Founder Steve Lydenberg Named Chairman
NEW YORK, APRIL 19, 2022 – The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), a consulting services and applied research firm, today announced changes to its executive management team as the company expands services to help investors contribute to the creation of the healthy social, financial and environmental systems we need now as well as benefit their portfolios.
To that end, William (Bill) Burckart has been appointed Chief Executive Officer and will assume day-to-day leadership of the organization. Burckart previously served as TIIP’s President and COO. Steve Lydenberg, who founded TIIP, has transitioned from his role as Chief Executive Officer and will serve as Chairman. He will act in an advisory capacity for the firm’s leadership as they accelerate the next phase of TIIP’s innovative consulting and research.
“It has been an honor to serve as the founding CEO of TIIP and I am quite proud of what we have accomplished,” said Lydenberg. “Bill and I have worked closely together since establishing TIIP, we have co-written a book, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change [Berrett-Koehler, 2021], and we share a vision for this company: to be a catalyst for investors to integrate system-level investing into their decision making.”
“I am excited for this next chapter and believe Bill’s passion, energy and leadership will serve TIIP well,” Lydenberg added. “As Chairman, I will focus on supporting initiatives to help investors of all stripes understand why it’s time for a new way to think about investing—one that can contend with the complex system-level challenges society faces in the 21st century. It is imperative that we take action now.”
Lydenberg has spent his career driving positive change in financial services. Beyond his work at TIIP, he serves as Partner, Strategic Vision of Domini Impact Investments where he provides strategic vision and direction to guide the firm’s policies, procedures, and daily practices. Mr. Lydenberg previously served as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer and was a co-founder of the Domini 400 Social Index in 1990, the first index to utilize social and environmental standards.
Since 1975, and throughout Mr. Lydenberg’s laudable career, he has been a leader in researching the social and environmental performance of corporations. Mr. Lydenberg was a co-founder of KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. and served as its research director from 1990 to 2001. From 1987 to 1989, he was an associate with Franklin Research and Development Corporation (now known as Trillium Asset Management). For 12 years he worked with the Council on Economic Priorities, ultimately as director of corporate accountability research.
Mr. Lydenberg is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Responsible Investment (IRI) at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, which was established to provide institutional support for responsible investment, broadly construed, with a strong focus on creating a foundation of research activity around the field. He has published widely on responsible investment and corporate social responsibility and is a CFA charter holder.
Monique Aiken, TIIP’s Managing Director, will also take on additional leadership responsibilities, including the continued development and refinement of TIIP’s new Systems Aware Investing Launchpad (SAIL) platform, the first resource to provide investors with a “one-stop shop” for practical system-level investing implementation support and tools. Monique is also a Contributing Editor at ImpactAlpha, a digital news magazine for the impact investing sector.
She previously served as Vice President of Programs at Mission Investors Exchange, a network organization for +250 members seeking to deepen their practice of impact investing through peer-learning. Prior to joining Mission Investors Exchange, Monique was a Director at Tideline, a boutique impact investing strategy consulting firm; Project Manager at the Clinton Foundation for No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, and a business development manager at the Clinton Global Initiative.
TIIP recently appointed an 11-member Advisory Council to help determine TIIP’s future and begin the exciting work of building a community of practice for asset owners and managers looking to integrate system-level thinking into their investment decisions. Inaugural members include asset owners and managers who represent a wide variety of investor segments, including pension fund managers, investment advisors, consultants and money managers.
“This is a coming-of-age moment for TIIP and reflects the rapid growth of investors adopting system-level thinking and techniques into their practices,” said Kirsty Jenkinson, Investment Director, Sustainable Investment & Stewardship Strategies, California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), and member of the TIIP Advisory Council. “Having worked closely with Bill, I am confident his leadership will remain at the forefront of an exciting and necessary transformation of the financial system.”
“I’ve worked with Steve for decades, so I know the research rigor and leading-edge thinking that he has brought to TIIP,” added Jon Lukomnik, Founder, Sinclair Capital, and member of the TIIP Advisory Council. “And I’ve spent the past six years collaborating with Bill on a variety of projects that put system-level investing into the forefront.”
Burckart has been at the cutting edge of the field, having worked as a strategy consultant to a range of investors, asset managers and financial advisors, helping them integrate impact and investment objectives. His writing has been featured in Barron’s, Pensions & Investments, The Guardian, Forbes, Quartz, top1000funds, Investment & Pensions Europe (I&PE), Benefits & Pensions, InvestmentNews, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), ImpactAlpha, CSRwire, Alliance, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, FundFire and Next Billion to name a few.
Mr. Burckart is a Fellow of the High Meadows Institute and co-founder of Colorful Capital, which aims to bring capital support and scaffolding to enterprises founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQIA+ community. He previously served as a member of the advisory council of the Investments & Wealth Institute’s WealthBoard 100 and as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He is a founder or co-founder of two impact investment advisory firms, Burckart Consulting and Impact Economy LLC.
“Investors increasingly need a way to grapple with fundamentally destabilizing, new and different social and environmental challenges,” said Burckart. “Over the past seven years TIIP has helped to develop a solution, namely system-level investing. I look forward to building on this foundation while also accelerating our efforts to guide investors in better managing systemic risks and solving complex global issues, encouraging widespread adoption of new and advanced techniques, and facilitating broader industry reform. There is no time to lose and, thanks to Steve, the investment community has a running start.”
About TIIP
TIIP’s mission is to help investors understand how healthy social, financial, and environmental systems can benefit their portfolios. TIIP provides consulting services, thought leadership, and a turnkey solution that support investors’ pursuit of system-level investing, an advanced sustainable investing approach that focuses on managing systemic risks and opportunities. For more information, visit https://www.tiiproject.com
