Speaker 1 00:00
Alex, welcome to swimming with alligators, the VC podcast from the LP perspective, with

Alexa Binns 00:09
Can we just hear from each of you, what was the inspiration for creating your firm, what was sort of the insight that this needed to exist in the world?

Lisa Richter 00:34
I’ll just say that I had spent 20 years at a national social enterprise and community development financial institution known as shore bank. Many people may have heard of it, and on the south side of Chicago, I had left there in 2006 to create a small investment advisory boutique that was focused on helping people learn how to use what came to be called Impact investing. Because what I saw during my time at Shore Bank, which wrapped up in 2006 is that more and more people were interested in using investment as a tool to drive change, including in institutions that are mission driven, like foundations, but they did not necessarily have the skill set for that. So I created a small boutique to provide guidance to institutional investors, and just was so lucky to be hired by the California Endowment at the exact same moment that they hired Tina to to lead their creation of such a unit within the foundation. So we had the pleasure and privilege of working together while Tina was at the California Endowment for five years, and she can talk about what it was that she was able to do there. But, you know, I had already been a consultant in a sort of a national marketplace, even with a small boutique. And I think I won’t speak for Tina and her thoughts about why there came a time to go outside of one institution, but I’ll just say that I only prayed that she would want to collaborate. And in the first year after she out and created her little boutique called avidad, i We did everything together, which I, I sort of, you know, in humor, say that was when we were living together, and then we merged, and I took her name as Aviva, and we became a registered investment advisor. Moved on from there, but maybe I’ll pass it to Tina for your perspective.

Tina Castro 02:47
I think for me, I started out my career at Goldman Sachs, a kind of more traditional Wall Street, which was, in and of itself, somewhat ironic, because not at all a finance person growing up that just didn’t register, really in my upbringing. I didn’t know who Goldman Sachs was when I was hired. I didn’t know the difference between a stock and bond when I was hired. But I learned quite a bit just going in for the interview. And I was intrigued by the folks that I met and the work that they were doing, and the sort of insight that the folks who controlled the money had a lot of control over the issues that I did care very much about, and that I did think I would be dedicating my professional career to. And so I was fortunate enough to be hired and did a lot of learning, spent a few years there, and then decided it was sort of time to move on and use what I had learned going back to the original intent, which was, you know, how do I try and make the world around me better? And now I had this new skill set to do that with investing in finance, and I was super lucky to be hired at the California Endowment right at the time that they were launching their 10 year Building Healthy Communities Initiative. And at the time, we’re looking for somebody to help them launch an impact investing strategy to help support that 10 year Building Healthy Communities Initiative. And so I was fortunate enough to be and I also hadn’t heard about the term impact investing. I was not familiar with that. It’s sort of a discipline that was new to me as well, but I thought it was fascinating. And so I spent five years at TCE, helping them to build the impact investing program there. I was super lucky that they hired Lisa at the same time, and I had the benefit of her tutelage and guidance and mentoring along the way. We did some really great work. And then, you know, come 2013 or so, I just, I was really looking for an opportunity to be able to do this work beyond one institution and their particular mandate and geographic focus. I spent a lot of time talking with Lisa about the work that she was doing with multiple organizations and places, and then felt like it was time to kind of take that leap and go out and try and venture out on my own with Lisa support, and like she said about a year later. Or so we merge the firm and her previous consulting practice and the little baby practice I had started in that year, and have been off to the race as she adopted. She took it to continue her analogy, she she adopted my baby in the marriage, took my name and adopted the baby, and we have been working together since to help build a firm and to help institutions figure out how it is that they can responsibly deploy capital in a way that addresses all sorts of issues, a whole range of issues.

Earnest Sweat 05:35
As a parent, you always have hopes and dreams for your baby. What were you guys hoping avivar was able to accomplish, and what its influence would be on the industry?

Lisa Richter 05:53
Wow, that’s an amazing question, earnest. And before I answer, if you don’t mind, I’m also going to insert a little pre-history, because I know we’re going to get to a point in the conversation about how you evaluate people with alternate track records, if you will. And I had actually been a music teacher before going to work at Schwarbank. And, you know, Tina didn’t know what a stock or bond was before going to Goldman. I thought a CD was something you put in a box. I had no idea, you know, what the tools of the trade were. And I was so fortunate to spend 20 years at shore bank and really learned that trade from others who were so deeply grounded in it. And I, you know, Tina often says that this is what we impact investing. Net TA is one that you develop through apprenticeship. It is not one that you can just get through book learning, and we can come to it later in the conversation, but we have really a huge interest and commitment to developing the next gen of talent and really being able to share based on the experiences that we were fortunate enough to learn from others. But going back to your question, I think both Ian and I come to this, you know, as you’ve heard, not with traditional financial backgrounds, but with really driving needs to solve problems and recognizing that investment capital is a medium for solving problems that, in fact, We think is one of the most important ones and still largely unrecognized, you know, so if we think about the field of philanthropy, the core tool is grant making, and most philanthropy still, you know, they give away 5% of their assets on average, wonderful, huge admiration for everything they do. But 95% of their assets are not necessarily aligned with the mission that they’re trying to accomplish. And so you know, not only with them as by definition, mission driven and values driven organizations, but with any actor in the capital markets if we are trying to create a society that fully realizes its potential. We don’t see how you can do that without applying the tool of capital in all of its forms to help cultivate talent and opportunity in all of its forms.

