Podcasts about heron foundation

As president of the Heron Foundation, Clara Miller in 2012 set a goal to invest 100% percent of the foundation's then-$250 million in assets to fight poverty within five years. Heron beat the deadline by a year to be become one of the first foundations to align its full endowment with its mission.  For the latest episode of the podcast series Finding Alpha, ImpactAlpha contributing editor Rob Brown sat down with Miller for a wide-ranging discussion about the innovations she fostered in impact lending, the value of starting your career at the bottom, and her favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney.  

Devin: What is your superpower?Michael: I have what we might say in Yiddish is intellectual shpilke. I have difficulty focusing on one issue. I like to think across boundaries.Michael Shuman, one of the real OGs of crowdfunding, has managed to elude an invitation to be a guest on my show for the past decade, but today we remedy that situation.He is an economist, attorney, author and entrepreneur who focuses on local community investing via crowdfunding. He publishes the Main Street Journal, which is also here on Substack.He noted a fundamental principle that guides his work—and mine—in the local investing community: “We're too few in number to be competitive. We've got to be as collaborative as possible.”Michael has a fascinating superpower, evidenced immediately in a one-sentence bio. He describes it as “intellectual shpilke” using a Yiddish term some describe as ants-in-your-pants. His education and practice include law, economics and entrepreneurship.AI Podcast Summary* Michael H. Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur focused on community economics.* He played a significant role in the creation of the 2012 Jobs Act and various state laws on crowdfunding.* His passion for local investing stems from his own experience of struggling to raise capital for his businesses.* Michael believes that local businesses are crucial for economic development, job creation, and community success.* He emphasizes the need for a massive organizing movement to shift the investment ecosystem towards supporting local businesses.* Some strategies he suggests include creating groups that bring businesses and investors together, providing information on local businesses seeking capital, and promoting the use of funds for local investment.* Michael publishes the Main Street Journal, which highlights news and innovations in local investment.* His superpower is the ability to integrate various subjects and perspectives to explore bottom-line truths.* Michael encourages reading across boundaries, subscribing to different publications, and engaging in civil conversations with those who have different viewpoints.* To connect with Michael and learn more about his work, visit the Main Street Journal website, his personal blog, or his Twitter account.How to Develop Intellectual Shpilke As a SuperpowerMichael shared a story to illustrate his superpower:'So there is a storyline that I developed during the conversation about creating the Jobs Act that I think was very effective with skeptics. In securities laws, you have securities lawyers who are like twins because they speak to one another all the time early in their childhood. Their speech gets stunted, and they don't even realize it. And one of the things that securities lawyers babble to one another all the time is that we don't want Grandma to buy swampland in Florida, which is a totally reasonable argument. You don't want people to get defrauded. And that's why we have all of these securities laws, strictures to protect grandma from buying swamp land in Florida. What I started to point out to people, and this is back in the late 2000s when my mother was still alive, is that my mother being a grandmother living in Saint Louis, I don't want her to buy swamp land in Florida. But what did she do with her money and her time? She would go to one of a dozen casinos in Saint Louis.And when she entered the casino, she. Would she get a question? “Excuse me, Mrs. Shuman, but can you prove that you are an accredited gambler?” That never happened. And when she sat down to play blackjack, would they say, “Listen, before you enter this risky enterprise, will you please read this thick booklet of all of the risks of playing blackjack and sign?” And that never happened, either. So I pointed out to people that we have two risky activities going on in the US economy. One called gambling, where you could lose everything and probably will–independent of your income. And another called local investing and saving your community, where we're not going to let you play unless you pay a lawyer $25,000. Every human being except a seasoned securities lawyer can understand the logic of that. So, you know, you get people to laugh a little bit. And my mother was sort of amused by the story. But I feel like it's through laughter and through just poking holes with sort of folksy logic that you can move mountains.What a great example! His intellectual ants-in-the-pants helped him cross-pollinate ideas to create a compelling metaphor for legal change. With it, he helped to change federal securities laws.Michael has some simple advice to help you develop your intellectual shpilke, “To help, one of the things that I have my students do to develop a little bit of this is I have them do something that they never do anymore—most people our age would find this shocking—which is to subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine.”By following Michael's example and his advice, you can increase the intellectual ants in your pants to help you cross-pollinate ideas and potentially create a new superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.Guest-Provided ProfileMichael H. Shuman (he/him):Publisher, Main Street JournalAbout Main Street Journal: The Main Street Journal, with sponsorship of the National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3) and funding from the Heron Foundation, is the world's hub for local investing news and events. This newsletter, published every other Thursday, aims to expand the audience, reach, and power of the emerging local investment movement worldwide. For the United States, we believe that shifting even a small fraction of the tens of trillions of dollars Americans have invested in Wall Street, to local businesses, projects, and people on Main Street, can have a huge impact on community prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social justice. For the world, local investing offers the best chance available for solving intractable problems of climate disruption, homelessness, food deserts, economic stagnation, and just about everything else that worries us.The Main Street Journal aims to unify, enlarge, and empower an emerging local investment movement. Every other Thursday, look for a roundup of news, voices from our partners, and a list of key events providing you an easy-to-use entry point into the field. We will also share other content about local investments you might have missed and tools for finding fellow travelers (we call them “Main Street Champions”) in your own community. We don't want you to just read. We want you to be inspired. And to act!Website: www.themainstreetjournal.orgTwitter Handle: @smallmartBiographical Information: Michael H. Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, and a leading visionary on community economics. He is an Adjunct Professor at Bard Business School in New York City. He is also a Senior Researcher for Council Fire, where he performs economic development analyses for states, local governments, and businesses around North America. He is credited with being one of the architects of the 2012 JOBS Act and dozens of state laws overhauling securities regulation of crowdfunding. He has authored, coauthored, or edited ten books. His two most recent books are Put Your Money Where Your Life Is:  How to Invest Locally Using Solo 401ks and Self-Directed IRAs and The Local Economy Solution:  How Innovative, Self-Financing Pollinator Enterprises Can Grow Jobs and Prosperity. One of his previous books, The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006), received as bronze prize from the Independent Publishers Association for best business book of 2006. A prolific speaker, Shuman has given an average of more than one invited talk per week, mostly to local governments and universities, for the past 30 years in nearly every U.S. state and more than a dozen countries.  Personal Facebook Profile: fb.com/michael.shumanLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/mishumanOther URL: www.michaelhshuman.com Get full access to Superpowers for Good at devinthorpe.substack.com/subscribe

