Social Impact Archives | Haas News

Haas Postdoctoral Scholar Merrick Osborne to focus on racial equity in business

January 20, 2023| by Kim Girard

Merrick Robinson Osborne is the first postdoctoral scholar hired in a new Berkeley Haas program focused on racial equity in business. Osborne, who grew up in Portland, Ore., studies how organizations address (or don’t address) prejudice at work and how that impacts social hierarchy.

The new role was created through a $1 million gift from Allan Holt, MBA 76, in support of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) efforts at Haas, which include building a pipeline for new faculty who have a commitment to racial equity in business.

As a postdoctoral scholar, Osborne will research new ideas, collaborate with Haas faculty, and advise doctoral students,. He received a BA in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before earning a PhD at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in 2022.

Osborne recently discussed how his family influences his work, his research findings, and his future teaching plans with Haas News.

Who are some researchers who inspired you?

At the beginning of my PhD program, I was fascinated by a lot of the work by Haas Professors Cameron Anderson and Jenny Chatman, and I’m still very interested in their work. But I also hold interest in how other fields of study speak to the work that I want to do. Recently I read Audre Lorde’s book Sister Outsider, which was provocative because it spoke to the way I’ve been seeing diversity efforts develop. She says that “Black and third-world people are expected to educate white people about our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions”. I wanted to represent this in my field because I think it has a very practical application.

How do you see it applying?

There are a lot of social hierarchy-related questions in her book. How do white people see people of color explaining racism? How do these conversations that Audre Lorde describes lead to conflict? And how did that impact her status and power? I’m starting to see more intersections with my work outside of my own field, which is really exciting.

Your mom is an experienced social worker and therapist. Has she sparked any research ideas?

My mom, dad, and sister have all touched my research in different ways. My mom’s job as a licensed clinical social worker, and experienced therapist, is to dive under the surface and ask more about what her clients are experiencing. Part of what I want to do is understand the assumptions that we hold about the way our world operates and the way people operate together in the world. But I also want to challenge those assumptions. In talking with my mom, I get a sense for how I can start asking questions.

Merrick Osborne with his family in the woods — Merrick Osborne (left, at his sister’s commencement at Howard University) says his family helps inform his research.

My dad had a career in corporate America, where he was the first and only person of color. While rising to an executive position, he had to navigate a lot of issues that play out in the work that I am doing. He’ll say,”Oh, that actually relates to this experience that I had or that relates to something that I saw somebody else doing.” An important question is how to make the workplace a better place, especially for people who experience it as a dangerous place, or at least a mildly unsafe place.

An important question is how to make the workplace a better place, especially for people who experience it as a dangerous place, or at least a mildly unsafe place.

My sister’s interests have also shaped my research. She graduated from Howard University, an HBCU, before coming home to work in Portland. Very white spaces are not completely alien to either of us, and I think she has been comfortable moving back. But within that comfort, she does experience some discomfort. And a lot of discomfort that we share comes with being asked to do diversity work at work. Talking to her about her experiences has helped inspire and motivate me to develop research that speaks to her experiences, because I know she is not alone in having them.

What did you focus on during your PhD program?

My dissertation was on confronting prejudice at work, and what happens to a disadvantaged group member who witnesses an advantaged group member confront prejudice and then asks for that person’s input. There’s a lot of depth to it. For example, two men and a woman are in a room. One of the men says something problematic and sexist. The other man speaks up, but then asks for the woman’s input on what she experienced. I was curious about how one disadvantaged group member views these confrontations—when a man speaks up before the woman even has a chance to—and how that woman feels about being drawn into these spaces involuntarily.

At a broader level, when there is a display of prejudice at work, people look for insight about how to address that display effectively and increase inclusion. And oftentimes, they don’t know whom to turn to so they turn to people who they think are best suited for addressing prejudice, which are usually the people who are directly impacted by the prejudice display. I think that can be good, and that can be bad. It’s just important for us to really dissect what happens to the people whose input is sought, and the outcomes they experience.

What will you be working on at Haas in 2023?

A lot of my work now for the next month or two is going to be finishing up my work from USC. I do want to explore more with the folks here on how disadvantaged group members view diversity efforts more broadly. I’m excited to do that through avenues like the Culture Center that Jenny Chatman co-directs, but also through the research and teaching of Drew Jacoby-Senghor and Sa-kiera Hudson, who co-teach the new core course called Business Communication in Diverse Work Environments. I think it’s really important and nice to see the work that’s being done here up close and in person.

How do you feel about racial equity efforts at Haas, compared to other academic environments you’ve experienced?

Something I realized a couple of years ago is that the onus is on academia to make it clear that these are spaces where it’s safe for a marginalized person to operate in. What’s becoming increasingly challenging is learning how to signal that effectively. Part of what I hope for as a postdoc is that I can be a Black man who experiences success here. I want to show other people of color and marginalized people that they can come here and experience success and signal that to other schools too.

Something I realized a couple of years ago is that the onus is on academia to make it clear that these are spaces where it’s safe for a marginalized person to operate in.

Do you plan to teach?

I did an introduction to organizational behavior class for undergrads at USC. I enjoyed it, but I realized that I just wasn’t excited about it in the way that I wanted to be. That was in very large part because I felt like I wasn’t talking about things that really interested me. The MBA classes here include some really stimulating material both for the students and the professors who teach it. So I’m hoping that if I work hard enough, I can put myself in a position next year to teach.

