(Illustration by lankogal)
In a year riven by protests for social and racial justice, financier Rachel Robasciotti wondered how her work in the financial sector could help communities in need.
As founder and chief executive officer of Robasciotti & Philipson, a wealth management firm in San Francisco, Robasciotti observed how investors were often inadvertently supporting companies with harmful practices that exacerbated social and economic inequities. She decided that something had to be done to address this problem and urge investors to value social justice in their investments.
In 2020, she established Adasina Social Capital, as a sister company of Robasciotti & Philipson, to give people the opportunity to invest in social good. “We’re serving as a bridge between social justice movements and the financial markets,” Robasciotti explains. “If you’re going to make systemic change, you’re going to be required to have impact that extends well beyond your own portfolio and outside traditional power structures.”
For people who are looking to invest responsibly but are unsure about how to begin, Adasina has established the Adasina Social Justice Index, which informs investors about opportunities in four areas: racial justice, gender justice, economic justice, and climate justice. The index consists of a database that identifies types of restorative and regenerative investing in companies that prioritize these areas. Such investing elevates returns that build community wealth and assets along with individual wealth.
Because the breadth of social issues available for investors to consider is vast, Adasina has streamlined diversification with its exchange-traded fund, the Adasina Social Justice All Cap Global ETF, a highly diversified, global portfolio that enables investors to align their portfolios with social justice values.
Adasina also has a team of expert advisors who are connected to these four areas of justice and to underrepresented communities. The firm is staffed entirely by women, people of color, and members of the LGBT community. “As a queer, nonbinary person in finance, I find that working at Adasina actually feels like home,” Director of Investor Services Rachel Freeman says. “Being in an environment that centers women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ communities allows me to live my values in our work.”
With a committed staff whose personal lives and values align with the firm’s mission, Adasina has attracted a client base that is more than 80 percent women and more than 70 percent LGBT.
Investments make up one of Adasina’s four interlocking levers for creating social change; the other three are campaigns, education, and people. The template for its theory of change is deceptively simple: draw on community needs and values, link them to investors and investments, and utilize staff members’ experience and expertise in social justice work, specifically by leveraging their networks.
Adasina seeks to make investors agents of change in the fight for social and environmental justice. In December, for example, Adasina led investors representing more than a half-trillion dollars in assets in calling for an end to poverty wages. In a letter addressed to dozens of publicly traded companies in the restaurant and hospitality industry, they wrote that “companies put their brand reputation at risk by continuing to pay a sub-minimum wage that impoverishes workers from already vulnerable communities.” Adasina’s letter was signed by about 70 organizations, such as the investment and wealth management firms Reinventure Capital, Harrington Investments, and Zevin Asset Management.
Adasina has also focused on gender discrimination in the workplace. When the #MeToo movement took off in 2017, Robasciotti says, the requests for portfolios focused on improving the social and economic lives of girls and women shifted into high gear. A toxic secret in the investment world was how women were forced into arbitration for sexual harassment cases. Adasina doubted whether people wanted to invest in these companies.
“The core issue here is serial sexual harassment in the workplace and the policies that allow that to continue,” Robasciotti says. “Forced arbitration has been shown to favor employers over harassment survivors, and it silences the victims, which creates this culture of acceptance of sexual harassment in the workplace.” Adasina investigates a company’s policies on sexual harassment and workplace safety, and if the company practices forced arbitration, it is not accepted into Adasina’s portfolio.
These are just two issue areas in which Adasina has leveraged its power to create a greater awareness about social problems to investors. For Robasciotti, the pathway forward is clear: “Adasina’s mission is not only to continue investing in alignment with the needs of impacted communities, but to transform the system such that this becomes the standard approach for impact investing.”
Read more stories by Victoria Brownworth.