Nikita Singhal is Co-Head of Sustainable Investment & ESG at Lazard Asset Management, a $234.6 billion global asset management firm. She oversees the firm's Sustainable Investment and ESG Integration strategy, leads client engagements and thought leadership on ESG topics. Nikita has been working in the field of sustainable investing for over 14 years at institutions such as IFC (World Bank Group), the Heron Foundation, and ClearBridge Investments. Guided by a core belief in the power of business enterprises to drive positive change in the world, Singhal and I begin this Sustainable Finance Podcast (SFP) episode by focusing on the following question – Is ESG built for purpose?

Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron DessnerWith this episode, we're excited to officially launch season two of our Roots to Renewal podcast, and we are thrilled to have Greg Watson as our guest to kick things off. Greg is the director of policy and systems design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and a self-described lifelong student. He has spent nearly 50 years studying systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and has worked to apply that understanding to achieve a more just and sustainable world. In this episode, you'll hear more about Greg's amazing biography and his involvement in many future bearing and life bearing initiatives as he and Hawthorne Valley's executive director and podcast host Martin Ping, take a deep dive on the topics of systems thinking and new economics, creating new forms of cooperation, the wisdom of nature, and so much more. If you'd like to learn more about Greg's work and the Schumacher Center for a New Economics visit https://centerforneweconomics.org. For more information on the World Game Workshop, visit https://worldgameworkshop.org.Donate to Hawthorne Valley here.More about Greg Watson:Greg is Director of Policy and Systems Design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. His work currently focuses on community food systems and an initiative to improve global systems literacy informed by a reimagining of Bucky Fuller's World Game Workshop. Greg has spent nearly 50 years studying systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and has worked to apply that understanding to achieve a more just and sustainable world. He has served on the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and as a juror for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.In 1978 he organized a network of urban farmers' markets in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area. He served as Commissioner of Agriculture in Massachusetts from 1990 to 1993 and again from 2012 to 2014 when he launched a statewide urban agriculture grants program.Greg gained hands-on experience in organic farming, aquaculture, wind-energy technology, and passive solar design at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, first as Education Director and later as Executive Director. There he led the effort to create the Cape & Islands Self Reliance energy cooperative.  He served four years as Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a multicultural grassroots organizing and planning organization where he initiated one of the nation's first urban agriculture projects (anchored by a 10,000 square foot commercial greenhouse).Watson was the first Executive Director of the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust (now the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center). In 2005 he coordinated the drafting of “A Framework for Offshore Wind Energy Development in the United States” and the following year founded the U.S. Offshore Wind Collaborative. Watson was part of the team that landed the National Wind Technology Testing Center in Massachusetts.  He served on President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. Department of Energy transition team in 2008.  In 2015 he founded the Cuba-U.S. Agroecology Network (CUSAN) following a trip to Cuba to learn about its agroecology system. CUSAN links small farmers and sustainable farm organizations in both countries to share information and provide mutual support. He is on the editorial board of MEDICC Review, journal of the nonprofit Medical Education in Cooperation with Cuba.Watson serves on several boards including Ocean Arks International, Remineralize The Earth, The Marion Institute, the Heron Foundation and Place Corps. 