Going Public

Fall 2022|By Carol Ghiglieri

Haas alumni take on civil leadership

Loren Taylor, MBA 05, always knew he’d pursue a public service role in his home city of Oakland, California. It was the very community—of family members, teachers, coaches, and scout leaders—that exposed him to ideas and opportunities that led to his degree in engineering followed by a Berkeley MBA.

“As a black man growing up in Oakland, in America, I could very easily have been on a different path,” he says. “Because of my trajectory and how it was impacted by this ecosystem of supports, it was always a given that I would take the blessings that I’ve gotten and translate that back to others.”

Two women talking at a picnic. — Laura-Parmer-Lohan MBA 96 (left), joined local politics in response to her sons’ discouragement about climate change and the government’s seeming inability to do anything about it.

But it was a matter of choosing the right time. He first spent two decades in the private sector as a biomedical engineer and a management consultant, developing strategies and opportunities for the healthcare, green energy, and telecom sectors. For the last four years, he’s been an Oakland city councilmember and this year ran for mayor among a field of 10 candidates. Despite losing an extremely close race and having to give up his seat on the city council, Taylor will continue working with the social impact consulting firm he launched in 2016 to help nonprofits and small businesses improve the lives of disadvantaged communities.

Public service, however, is not on everyone’s radar. Laura Parmer-Lohan, MBA 96, never imagined she’d run for political office. She was a successful marketing executive with her own consulting business. But the idea arose after her two teenage sons shared how discouraged they felt about climate change and the government’s seeming inability to do anything about it. Their disillusionment weighed on her.

“To have the next generation lacking confidence was deeply concerning to me,” says Parmer-Lohan. “My kids are my hope, and when I heard that they lacked hope, I wanted to figure out how I could lend my leadership skills to the community.” In 2017 she ran for and won a seat on the city council in her hometown of San Carlos, California. She’s since helped the city create a strong climate action plan with over 40 strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address the impacts of climate change.

The desire to find solutions to society’s biggest challenges is woven into the DNA of Haas alumni. And while most will leave their mark in the private sector, for some, public service offers an ideal way to go beyond themselves.

From private to public

For the Haas alumni interviewed for this article, the transition to civic leadership was relatively seamless. Many of the skills that make for success in business are just as essential in government.

Woman at a lectern talking. — Donna Colson, MBA 94,
has been a member of Burlingame’s city council since 2015. Her current assignments focus on her expertise in affordable housing, green energy
and sustainability, fiscal responsibility, pension management, and economic development.

Donna Colson, MBA 94, who was elected to Burlingame’s city council in 2015—and who was the city’s mayor in 2019—says she constantly calls on her business background, which includes real estate investment consulting, pension administration, and institutional investment management. In fact, much of what she does in city government relies on business school fundamentals.

“The ability to run through financial statements and read a balance sheet, to develop a budget, and to understand how pension funds work—just understanding the mechanics behind economic development, macroeconomics, microeconomics, accounting, and finance—these are things I use every day,” says Colson, who is also a member of the Haas School Board and a founding advisory council member for Haas’ Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership, which aims to reimagine business for an equitable and inclusive society. Her current city council assignments focus on her expertise in affordable housing, green energy and sustainability, fiscal responsibility, pension management, and economic development.

One of the first things Oakland’s Taylor says his business school training taught him was to consider optimal ways to allocate scarce resources. “And nowhere is the challenge of allocation of scarce resources more pronounced than in city government, where we have so many needs that are all high priority,” he says. Taylor recognizes that what’s good for communities is most often good for business, and vice versa, citing the problem of homelessness as one example. “When you have a business that’s trying to thrive but folks who are unhoused sleeping on the streets around it, that has a negative impact for the business.” Given this interconnectedness, he says, it’s in business leaders’ interests to look beyond the walls of their companies.

“Just understanding the mechanics behind economic development, macroeconomics, microeconomics, accounting, and finance—these are things I use every day.”

It’s also in cities’ interests to support their businesses. When the pandemic first hit and restaurants everywhere were suffering, Parmer-Lohan says it was up to the city to step in—and it did. San Carlos was one of the first on the peninsula to allow outdoor dining.

Man standing in front of a San Jose firetruck. — Charles “Chappie” Jones, MBA 90, served in local government for eight years, most recently as the vice-mayor of San Jose, California.

While a business background provides a good preparation for public life, Charles “Chappie” Jones, MBA 90, the vice-mayor of San Jose through 2022, emphasizes that the public and private sectors are not the same. “A lot of people from the private sector think they can come into the public sector and run it like a business and get good outcomes. But the two are totally different,” he says. “In the private sector, the goal is to either get market share or to make a profit and grow. But in the public sector, it’s all about delivering services to your community.” That requires a different decision-making process, he says.

Other ways to engage

At a time when democracy feels increasingly precarious, some people are feeling a new pull toward greater civic engagement. Taylor says he’s seen increased attendance at Oakland city council meetings. In part this has been aided by the pandemic, as meetings shifted from in-person to online. Still, he thinks the growing interest is real.

Attending city council meetings is just one of countless ways to become more civically engaged that don’t involve running for office. Taylor says the training and experiences acquired in business school and the corporate world can be applied at different scales and at varying levels of intensity and commitment. He suggests volunteering on a board or a commission or lending investment, finance, or technology skills in an area you’re passionate about. “Start having some coffee conversations with folks who are doing the work and see what opportunities there might be,” he says.

Colson did just that before being elected to the city council, serving on a county employees’ retirement association board, as a commissioner for the parks and recreation department, and on redevelopment committees. She advises subscribing to your city’s newsletter to learn about the multiple opportunities where you can apply your skill set. Colson also encourages people to get involved in campaigns. “Pick a person you like and help them run for office,” she says.

