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welcome to knowledge at Wharton I'm Sandy maroh hunt associate director at the Wharton social impact initiative and
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I'm thrilled to welcome you to a conversation today with Jackie vanderbrug managing director at Bank of
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America us trust welcome Jackie thank you so among many other things Jackie you are a thought leader in the gender
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lens investing space I'm very excited to have this conversation with you because
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we love to bring our Wharton Community whether students alumni and friends the latest in the impact investing and
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broader investing space so let's start at the beginning what is gender lens investing so first of all thank you for
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having me here thrilled to be here and gender lens investing is a process it's
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the deliberate integration of gender analysis into investment analysis and decision-making what's important to
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understand about that um is really two factors first um the definition includes this aspect of lend
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not limitation and often times there's an already listening when as soon as you
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say gender that people feel like oh you're excluding men this is not an exclusion it is a lens and not a
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limitation a lens is like a pair of glasses right through my glasses I'm going to see some things that otherwise
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if I didn't have them on I would miss yeah that's a really great point about
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how your your glass prescription is going to have a different one than my contact prescription we've got different
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lenses can you give us a couple examples about how that might play out in real world scenarios yeah absolutely um some
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investors for instance Sandy will say that they're really interested in getting women access to Capital and that
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may be women micro entrepreneurs in an emerging market or in a domestic situation here in the US might be women
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film directors it might be women hedge fund managers but they've realized that
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there are women who have less access to Capital than men and that's the lens
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that they use other investors use a lens where they look across the value chain of a company and they say how do I
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evaluate this company from the board through its Senior Management through the way that it's working within its
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organization to the supply chain and understand the way that they're valuing
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women and men equally in their organization still other investors are really looking at that product and
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service and how is it that if this company was wildly successful given what it does how would that
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change gender equality in its markets right does it have a product that's going to solve a challenge for women
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like women's safety um has it thought about gendered knowledge um there's
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really interesting research now on the way that software is designed and how software design has been predominantly
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for male patterns of problem solving wow and so thinking about how you could e bias software design could open up a
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whole set of new product offerings sure so those are very very different lenses and they all overlap and none of them
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are better than others in general what happens is I have an expertise I have an experience I have a theory of change and
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that creates my lenses yeah and what I love about that example or those examples thinking about the lenses is
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that it empowers everyone to have a voice whatever your experience you've got a unique lens that you're coming to
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this space and it sounds like there's no wrong way to ask those questions I've
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heard often in the space um folks will say well is it a sector like energy or in or you know education but it's really
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not it's a lens over all sectors so tell us a little bit more about why that's so
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important you're you're absolutely right right all Investments have impact as you
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probably often say all Investments have gendered impact exactly and so gender lens investing crosses all sectors it
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crosses all asset classes um and people use lenses in different ways so it's
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also important to understand that my gender lens might not be the same as yours um so it why it's important is
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because we're starting to realize that so much of the way that we allocate capital is gendered and so when we can
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be aware of that we can be aware of our biases we can be aware of the opportunities we can make much better
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investment decisions absolutely and that's a great case for gender lens investing why is it important to Bank of
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America Maryland us trust so it is important because we're looking as our all investors to make the
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best investment decisions and so having additional information about an investment um whether that be the role
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of women within the company whether that be the way that the company is attacking
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potential important markets whether that be the Safety and Security of the products that it's creating all of those
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factors gender has a part to play in um so that's important to us it's also
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important because it's important to our clients right so increasingly as many of
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your readers know clients are asking about the environmental and social impact of their
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Investments our research is that 58% of high- net worth individuals say that that's important to them interestingly
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50% more women say that than men so we don't think that gender lens inv investing is Investing For Women it's
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investing for smart investors that said research does show that women are more likely to start asking these questions
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to say what is the impact of my portfolio on women and girls and also how is it that my portfolio is taking
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advantage of fully diverse organizations and the power they bring yeah and I'm
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curious about another demographic group that is emerging of particular importance and interest to the financial
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services industry which is the millennial group who is inherit in something around $40 trillion in this
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Boomer wealth transfer that's just begun to happen and will be happening for the
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next few decades talk to us about what you see from that audience and how you see gender lens as a part of their
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priorities and experience yeah so that audience to your point has a completely different worldview right when we ask
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them about do the social environmental impacts of your portfolio matter 93% of them said yes 93 93% so they're sort of
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saying why are asking us this question right almost rhetorical almost rhetorical exactly um and their view is
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that they're looking for equality right they want to um work in organizations
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that have um diverse management teams they want to buy from products that reflect their identity and increasingly
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their identity is one of community and us doing things together and so forth um they want to make the world a better
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place and they have understood and and some of this is research right the research of the time shows
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that countries that are more inclusive in terms of women's labor force participation in terms of women's access
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to legal rights have higher GDP growth over time right so that this is in the Zeitgeist of the time but they're also
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hearing things like Melinda Gates saying well wait a second women do do more unpaid work than men girls do more
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unpaid chores than boys and they're saying hm this isn't the world I want to
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live in I want to live in a true meritocracy and and it's particularly interesting you've heard this sandwich
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generation term for um individuals and and Partnerships that will be managing both child care and Elder Care at the
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same time so you sort of double hit the women who are doing that unpaid work so I understand why it's a a huge issue so
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we're painting a really positive picture for why gender lens investing matters
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and why it's so important what's what are the challenges if I can be a pessimist for a moment just a moment
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what are the challenges that are facing the space that are um prohibiting it from growing more quickly so partly I
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would say um there's a lack of understanding of what it actually is Right often times people think gender
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lens investing is um small soft and pink ah yes right so it's small Investments