The following is a conversation between Dana Bezerra, President of the Heron Foundation, and Denver Frederick, the Host of The Business of Giving. The Heron Foundation, founded in 1992, is an organization that continuously learns. It acknowledges its missteps and then seeks to change in order to get better so it can best serve people, places, and enterprises. And here to tell us about their work and that learning journey is Dana Bezerra, the president of the Heron Foundation. Welcome to The Business of Giving, Dana!

Nikita Singhal is the Co-Head of Sustainable Investment & ESG at Lazard Asset Management. Nikita oversees the firm's ESG integration strategy. She works closely with analysts and portfolio managers to enhance their investment processes and on launching new strategies. She co-chairs the firm's ESG Steering Group and sits on the firm's Proxy Voting Committee. She also leads client engagement and thought leadership on ESG topics. Previously, Nikita worked on the Sustainability Leaders Fund at ClearBridge Investments, covering renewable energy and other high sustainability companies while also helping execute on the firm's overall ESG strategy. Prior to that, she was a Director at the Heron Foundation where she was focused on deploying and managing their $300mm endowment across asset classes. She has also worked at IFC's (World Bank Group) infrastructure private equity group and started her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Nikita holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is an executive board member of CECP's CEO Investor Forum and Bloomberg's ESG Advisory group. She is also an emeritus board member of the Human Impacts Institute, a non-profit organization aimed at using arts and culture to inspire environmental action for social good. Don't forget to check out my book that inspired this podcast series, The Caring Economy: How to Win With Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/toby-usnik/support

Actor, karate-school manager, Apple Genius (before there ever was such a thing), journalist, philanthropy executive, and potential future politician? Yep, Toni has lived each of these lives and is ready to talk about it! Journalist and communications expert Toni Johnson is a former deputy editor and staff writer for the Emmy-winning website of the Council on Foreign Relations, she spent four years as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly where she covered a range of legislation. Her work has appeared in numerous major publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, and more. Toni is currently CEO and founder of Mission OutLoud. In her former role as head of knowledge and influence for the Heron Foundation, Toni led the foundation’s long-term public influence and engagement strategy.  Basically, Toni is a huge politics and policy wonk - which are some of my favorite people.  She’s been awarded prestigious journalism fellowships and has a masters in international journalism from American University. I also happen to put her up as one of the thought leaders I follow on social media. What we’re talking about: This episode was recorded before the tragic murder of George Floyd and the protests that are ongoing as of the release date. It’s important to note this is why our conversation revolved around COVID-19 and not current events. We discuss Toni’s early ambition to become a lawyer, yet surviving a school shooting at Simon’s Rock impacted her greatly and shifted her career trajectory. Toni gave herself a 5 year plan to pursue acting in NYC instead of going to law school and during that time acted, managed a karate school, temp’ed for a nonprofit, became a certified apple technician, and then finally decided to pursue journalism. How she believes her upbringing and Montessori education and then attending college at a young age at Simon’s Rock helped shape how she learns and approaches life. Her story of becoming guardian to her siblings just before going to grad school for journalism, how she dealt with homelessness in DC the week before 9/11, and how American University believed in her so much they offered her more scholarship and access to a supporter who provided an apartment. Her career trajectory working her way through DC’s elite political journalism organizations and how she chose a job when offered THREE jobs in one day. She defines herself as a “policy journalist and not a politics journalist” during her time in DC. Toni’s career life lessons for aspiring journalists (33:00): Journalists will have a long life. It’s okay to remake yourself. How people treat you at work is important. And we need to rely on our network to build us up so we don’t get caught up in toxic environments. There’s a tension between being a doer and a helper and what you need to do to further your own ambitions. “Being fearless and talking bravely is really the life lesson for everything.” (35:00) Life lessons about money as a successful Black woman. Her period of severe poverty growing up and how that impacted her ambivalence to money right now. She sees money as a tool, and in the past has had a distrust of the markets.  The discomfort of making a lot of money working for a philanthropic foundation and questioning the impact of how she’s serving the poor. The philosophy that if she has enough money to splurge on cable, she’s going to be okay. The idea that it’s never too late to get in to politics - and maybe how Toni thinks she’s a little more Bernie Sanders than Joe Biden - and might run for local office one day Connect with Toni: On LinkedIn On Twitter @ToniOutLoud   Connect with Talk Bravely: Instagram: @talkbravely www.talkbravely.com 

Heron is excited to launch our 2019 Presidential Podcast! In 2018, we welcomed Dana Bezerra as the new president of the Heron Foundation, and we shifted our focus to working at the intersection of communities and capital markets. Now, following her one-year anniversary, we've asked Dana to reflect on what she's learned throughout her time at Heron, and give us a glimpse of where the foundation is going next. Reflecting on the role of power in the traditional investment universe, we’re thinking about a new investment process that places communities front and center.