Small businesses can engage by getting involved in the chamber of commerce and business improvement districts and, of course, by sending volunteers or money to support particular efforts. Corporations can promote civic engagement by encouraging their employees to vote, giving them time off to do so, and even offering them paid time off for poll working. Some analysts suggest that good corporate citizenship is even good for the bottom line.

Choosing the right time

California’s newly re-elected Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, MBA 92, has made public service her legacy. Upon graduating from Haas, she moved to Sacramento and worked for the California Democratic Party before spending 18 years working for her family business. She then served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary in the Obama administration before becoming the first woman elected lieutenant governor in California. But she’s the first to recognize that not everyone will—or needs to—make public service a permanent career in order to make a valuable contribution. In a work life that may span four decades or more, a period of public service might constitute a single chapter, and for some, getting involved in civic leadership makes sense after they’ve pursued other passions. “There may come a time,” she says, “after you’ve accomplished certain things when you take a pause and ask, ‘Now, what will be meaningful to me?’ And at that point, mid-career or toward the end of your career, getting into service is a great option.”

Woman shaking a veteran's hand while three other veterans look on. — Eleni Kounalakis, MBA 92, was the first woman elected lieutenant governor in California. In March 2022 she became the first woman in California history to sign a bill into law when she served as acting governor while Governor Gavin Newsom was out of the state. The legislation extended eviction protections.

Vice-Mayor Jones first considered going into public service as an undergraduate, when his role models were big-city mayors and politicians like Willie Brown, Andrew Young, and Maynard Jackson. But more than 20 years passed before he acted on the desire. And now, after eight years in office, he’s decided to leave city government. He says there are many reasons for his decision but among them is the growing polarization and rancor he sees on a daily basis, which, he admits, take their toll. Yet he’s leaving office with no regrets. “I left the private sector, did my public service, and now it’s time to go to the next chapter of my life,” he says. “I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to serve and make a difference.”

Berkeley Haas Dean Ann Harrison on her days as a globetrotting development economist and her new book

November 23, 2022| by Laura Counts

Dean Ann Harrison
(Photo: Copyright Noah Berger / 2018)

As a young economist, Dean Ann Harrison traveled the globe for the World Bank, lugging home reels of magnetic tape from mainframe computers that she gathered from census bureaus in developing countries. She poured over the data she collected, asking questions like: Does freer trade and globalization help or harm workers? Do wealthy multinational corporations help local economies by raising wages, or is it the reverse, and do they exploit cheap labor?

The academic work she produced, as a faculty member at Columbia University, Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, propelled her to become one of the foremost scholars in trade and development economics. She is now the world’s most highly cited scholar on foreign direct investment.

In 2019, Harrison took on a more public role with her appointment as dean of the Haas School, adding a new dimension to a career of serious scholarship that also included serving as director of development policy for the World Bank.

A new book, “Globalization, Firms, and Workers” (World Scientific Books 2022), collects Harrison’s path-breaking work on globalization, trade, and foreign direct investment into a single volume.

We sat down with Dean Harrison to hear more about her work.

Haas News: In the introduction to your new book, editors Keith Maskus and Jed Silver note that your work “shone a light on workers who were not the focus of academic studies in the past, including those in sweatshop industries or multinational firms that were pursuing low-cost labor around the world.” Tell us the backstory of how you came to this work.

Ann Harrison: I was always interested in international issues because I came from an international family. My father was American, my mother was French; I was born in France and French was my first language, and we always went back and forth between France and the U.S. As an undergraduate at Berkeley, I started off as a history major and I became fascinated by questions like: Why are some countries rich and other countries poor? Being a Berkeley undergraduate you naturally gravitate towards these kinds of questions. And then I became interested in the economics of these inequalities, and what we can do about them. By the time I graduated, my goal was to eliminate world poverty. I cold-called the World Bank, since that was their mission, and they told me the most effective thing I could do was to become an economist. So I got my PhD in economics and I started working at the World Bank.

You were working in developing countries at a time when data wasn’t all that accessible. How were you able to gather your data?

In the early- to mid-eighties when I started doing this research, you had to go to Washington and sit in Census Bureau offices to get national data. But as a World Bank staff member, we had more access to emerging market company data. The World Bank lends billions of dollars a year to emerging markets and we would go to countries to help them devise their policies. We supported them in their analysis, and they supported us in our research and data collection. That put me in a position where I was able to get access to census data sets that in the U.S. nobody had access to.

First I went to Caracas and visited their census bureau. I signed documents saying I wouldn’t release their data and they handed me reels of tape from mainframe computers. In some countries, the data sets weren’t so big, so I could get them on floppy disks. Later, they started making PCs, but they were really big and heavy, and I had to get on planes with these heavy computers. I would carry everything back to Washington and the technical people would help me figure out how to read the data. We worked on it for months and even years. I still have some of those tapes— in my basement and I might even have some in the storage closet in the bathroom of the Dean’s Suite.

How many countries did you visit for your research?

I don’t have a tally, but some of the places I went to are Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Morocco, Pakistan, India, Argentina, Chile, and Jamaica. I spent my 30th birthday in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines—that was nice. I’m sure there are more.

What’s your dinner party answer when people ask you, as a trade economist, has globalization left us better off or worse off?