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maybe a loan to a low-income woman to become an entrepreneur it's soft meaning
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it's not research-based and it's pink meaning it's just about women it's not
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actually about gender and the role that men and women play in society and so when we shift out of that bias we can
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understand what happens when say calsters starts working with State Street Global advisors and creates an
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ETF called shei and they move you know a half a billion dollars under both the ETF and the exchange the indices so
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there's yeah there's nothing smaller soft about sof about that right but part
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of it is the bias second factor is the data so the data is challenging um there's not enough of it
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it's not Apples to Apples across countries and across companies now you're starting to see companies being
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more revealing about the role of diversity across their ranks around questions like pay equity and so forth
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you're seeing organizations like data 2.x really look at driving more consistent gender data across
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countries and the sustainable development goals are going to push that forward as well because as we look at
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those and how gender is both a separate called out gender equality sustainable development goal and integrated
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throughout the other 17 goals you need measurement for that yes it's a lens throughout those other goals right
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exactly um what can someone do uh you know we often talk about and you and I have talked about how less people than
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are actually investors consider themselves investors right how we are all investors in the products and
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services we're buying we're supporting and how we manage our Capital what can
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someone do um if if they are curious about advancing the conversation around gender lens
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investing it's true that we tend to think of investors as has a small few talking headss on CNN M very wealthy
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ones exactly and those investors are are powerful and important but all of us have an opportunity to be curious about
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this and to ask questions and so if you ask questions of your investment advisor
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in terms of how a gender lens might be implemented in your portfolio that starts a conversation that is between
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the two of you but also between your investment advisor and their firm um and the same is true for any board that you
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serve on for any organization all of the questions around how are we inclusively
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using the talents of men and women as we do our work lead to Opportunities excellent and what are some um
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opportunities for advancement of the space What are some areas where you think a research institution like
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Wharton can play a role in advancing gender lens investing so I think there's a lot of
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research to be done around perceptions and communication as we've talked about
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it's very easy for people to get confused and to think genderland investing is just about investing in
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women entrepreneurs um and while investing in women entrepreneurs is important and women's access to Capital
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is critical there are other factors in terms of how men and women play roles throughout a a company in terms of the
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product and research um there's fascinating work being done in terms of the way that knowledge is gendered um so
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to the uh Title Here Right this question of what kind of data is an organization
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Gathering and how does that determine the products and services that they are creating so um lots of opportunities
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there um in in terms of how do we get that complexity into something called gender
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lens investing yeah I think there's great research around um the financial performance
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there's great research to be done around impact um and how the role of gender
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lens investors can drive impact um and then the the research that I'm most interested in is potentially the
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intersection of those right the flywheel that happens when gender lens work creates more impact which then creates
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better Financial returns let's move to a success story Jackie can you give us an
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example of something that has been particularly inspiring or exciting to you emerging in the gender lens
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investing space absolutely there's a lot it's hard to pick but I will say um one
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of my favorite examples of gender capitalism which is the the term that Sarah Kaplan and I use to explain the
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converging of those who traditionally were on the gender lens philanthropy side with those that were more
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traditionally just straight investors coming together to see the power of AG gender lens um to drive forward both
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objectives is the partnership between us trust and the women's Foundation of
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California where we came together to use the Deep gendered knowledge of the women's Foundation of California and the
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investment um Acumen of us trust to put together a investment fund we call the women and girls equality strategy it's a
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us all cap equity and fixed income strategy and what we do there is enable the woms foundation of California but
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other investors to invest in those companies that are thoughtfully engaging women as consumers as employees As
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Leaders of global change right how do we look across the entire value chain of a
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company and say how is it that they're harnessing um all of their Workforce and
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being thoughtful the thing that is the success story here is not just that it was launched but that at the three-year
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track record it's outperforming its Benchmark um and that it's now available
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you know more broadly Beyond us trust at maril Lynch um that there's a whole set
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of other investment opportunities in this space that are similar but that's the kind of model that I think is
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interesting where you take deep gender knowledge deep investment knowledge and you merge them excellent and as you look
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at that example and and you see it success is unfold I've heard you talk a lot about moving from counting to
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valuing women how did you measure SU ESS and what did you look at to determine um
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what would what you would do to consider this investment vehicle uh something that you wanted to grow in
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replicate so part of the question is um how is it generating change in the field
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and as we have more and more investment vehicles in the public debt and Equity space questions get asked um and so
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these vehicles are less about direct change and more about systemic change in the field um so I think the level of
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conversation around genderland investing which has happened because these Investments have been successful is
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really important this is such an exciting space and we love that we have a chance to work with great thought
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leaders like yourself in it we encourage all of our viewers and listeners of course to check out our website and
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follow along with the blogs and research and stories that we're putting out Jackie what else would you recommend
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readers and viewers look at to learn more about this space I've heard of a book coming out that might be of some
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interest it is true um in the fall we will have a book I've co-authored a book
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with Joe quinland who is our chief uh Market strategist at us Trust Bank of America um called gender lens investing
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so it'll be out in the fall and that's a great place to start there are lots of
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other great places though I would really suggest that viewers sign up for the blogs that Wharton puts out because your
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work on jeder lens investing is fabulous um there's a new community globally
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called women effect Investments that has a great resource list um on it it includes some of the best reports that
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have been written some of the research um bases so that's another place to start well thank you so much for your
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time today Jackie I've enjoyed talking with you and I'm sure our viewers and
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readers will enjoy learning more about the gender lens investing space I look forward to being back here with you in a
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couple years when we can talk about many more success stories in the gender lens
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investing space thanks for being with us [Music]