T00: Tom Mitchell, Cambridge Associates by The Heron Foundation

T100: Brent Kessel, Abacus Wealth Partners by The Heron Foundation

Clara Miller is President of the Heron Foundation, a US foundation that helps people and communities help themselves out of poverty. Heron began as a grant-maker 25 years ago. The post Episode 12 Interview with Clara Miller, President of the Heron Foundation: Going all in at the Heron Foundation appeared first on Financing Social Entrepreneurs Podcast.

Matt talks with Clara Miller, President of the F.B. Heron Foundation, about Heron’s leadership in shining a light on the need for impact investing alongside mission investing; how asset managers and corporations are responding to millennials and why it’s important; and why the old Girl Scout adage "leave the campsite better than we found it" still applies.

Matt was a recent guest on the Heron Foundation Soundbites podcast, so we thought we’d share that this week. He talks about what it means to be an investor of the Heron Foundation and what it’s meant for our organization, but more importantly how it’s helping our team and our partners to revitalize Buffalo.

T00: Thomas Van Dyck, RBC Wealth Management by The Heron Foundation

Tom Mitchell, Managing Director at Cambridge Associates by The Heron Foundation

Francis Byrd, CEO of Byrd Governance Advisory by The Heron Foundation

Clara Miller is President of the Heron Foundation, which helps people and communities help themselves out of poverty. Prior to assuming the foundation's presidency, Miller was President and CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund which she founded and ran from 1984 through 2010. In addition to serving on Heron's board, Miller is on the boards of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and she is a member of the U.S. Advisory Committee to the G8 on Impact investing, named in 2014. From 2010-2014 Miller was a member of the first Nonprofit Advisory Committee of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Ms. Miller speaks and writes extensively and has been published in The Financial Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Nonprofit Quarterly and the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and her newest essay is titled Building a foundation for the 21st Century. In 2015, Miller and Heron were named Investor of the Year by Institutional Investor Magazine in the category "small foundations."​ In 2014, Miller and Heron received the Prince's Prize for Innovative Philanthropy from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the “Shining Star Award” from New York City performance space, PS122. She was awarded a Bellagio Residency in 2010 by The Rockefeller Foundation and was named to The NonProfit Times “Power and Influence Top 50” for the five years from 2006 through 2010. Heron.org Twitter: @ImpInvPodcast Facebook: Impact Investing Podcast  www.impactinvestingpodcast.com Clara Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clara-miller-4b261614

Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and President of PolicyLink by The Heron Foundation

In 2012, the F.B. Heron Foundation made waves by setting a goal to mission-align 100% of it's $300 million in assets by 2017. Now, in "Building a Foundation for the 21st Century," Clara Miller - president of Heron - has called for the rest of the field to follow suit. This week on ROI we're featuring an interview with Clara. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha/message

Heron's Rodney Christopher discusses the importance of unrestricted revenue and offers thought son the overhead question.

July 2, 2015 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1RSwJiN. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. When people hear about impact investing, a light goes on. People immediately begin to see the potential. Once they do, they often assume that foundations must be doing the bulk of impact investing. In fact, relatively few are actively doing it. The FB Heron Foundation has made a bold, public commitment to move 100 percent of its assets to impact investments by the end of 2017. In her President’s letter issued last month, Clara Miller wrote, “In 2014, we continued to push forward on our core operating principle that “all investing is impact investing,” meaning that we believe that all investments (spanning the range of debt, equity, cooperative shares, warrants, and hybrid instruments) have social as well as financial repercussions. These social and financial repercussions can be positive or negative and vary over time. Bidden or not, intentional or unintentional, all of the enterprises that we invest in have impact that goes well beyond a financial return to an individual investor.” Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

Luther Ragin, Jr., Vice President of Investments for The F.B. Heron Foundation, explains how the mission-related investment approach can harness a foundation's financial power to maximize its social return. From the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/luther_ragin_jr._-_is_grantmaking_enough_a_case_for_mission-related_investi