Economists usually just add up all the winners and subtract out the losers and if the answer is greater than zero, then globalization is good for you. And I think it is true that, on net, it’s been good for a lot of countries. It’s been good for China, which is much richer than it was before. It’s generally been good for the U.S. in terms of access to cheaper goods and more efficient supply chains and opportunities to buy and sell things that we couldn’t have done before. But it hasn’t been good for everyone.

The big mistake economists made is that they underestimated how difficult it would be to compensate those who lost out from increasing global competition. The benefits of globalization hinge on us being able to use the gains to help those who are hurt. But that part of the policy package was not well executed. What could have been good for everybody just ended up benefiting parts of society and hurting others.

The term “globalization” has become a dirty word, synonymous with the loss of the working class, erosion of manufacturing jobs, and rising inequality. Right now we’re seeing a rise of right-wing populist leaders—such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni—lashing out at globalization, gaining support from workers who feel left behind. How much can we blame the decline of manufacturing and good working-class jobs on globalization?

Technology and automation are replacing people beyond manufacturing—think Amazon fulfillment centers. If you’re educated, you’re doing pretty well, but if you don’t have a college education, you’re doing worse and worse. That inequality is largely being driven by automation. There’s no question that trade did play a role in undermining manufacturing wages. The pain is real. But I found that automation played a much bigger role. We know that’s true because even in China the percentage of workers engaged in manufacturing is declining and people are being replaced by machines. I would say about 75% of the decline is from automation and technology and 25% is from globalization.

You had a counterintuitive finding in one of your papers about Mexico. The assumption was that free trade would benefit workers in Mexico, but it was only the most skilled workers who benefitted while low-skilled workers lost out.

Yes, that’s right, because in order to benefit from globalization you need a lot of knowledge, skill and education. What happened is that Mexico’s unskilled workers were undercut by even lower-wage workers elsewhere in the world. It was a race to the very bottom.

It’s a really interesting case because Mexico put a lot of weight on going global. The leaders really believed that globalization was going to make them richer. The jury is still out.

What are some of your other surprising findings?

Here’s one that is surprising—at least to proponents of globalization. When multinational firms went into a country like Venezuela, the multinationals took away significant market share of the local companies. It may sound obvious, but a lot of governments still welcome investment by foreign firms because they think it will make them better off. What some of my research showed is that this market-stealing effect could be really big and it could hurt you.

The Chinese government figured this out a long time ago. They decided to only let in foreign firms if they partnered with domestic companies. And then eventually policy makers phased out all the benefits that they accorded to the foreign firms. Today foreign companies get no benefits at all in China. So while China understood this from the beginning, a lot of other countries, including the U.S., provided all these benefits like tax subsidies to incoming multinational firms. We thought about the benefits of investment but we didn’t think about the costs in terms of the foregone market share for domestic firms.

You also studied sweatshops.

I did a series of papers on the anti-sweatshop movement. The question was: If you target global companies that set up “sweatshops” and shut them down, what happens to the workers? Are they better off, and is it possible to get to a win-win outcome? What my research showed is that a win-win is possible if you encourage the companies that are already making huge profits to share more of those profits with the workers. But if you force companies that are barely profitable to share more of the meager profits they have, they might go under and workers will lose their jobs.

Another unusual finding looks at what happens when you get rid of special protection for very small firms. In India, 80% of workers work in really small enterprises, and intuitively you would think that removing protection for those firms would not be good for employment, wages, and investment. But it turns out that removing protections was really good for employment and wages because the government had been protecting firms that were so small that they wouldn’t ever get to economically efficient sizes. There wasn’t enough employment growth, wages weren’t high enough, productivity was low. When these laws, called small scale reservation policies, were phased out, wages and employment overall grew.

That was a form of industrial policy, which is another area you’ve studied closely. What is your overall conclusion about industrial policy?

I think there are good kinds of industrial policy and there are bad kinds. You don’t want to promote declining industries. You want to promote the emerging growth areas that are going to create a lot of great jobs tomorrow. What China has shown is that if you systematically promote advanced industries, you can move much more quickly. And so what China has done is given a lot of sectors an artificial advantage. China is not trying to prevent its steel industry from going under. They’re thinking about what are going to be the leading sectors tomorrow and trying to get a leg up there.

You’ve managed a rare career combining serious academic scholarship with public service and leadership. How has your academic work influenced your leadership as dean?

Great question. It has turned out that my three top priorities, innovation, sustainability and inclusion—which I refer to it as my ISI agenda—are the very things I focused on in my research. I don’t think it’s by accident. A lot of the research that I did over the decades was about what happens to people’s livelihoods when they’re exposed to trade and globalization. Who’s helped and who’s hurt? So I’ve always been interested in this question of inclusion and that’s something I’ve brought to my role as dean by prioritizing DEIBJ.

My long fascination with companies is based on questions such as how to identify the companies that are successful, and how to measure innovation at the company level. How do you create something better? So this focus on innovation and the creation of new companies or better ways of doing things is something that I’ve brought to my role as dean.

Right now I am really prioritizing sustainability. When you travel, you see first-hand the huge environmental issues that we’re facing. Access to clean water and access to clean air are fundamental challenges that countries face. Earlier in my career, I became a professor at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources in Agricultural and Resource Economics. And before I became Dean, the last project I worked on looked at how you make environmental policies effective in emerging markets where compliance and enforcement are big challenges. I became interested in green industrial policy, which is industrial policy focused on sustainability and environmental economics. And then when I moved back to California, the first things I noticed were wildfires, drought, blackouts. That just reinforced the importance of sustainable policies. I’ve really taken all that research and background and I’ve used it here as Dean. I’ve gone back to my old contacts at the World Bank and the College of Natural Resources, and we’re partnering with them, and we are building sustainability into our core curriculum so that every Haas graduate can lead in this area.

