Impact Investing Influencers: Erin Gray

US SIF — the Sustainable Investment Forum is a leading voice advancing sustainable investing across all asset classes. The forum says its mission is to rapidly shift investment practices toward sustainability, focusing on long-term investment and the generation of positive social and environmental impacts.

Its members represent $5 trillion in assets under management or advisement and include investment management and advisory firms, mutual fund companies, ​asset owners, data and research firms, financial planners and advisors, broker-dealers, banks, credit unions, community development financial institutions and nonprofit associations.

Equities News caught up with influential members of US SIF at the organization’s recent Forum 2024 in Chicago.

Erin Gray, Vice President, Green Century

Tell us a little about yourself and your work.

At Green Century, we are an environmentally responsible and fossil fuel free mutual fund, one of the first one of its kind in the U.S. And we were started about over 30 years ago now by a group of environmental and public health nonprofit advocacy organizations.  Some nonprofits start a coffee shop as a revenue stream, this group started a mutual fund.

Our mission is to provide positive environmental impact through three mutual funds, through our shareholder advocacy program and through our unique ownership structure. When we make money, it goes to our nonprofit owners to do the good work that they’re doing to protect clean air and water, open spaces and wildlife

My role at Green Century is to do outreach to financial advisers to educate them about our space. What is ESG? What is sustainable investing? Why fossil fuel free investing might be a fit for their clients, and just build those relationships and hopefully educate them about us.

Can you give an example of how as a shareholder advocate your activities made a significant impact in a corporate decision?

We look at the most pressing environmental issues that we’re facing, and then see where companies can be a leverage point, and where can we make change on that particular issue. One issue in particular that has bubbled up recently is trying to stem plastic pollution and plastic waste. It’s estimated that 11 million metric tons of plastic waste enter our waterways each year. So it’s actually getting into the food system. 

So many companies across different industries use and work with plastic, and many have a packaging issue. And so we’ve worked with hotel chains trying to get them to stop the single use small bottles we’ve all seen in the hotel rooms, you know, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, to now use those big, big refillable containers that we have here at our conference, and this year, we worked with Choice Hotels, Marriott and Hilton to help implement that change.

What are you most excited about here at the 2024 US SIF Forum?

We have a lot of great speakers here. We just heard from Sean Casten, who is one of the two members of the Congressional Sustainable Investment Caucus, and he provided a really optimistic perspective about the outlook of some of the issues we’re facing, especially climate related.

He traveled recently, he saw some offshore wind projects happening in Northern Europe that he said are going to flood them with cheap energy to the point where the politicians and regulators are trying to decide, how do we keep out big energy users like cryptocurrency farms and things like that. That gives me hope that here in this country, we have a lot of states that have committed to 100% renewable energy in the next few decades, and they’re going to have to bring some of these projects on, like offshore wind, and we’ll try to find ways to finance that and do some really interesting things.

So these events always bring together my colleagues who are doing the good work, and it’s just very energizing to keep us all going.

What are  you looking forward to in the near future?

We are entering a new shareholder advocacy season, hearing about the engagements that my colleagues are going to be reaching out to companies. We’ve heard about companies not being as public with the good things that they’re doing, but we know that they’re happening, and so it’s always really exciting to just kind of get that feedback from them and learn the good incremental and large steps and policy changes that companies are implementing that have that real world on the ground. Impact for investors. 

Check out all the Impact Investing Influencers.