Our Vision
The Values Based Investing Education Circle is focused on educating and activating WDN members to use our investment portfolios and roles as influencers of investment capital, to enhance our ability to achieve our aspirations for social change. We also aim to leverage our power as shareholders, trustees, and directors and to have a meaningful voice in the corporate boardroom.
Our Impact
Our work has been particularly important in the wake of the fiscal crises of the past few years.
Recent activities have included the Savvy Investor event at our 2012 Conference, plus conference calls throughout the year on a variety of relevant topics, including:
- Assessing Opportunities and Risk in the New Financial Environment
- A Spectrum of Risk and Return — What’s the Right Fit for You in Today’s Climate?
- Leveraging Memberships’ Stories, Struggles, and Experiences to Help us in our Transitions to a Values-based Approach
- Moving your portfolio – start by knowing what you own
- Shared calls with the Earth Circle where activism and divestment/investment play a role
- Using race, class, and gender lenses in our investing
We have also held several successful workshops on the topic of values-based investing and shareholder engagement. Our first was held in New Orleans in 2008 and focused on “Values Based Investing 101” and general investment topics. We also held a follow-up workshop as part of the Climate Change Convening in 2009. In this workshop, we examined what we, as women investors, could do to re-evaluate and amend our portfolios to include the lens of climate change as a criterion in our socially responsible investing.
Our Strategy
We work to empower the women of WDN to expand their investment universe to include investments that may or may not have been part of their existing strategy. Our activities as a circle include the following:
- Hosting conference calls on topics spanning all asset classes, shareholder engagement, personal and family dynamics of transitioning capital, and more
- Working with partners to host in-person events focusing on values based investing and gender-lens investing issues
- Collaborating across the many circles of WDN to bring in the perspective of using investment as a tool alongside philanthropy, activism, using our voices politically and professionally
- Sharing within the WDN community our resources to help members formulate a personal strategy