You’ve talked a little bit about some of the mistakes that were made with globalization, and we’re now in a period of even greater inequality. Do you see any hope of reversing that?

That’s one of the reasons I took this job. I think public education is the solution. That’s the hope. We’re sitting on top of part of the solution right here.

Dean’s Speaker Series: Alex Budak on how anyone can become a changemaker

September 15, 2022| by Kim Girard

After Berkeley Haas professional faculty member Alex Budak created and launched his course “Becoming a Changemaker” in 2019, it quickly grew to be one of the most popular electives for both undergraduate and MBA students.

Now Budak has published a book of the same name, which he kicked off at the second Dean’s Speaker Series talk of the year.

Erika Walker, senior assistant dean of instruction, introduced Budak and described the book as “very Haas.” It also connects closely with the school’s Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always and Beyond Yourself.

“Students will share that the Becoming a Changemaker class was life-changing, even transformational, and that they were surprised that such a course as this was offered in business education,” she said. “It ultimately reframed the way students approached their own leadership journeys.”

Before Budak began teaching the class, he had to undergo his own changemaker journey. He recounted a “single, serendipitous” meeting with Jay Stowsky, then the senior assistant dean of instruction, about career advice.

“He said, ‘Alex what do you really want to do?'” Budak recalled. “I said, ‘Well, what I really want to do is teach,’ and then made some excuses for why I couldn’t possibly teach. But to my shock and delight he said, ‘All right, what do you want to teach?’ And in that moment, it became crystal clear. I said, ‘I want to teach ‘Becoming a Changemaker.'”

Stowsky told Budak to put together a syllabus. “I remember literally leaping out of my seat, so elated that someone else saw this potential in this class and this vision,” he said.

Budak then welcomed alumni Shannon Eliot, MBA 20, Angelica Song, BS 20, and Alicia Wilson, BS 23, (Ibrahim Baldé, BS 20, participated via video), for a panel discussion on their journeys to becoming changemakers.

Watch the full video here:

How should ESG investing be regulated? Q&A with Prof. Panos Patatoukas (Part 2)

July 1, 2022| by Laura Counts

In Part 2 of this two-part interview, Assoc. Professor Panos Patatoukas shares insights on the SEC’s new rules around the marketing of investment products marketed as socially responsible, as well as disclosure rules around companies’ ESG (environmental, social, and governance) activities. The interview also covers ESG valuation and investing, as well as divestment versus engagement—two different investor approaches to pressuring

The interview follows the Center for Financial Reporting and Management’s (CFRM) annual conference, which brought together high-level ESG investing thinkers with a wide range of perspectives on the direction of the industry. Among them were SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, a Republican appointed by former President Trump; Janine Guillot, CEO of the Value Reporting Foundation and former CEO of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), which has developed the leading framework for ESG data; Andrew Behar, CEO of shareholder advocacy nonprofit As You Sow, AJ Lindeman, who leads index and ESG quant research at Bloomberg; Karen Wong, who leads ESG & Sustainable Investing for State Street Global Advisors; and Wall Street Journal Senior Columnist James Mackintosh, an ESG investing skeptic.

Read Part 1 of the interview here.

Haas News: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering a host of new ESG disclosure rules. What will they do?

Panos Patatoukas: There are two new policy proposals (both released in May 2022) that would require additional disclosure regarding ESG strategies in fund prospectuses, annual reports, and adviser brochures. The SEC also proposed amendments to what’s called the fund names rule. Under the proposal, a fund that considers ESG factors alongside non-ESG factors may not be permitted to use ESG or similar terminology in its name, if doing so is materially deceptive or misleading. The idea behind these amendments is to prevent potential greenwashing or ESG lip-servicing, so that Main Street investors will not be deceived or misled.

At the conference, we heard from SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce argued that existing rules already allow the SEC to go after companies for any misrepresentations or omissions of “material” information? Do you agree?

I think it was important to have her perspective. Our conversation with Commissioner Peirce indicated that she is opposed to the rules not because she doesn’t think that greenwashing isn’t happening, but because she thinks we already have the regulatory tools to address it.

One good example of what she is talking about: The SEC recently fined Bank of New York Mellon Capital $1.5 million for misleading investors on false ESG quality reviews of some of the firm’s mutual funds. Of course, the $1.5 million fine is just a slap on the wrist, but it’s a signal that says the SEC can go after fund managers who make ESG claims but aren’t true to their promises. Consistent with the idea that the Bank of New York Mellon Capital case may provide a roadmap for future enforcement cases, the SEC has now taken on a much bigger player, looking into whether some of Goldman Sachs’ mutual funds don’t meet the ESG metrics proclaimed in their marketing materials.

If you scratch the surface of Commissioner Peirce’s argument, we get to the old question of: What’s the point of having rules and more rules if we don’t have sufficient enforcement? Should we allocate more resources creating new rules, or should we allocate those resources on enforcing existing rules—to the extent that the old rules are still relevant and effective?

My view is that the recent SEC proposals on funds and advisers that market themselves as having an ESG focus respond to the need for more transparency. More regulation in this regard might actually facilitate more enforcement. The bottom line is that unless we have both meaningful regulation and enforcement, we’re not going to achieve real progress.

But will these new disclosure rules actually make it easier for investors to, as you say, invest with their values?

