive Quality Jobs by Investing in People” alongside Todd Leverette, Managing Partner at Apis & Heritage and Marcus Felder, Vice President in Portfolio Operations at Blackstone and the discussion was moderated by Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller, Founder and CEO of Workforce & Organizational Research Center
- 6/20 – TIIP CoP conducts an in-person training in Melbourne, Australia, with 40 attendees in partnership with Impact Investing Australia and UN PRI
- 6/25 – Bill featured in an article in Barron’s entitled “Finding LGBTQ-Focused Investments Can Be Difficult” here.
- 6/26 – Bill joins roundtable hosted by The White House on the LGBTQ+ venture capital ecosystem. Reflections on the gathering can be found in his op-ed in ImpactAlpha here.
- July
- 7/11 – TIIP CoP conducts a Zoom-based training with 12 participants recruited through IEN, ICCR, Racial Justice Investors, Impact Capital Managers, Women Investing in the Sustainable Economy, and UN PRI
- August
- TIIP took a break from events!
- September
- 9/5 – Bill and Jon Lukomnik, Sinclair Capital, kick off the 4th semester of the system-level investing course at Columbia SIPA. Guest speakers this semester included: Piers Hugh Smith, Heidi Welsh, Akaash Sachdeva, Fran Seegull, Anna Snider, Ibrahim Rashid, MPP, Tiffany R. Reeves, Melissa Eng, Matt Lomas, Adam Kanzer, Edgar Romney, Rekha Vaitla, and Jimmy Yan.
- 9/13 – Bill leads a webinar co-hosted by the Colorful Capital, ICCR, PRI, Out in Finance, StartOut, and TIIP which introduced investors to a new set of actionable frameworks that detail the ways investors can extend existing portfolio management tools and adopt techniques to drive towards LGBTQIA+ equity in both portfolio and practice. Speakers included Megan Kashner as well a panel moderated by Cambria Allen Ratzlaff, featuring Aeisha Mastagni, Jesse Beck, and Traci Keen. Eric Krull and Tarik Perkins.
- 9/22 – Monique and the Make Justice Normal collective organize their inaugural StreetWorks Earth, a “streetfair for good” in Jackson Heights, Queens on September 22nd during NY Climate Week, supported by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Frontline Resource Institute. Monique’s op-ed for ImpactAlpha can be found here.
- 9/30 – Monique is the featured member in the September newsletter of WISE network, Women Investing in the Sustainable Economy.
- October
- 10/3 – UN PRI’s Nithya Iyer publishes a cogent explainer of the approach alongside key resources for those seeking to explore the concept further.
- 10/10 – Monique speaks at a WISE member webinar on the topic of mentorship.
- 10/10 – Bill speaks at the 2024 PRI in Person Forum in Toronto, Canada.
- 10/16 – Nathan Fabian, Chief Sustainable Systems Officer at PRI and Takeshi Kimura, Board Director at PRI and Special Adviser to the Board, Nippon Life Insurance, publishes a piece entitled, “Why system-level thinking is required of responsible investors in an inflationary environment” here.
- 10/22 – Bill speaks at the GIIN Investor Forum in Amsterdam, on the panel entitled “Impact Measurement and Management for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.” The other panelists included: Hetal Sheth Damani, Impact Partner at Trill Impact, Brianna Losoya-Evora, Head of Impact Measurement and Management at Sweef Capital and Melissa Bradley, Managing Partner at 1863 Ventures.
- 10/24 – Monique speaks at the Philanthropy Advisors of Color Convening hosted by Unboxed Philanthropy. The session, “Impact Investing & Venture Philanthropy”, featured Erika Seth Davies, CEO of Rhia Ventures and the REAL, Natalia Oberti Noguera, Founder and CEO of Pipeline Angels, and Austin Serio, Co-founder or ShockTalk.
- 10/22 – Monique keynotes Culture Shift NY/Beyond the Billion’s “Investing in Women” day.
- 10/22 – Bill pens recap on UN PRI conference on ImpactAlpha “Charting the path forward for responsible and impact investing with a systems lens” here.
- 10/29 – The CFA Institute releases report on “Investment Innovations Toward Achieving Net Zero,” along with a chapter co-authored Bill and Jon Lukomnik entitled “Tools Used by System-Level Investors in Their Net-Zero Initiatives.”
- November
- 11/14 – TIIP publicly signs on as one of 18 design teams joining forces with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to advance the Making Missing Markets initiative.
- Please let us know if you are interested in joining the 9-month cohort being launched in March 2025, or if you wish to nominate other US based investors who you know wish to deepen their understanding of system-level investing with a focus on societal issues.
- 11/14 – TIIP publicly signs on as one of 18 design teams joining forces with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to advance the Making Missing Markets initiative.
- December
- 12/13 – Monique moderates a panel at the IWBI Sustainable Finance with fellow panelists Claudia Herbert Colfer, Head of Programming, UN Global Compact Network USA, Mary Luevano, Executive Director, PACENation, Antonio Rodriguez, Director of Investments, 32BJ Benefit Funds, and Hamoda Youssef, Director of Client Development, ClimateFirst.
Have questions about system-level investing? Email us at [email protected].
