More Money & Meaning: Incorporating ESG into your Personal Portfolios

With Nidhi Chadda, Kristen O’Grady and Megahan Peterson

Discover how incorporating sustainability measures can improve your personal portfolio’s investment performance and lead to positive outcomes in the world.  

Many of us unknowingly support the very companies that aren’t practicing what we believe in and are inconsistent with our own personal core values.  What can we do about it? From large corporations and investment funds, to financial advisors and investors, we can all make slight changes to how we invest to both grow wealth and drive positive change in the world.  How you spend and invest your dollars matters. Now is the time where we have the ESG data and tools to invest in companies that care about all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

• How does a retail investor begin to think about aligning their values to their personal portfolios? Where do they start?
• What data shows that investors owning companies with better ESG profiles are likely to outperform over the long-term?
• Looking at the more recent performance of ESG funds to date, many believe that the skew towards owning technology stocks drives the outperformance. What is your observation?
• 2/3 of millennials believe their advisors should include ESG investments in their portfolios but only 1 out of 3 do so. Why the disconnect? Why aren’t financial advisors incorporating ESG into their advisory work to match this demand?
• How do you address the lack of transparency and consistency across ESG standards in your work? Will regulations requiring disclosure help address this roadblock?
• As ESG investing is becoming more popular, so are the investment options and fintech solutions for both individuals and financial advisors, How do we begin to evaluate these platforms? What should we look for? 
• AMAZON (AMZN): An example of how ESG plays out in a company's operations and financial viability 
• Measuring Impact: How does an investor know that their portfolio is really having a positive impact on the world?

Nidhi Chadda is a generalist growth investor and advisor across public and private markets. She is currently the Founder and CEO of Enzo Advisors LLC, a global sustainability consulting firm focused on helping companies build best-in-class sustainable business models within an ESG construct and works closely with institutional investors to codify and integrate ESG policies and frameworks across their investment processes.

Kristen O'Grady is a finance executive and entrepreneur, currently COO and Head of Product for Seeds (www.seedsinvestor.com), a fintech platform for financial advisors that aligns investor personal values and wealth. Prior to that, Kristen spent nearly 15 years at BlackRock and JPMorgan designing & launching investment products for wealth advisory and private bank clients.

Megahan Peterson is Director of Sustainability at Enzo Advisors LLC. She has been involved in sustainability and impact through management consulting, research and project management across the from private investors, companies, foundations and multi- and bi-lateral institutions for over 13 years.