In the absence of standardized and informative disclosures, in my opinion, it’s not entirely surprising that an ESG fund could exaggerate its actual consideration of ESG factors. If adopted, the proposed rules would require ESG-focused funds to provide more detailed information in a standardized tabular format. By providing information prominently, in the same location in each fund’s prospectus, the idea is that more disclosure would help improve investors’ understanding of ESG investment strategies and would assist them in comparing ESG-focused funds at a glance. The SEC also proposed amendments to existing rules to address materially deceptive or misleading ESG fund names. This new regulation basically says that fund managers who make ESG claims better be true to their promises. Because if not, that’s the definition of greenwashing.

I believe that a common, standardized disclosure framework tailored to ESG investing makes sense. So overall, I am in favor of providing more standardized disclosures about fund performance, investment strategies,and portfolio characteristics.

But we need to be careful. More disclosure will not automatically level the playing field for individual investors allowing them to make more informed decisions while investing in alignment with their values. If investors don’t have the financial acumen to process the disclosed information, then disclosure on its own may not be as impactful. Remember, while we are all investors, not everyone can access financial education. One of the things that preoccupies me is finding ways to make financial education and the power of financial data more accessible to everyone.

Critics of ESG investing say that it limits the universe of available stocks, which will negatively impact performance. You asked some of the panelists: “Can investors have their ESG cake and eat it too?” Can they do well by doing good?

I asked that question to the representatives from State Street and Bloomberg. State Street has been a leader in the ESG investment sector. They have all kinds of financial products, including scoring models, indices, and fund offerings using ESG data. For example, a key premise of State Street’s “Responsibility-Factor”—or “R-Factor”—scoring model is that it allows investors to identify companies that score higher on material ESG metrics. State Street’s R-Factor is also the ESG scoring model powering the Bloomberg/SASB ESG indices, which are used as ESG investing benchmarks.

My question was whether outperformance, relative to passive benchmarks, is a good measure of the effectiveness of State Street’s ESG scoring model. The response was ideally yes, but in practice, it doesn’t usually work that way and that a better measure of effectiveness might be “do no harm.” In other words, just make sure you don’t underperform the market benchmark, but without necessarily outperforming the benchmark.

This response in my opinion deviates from the way ESG scoring models have been marketed to everyday investors. ESG scoring models have often been promoted on the premise that the resulting ESG scores can help investors select stocks that will generate higher future returns.

In fact, the premise that you can “have the ESG cake and eat it too” has proven to be a highly effective narrative for the marketing of ESG funds and indices. Reflecting on these dynamics, I believe that there is a need for caution and more transparency on the part of ESG index providers and fund managers when marketing ESG scoring models and indices to everyday investors.

One of the most interesting discussions of the day centered on ESG strategies of engagement versus divestment. Let’s say we have good data to identify “brown” companies. Does removing them from a portfolio drive change?

The issue of engagement versus divestment is one of the most important, because I think that’s the one that can have immediate, real implications. The goal of ESG investing is not just to make money for ESG-motivated investors but also to change companies’ behavior through engagement and divestment. For example, divestment involves selling fossil fuel companies that have negative environmental impacts and buying “green” companies in other sectors. The idea behind divestment is that it raises the cost of capital for fossil fuel companies, thereby impeding their growth, while helping green companies grow. Based on this, several ESG-motivated investors have called for complete divestment from the fossil fuel sector.

For example, the University of California made the decision to remove all companies that own fossil fuel reserves from the UC Retirement Savings Program (RSP) fund. As of today (June 30, 2022), they sold existing holdings from RSP core funds and will no longer invest in fossil fuel companies.

The UC retirement fund is a relatively small fraction of the total market, and when UC RSP sold stocks of fossil fuel companies, somebody else bought that stock. Nevertheless, it does raise the question: Will divesting from fossil fuel companies accelerate the path to decarbonization of the economy? Where will the technology that will change our lives come from? Will it come from an entirely different sector, or could it also come from leading companies in this sector?

Outright divesting should be contrasted to an alternative approach, let’s call it selective divesting. Consider the fossil fuel sector as a whole. Within the sector, there are leading companies that are innovating, investing in new technologies, and there are lagging companies that are falling behind and continuing their dirty practices. Divesting from all of them is one possibility. An alternative would be to divest only from the laggards and reallocate this capital to the leaders. This approach of selective divesting and tilting may be desirable for an ESG-motivated investor because (a) it would reward companies that invest in transformative technologies and (b) it would penalize companies that do not adopt. This approach effectively blends divestment with engagement. The bottom line: Is indiscriminate divestment from fossil fuel the best way to accelerate progress or is the alternative approach of selective divesting and rewarding change a more effective approach to realizing our sustainability goals?

Wall Street Journal columnist James Mackintosh argued an investor’s role is to make a return within an acceptable level of risk, not push for change. He said it’s more effective to push change at companies through consumer actions, through buying power, or through government. What do you think?

Consumers and investors can be a force for change. ESG-motivated investors are asking for more transparency and verifiable data that they can use to make more informed investment decisions. Consumers are also asking for more transparency, and more reliable, verifiable and standardized data to inform their consumption choices. I believe that change could come from anywhere.

With respect to lawmakers, I agree that they have the power to drive change. For example, as many economists have been arguing for years, introducing a carbon tax in the corporate tax code would effectively change the incentives and behavior of companies by internalizing the negative externalities of carbon emissions. But still, measurement issues may hamper the effectiveness. Suppose we introduce a carbon tax, we still need to measure carbon emissions. Should the measure of carbon emissions include only direct emissions and emissions resulting from the company’s energy use—known as Scope 1 and 2 emissions? Or, should the measure also include Scope 3 emissions, those resulting from activities that the organization indirectly impacts in its value chain? While Scope 3 emissions often account for the biggest part of a company’s emissions, they are also the hardest to measure.

What are you most optimistic about right now in terms of ESG investing?

I think over time, we will have more transparency and more tools that will allow everyday investors to invest with their values and to be more aware of what they’re investing in. And we’re going to have more and better data that will allow us to overcome the measurement challenges, monitor corporate impact, align management incentives with long-term sustainability goals, and facilitate the allocation of capital in ideas and technologies that will drive change for good.

I also think we’ll have the technology required for individual investors to be more active participants in corporate decision-making. For example, I think it’s a matter of time before pass-through voting becomes available to every individual investor. A bit of context: Many of us individual investors participate in the stock market through index funds offered by large asset managers. Stock indexing has enabled us to get access to diversified portfolios at a low cost. The Big 3 asset managers—Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street—dominate the field, with a collective >80% share of index fund assets. The Big 3 alone manage $20 trillion in assets.

One key implication of the growth in stock indexing among the largest asset managers is the voting power they have amassed over time, since they typically vote on behalf of individual investors. Giving every individual investor the option to participate in the proxy voting process can help them amplify their impact collectively on the issues that matter to them the most. This is an exciting prospect compared to today’s reality where a small set of individuals representing the top asset managers gets to decide on our behalf.

It’s about time to ensure that the voices of everyday investors are being heard.

Q&A: Jude Watson, MBA 23, a chef-turned-social entrepreneur, on building empathy for transgender community

June 1, 2022| by Kim Girard

portrait of Jude Watson in a chef's coat — Jude Watson, MBA 23, worked as a chef before founding Cooks for Black Lives Matter.

Haas Voices is a series that highlights the lived experiences of members of the Berkeley Haas community.

Jude Watson, MBA 23, never intended to become a social entrepreneur. But that was before Watson successfully founded Seattle-based Cooks for Black Lives Matter. Watson, who for years worked as a chef, raised $100,000 by selling CSA (community-supported agriculture) food boxes of gourmet treats donated by cooks, restaurants, and farmers to support Black-led community organizers. We interviewed Watson about the power of community organizing, and their experiences as MBA Association student body president and as a transgender student at Haas. (Jude uses the pronouns they/them/theirs)

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Seattle on Capitol Hill, which is the gayborhood of Seattle. My mom’s a hair stylist and my dad does a lot of climate justice work. I had a very socially motivated family and that shaped a lot of how I grew up. I felt very connected to the community in a lot of ways because both my parents are firmly rooted in Seattle and very present in our community.

Did you become politically active at a young age?

Yes, at age 16. When I realized I was queer, and especially when I realized I was gender expansive, I got very involved with local queer youth organizing. There was this amazing group of queer young people who were trying to start a community center for ourselves. A lot of LGBTQ spaces tend to be bars, so there aren’t many inclusive places for young queer people. We founded the first youth-led LGBTQ community center in Seattle with large grants from the City of Seattle and the Point Foundation. That period of my life was a mind-blowing crash course in community organizing. I also met and was mentored by trans adults for the first time, which was very meaningful and helped me imagine a future for myself.

Sounds like that was a very open and formative environment.

Definitely. I learned so much about social justice issues, especially around race, class, and disability. We were a diverse crew and it was a very energizing organizing community to be a part of. While doing that organizing, I graduated from high school when I was 16, and did an early entrance program at the University of Washington, where I made my own major in the History of Social Movements by pulling together classes in history, ethnic studies, women and gender studies. It was a great way to learn how social changes happens over time in different social contexts, and informed my work with Queer Youth Space.

Jude Watson with friend wearing triangle t-shirts in support of activism in Seattle — As a teen, Watson helped found the first youth-led LGBTQ community center in Seattle.

What did you see yourself doing after graduation?

I saw myself doing social work and community organizing with young people, which I pursued for a couple years after I graduated. But I also craved more creative work, so at age 22 I took a very abrupt left turn to pursue a career as a chef. I left my job working with young people and got a job as a restaurant prep cook, and then worked my way up to a chef-level position for the next seven years. I even spent a summer learning traditional butchery in Italy from a third-generation pig farmer, which was mind blowing.

Jude Watson learning to make sausage in a kitchen in Italy with a local butcher — Watson learned to make sausage in Italy from a third-generation pig farmer.

What made you leave cooking?

Although I loved my career in kitchens in many ways, it was also an incredibly intense experience that I have a lot of ambivalence about. There are parts of my job that were life affirming and beautiful, and there were parts about it that were horrifying: toxic people, sexual harassment, gnarly injuries, constant violations of labor laws. At some point I was deeply burned out and knew, “It is not healthy for me to keep doing this.” But I still deeply love cooking. I’ve done some elaborate dinner parties for fellow Haasies.

So how did you end up in business school?

Seattle was the first city that got COVID in the U.S., so we shut down our restaurants before everyone else did. At that point, I turned back into community organizing and founded the social enterprise Cooks for Black Lives Matter, which has raised over $100,000 for local Black-led community organizing. Although at the time I just felt like I was doing something to be useful during such a dark time, I eventually realized, “Oh, I’m an entrepreneur now. I’m genuinely good at this,” and I wanted to build up those skills more. I contemplated a master’s in social work or public policy, but I thought it would be a bigger stretch for me to learn more about business.

Are you happy with that choice?

I’m so glad to be at Haas. It’s unbelievable the amount of opportunities that exist in business school. You have access to so much, which is often unbelievable to me coming from the service industry where you’re always given the bare minimum. One of my best experiences at Haas was in Lean LaunchPad last semester, where I was on the team with MBA student Carlson Giddings, helping her start a sweet potato flour company. I did all the recipe development for our team, and learned so much about the entrepreneurship side of the food CPG industry from entrepreneurship experts with decades of experience. During that class, I got to make a short video about our project and get editing help from Ralph Guggenheim, one of the co-producers of Toy Story and a mentor in the class. That’s one of those opportunities that, if I wasn’t at Haas, I would never in a million years have had access to.

Jude Watson in kitchen making waffles — Watson and classmate Alex Angarita making waffles using sweet potato flour developed by Carlson Giddings, MBA 23.

You’re an active student leader at Haas. What’s that been like?

Although I would love to find out that I’m wrong about this, I believe I’m the first ever out transgender person to be the student president of an MBA program. It’s been a huge priority for me to have more conversations about trans identity at Haas. Via Abolencia, MBA/MPH 23, is one of my best friends, a fellow non-binary student here, and a co-president of [email protected] Together, we ran an event called Trans Futures, featuring a panel of trans advocates from public health, consulting, and community organizing, which was such a moving experience. The vast majority of the time, I’m the only trans person in the room at school and at work, which is a fairly exhausting experience. To create a trans-led space at Haas was good for my heart. It’s powerful for my classmates, most of whom have never seen eight trans people together before in their lives, to get to listen to these incredible activists reflect together on their work and their lives. That is by far the event I’m most proud of running at Haas.

Any suggestions for how our community members can be better allies to the trans community?

Overall, I would say read trans authors and watch media made by trans people, because I think what many people are lacking is empathy for our life experience. Follow some trans people on social media, and in general gain a more casual familiarity with the language we use and the struggles and successes a lot of us share. We’re not a huge percentage of the population, (although the number of people that identify as gender expansive is growing as more people feel comfortable coming out), so cis people need to put in more effort themselves to build their familiarity and comfort with trans people.

Angelo Ignacio, EMBA 22, on pursuing mission-driven work

May 24, 2022| by Natasha Payés

Haas Voices is a first-person series that highlights the lived experiences of members of the Berkeley Haas community. In honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we spoke with Angelo Ignacio, EMBA 22, an email marketing manager at 23andMe, who’s committed to mission-driven work. He shares his story below.

Filipino American male with short black hair wearing a striped sweater — Angelo Ignacio, EMBA 22

Social impact work and storytelling have been at the heart of everything that I do. As a marketing major at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit private college in Los Angeles, I envisioned working at a big advertising agency after college. But the 2008 recession forced me to shift gears and be open to other possibilities. It was a sobering moment for me because I learned that life doesn’t always go the way you plan, but if you approach life with a half-glass full mentality—something that I inherited from my parents—you can overcome anything. The recession, in my view, was a shortcut to finding my purpose and pursuing a mission-driven career.

After college I joined Invisible Children, a nonprofit humanitarian organization whose mission is to stop the use of child soldiers and reunite children with their families. That work opened my eyes to the impact of storytelling and marketing to get people to rally for a good cause.

One of the projects that I worked on was building a marketing campaign to raise funds that were then used to charter helicopters. The helicopters would fly over Kiliwa in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nzako in Central African Republic, drop compostable flyers with directions to safe zones, and use loudspeakers to play recorded messages from parents whose children had been abducted. To see this project come to life and help children flee their captors was incredible. Seeing actual cell phone footage of reunited families from our partners on the ground was one of the proudest moments of my life. I went on to work at other nonprofits including World Vision, and Seattle Children’s Hospital.

While I found working in the nonprofit sector incredibly rewarding, I realized that the nonprofit world could benefit from having more leaders with business backgrounds—leaders who push for operational efficiency and consumer-driven segment marketing campaigns. These are big stretches for even large companies like World Vision, but they are necessary steps for growth and sustainability. I felt like if I was going to continue on in this career field, I needed to bring a business skillset to the nonprofit world.

While I found working in the nonprofit sector incredibly rewarding, I realized that the nonprofit world could benefit from having more leaders with business backgrounds.

Just like in 2008, I found myself grappling with a world filled with uncertainty in 2020. Despite the challenges brought on by the global pandemic, I decided to enroll at Haas because I believed that there was no better time to go to business school. The world was changing rapidly and I figured if I waited any longer, I wouldn’t be able to learn in an environment where things were happening in real time.

Since coming to Haas, I’ve taken classes that have shaped me into the business leader that I want to become. One class that has left the biggest impact on me is Executive Leadership taught by Harris Sondack. At the heart of this class is figuring out who you want to be and the kind of leader you want to be. Lecturer Sondak asks ethical and philosophical questions that truly make your brain hurt, but in a good way.

Since coming to Haas, I’ve taken classes that have shaped me into the business leader that I want to become.

Another invaluable class that has left a profound impact is Leadership Communications taught by Lecturer Mark Rittenberg. This course focuses on how to effectively tell your personal story, how to show up and be present for others, and how to lead teams and organizations. The biggest takeaway from that course was learning and proudly accepting that I’m also a storyteller. I don’t have to choose between being a business leader and a storyteller, I can be both at the same time.

I now have a new outlook on my career path. I’ve realized that I don’t need to remain in the nonprofit world to positively create change, but I do know that whatever I decide to do, it has to connect back to impact and mission-driven work.

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