Tina Castro 08:38
when I left the endowment, I think my hope was to create a firm and a practice that could actually move beyond just the talk of impact investing and the potential right. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of theory in the in the dialog around impact investing and what’s possible and and sometimes the practice of doing it and making it happen and executing and actually getting dollars out the door, it’s not as quite as much fun and sexy to talk about, you know, it’s it boils down to sometimes very tactical sorts of things. And I think both are necessary. You know, the bigger the vision, the strategy, but also just like the ability to, you know, tactically execute and cross the t’s and dot the Is. And to get these organizations that are not just individuals, they’re complex organizations with their own cultures and organizational dynamics and a myriad of folks who all have different opinions. Used to joke that I would go in at TC to present to the board and the Investment Committee, and there might be like, 20 people on the board and 40 opinions about what we should be doing and how so you can talk all day long about alpha and returns and risk, but at the end of the day, it’s people making decisions and, you know, navigating where folks are in their understanding, helping them learn and. And develop new perspectives, come together with shared goals and objectives and then figure out what they want to do and how they need to do it in the confines of their organization. My hope was that we could be that, that advisor, that sort of that guide for organizations, to help them come to that shared understanding and then help them navigate how to actually put one foot in front of the other, to be able to put capital and to execute on the bigger vision. And to be a firm where you know, if you think about impact investing, it’s really needing to understand the the impact that you’re trying to drive in the world, the social outcomes that you’re trying to accomplish, but also the investment discipline and analytical rigor that it takes to deploy capital in a responsible manner, bringing those two disciplines together, where you’re not sort of for fitting rigor in one for the other, but you’re genuinely bringing strength in both of those to the table to help these complex organizations move forward. That’s what I hoped that our child would become and so we’ve worked really hard over the years to to bring that discipline, that rigor, to to the engagements that we have, and, you know, to also be a place where, as we grew the team over time, where individuals felt that they could show up as their authentic selves.

Speaker 2 14:02
there is almost an implication that

Alexa Binns 14:07
you are a separate asset class, or you have different expected returns, and therefore you should only be given a portion of the assets to manage, as opposed to your approach, which I’d love to hear more is, is pretty comprehensive that that you’re looking at, I’d love to hear all of the all of the solutions, or all the strategies that you consider under for your clients.

Lisa Richter 14:37
Well, sure, maybe I’ll just say a word about Alexa and then Tina. I hope you’ll pick it up. But you know, we have had some clients where they specifically ask us, How can we do essentially a conventional asset allocation, but bring a mission lens to every part of it? The other part I’ll mention is that for many of our clients, they are a so -called place. Highest impact investors. So they’re not just interested in certain impact themes like increased access to capital for underrepresented founders, let’s say, but they may be interested in that plus increased access to quality education, increased access to affordable health care, affordable housing, etc, within a geography. So, you know, whatever their mandate is, we can help them think through then, what do you do with your cash? Is there a bank or a credit union that might be a community development financial institution, which is mission driven, that’s going to deploy the lion share of those dollars in community loans. Are there fixed income opportunities that are driving various kinds of more equitable systems within municipalities, access to first time home buyer loans, access to better financing for small business, and access to private debt, of which there’s a marvelous increasing opportunity set, ranging from so called Community Development Financial Institutions, which can be on the concessionary end, to once delivering remarkable returns to private equity, to venture capital and to other kinds of alternatives, real estate, you know, timber and while avivar focuses more on the private markets, including that, we do a lot of work in the venture capital segment and with diverse founders, we have supported clients in screening, or let’s say, doing an analysis of their publicly traded securities to bring them in alignment with their values. And we’ve even helped some design ETFs that select stocks according to their values, such as companies headquartered in the state that employ the preponderance of state employees and that have fair labor practices and that are preserving the environment, that type of thing. Tina, I know you were going to jump in there.

Tina Castro 17:10
Oh yeah, no, I think you said it far more eloquently than I was about

Speaker 3 17:15
Now we’ve learned something when I listen to Lisa. I was simply just going to say that

Tina Castro 17:21
I think for a lot of the organizations that we work with, it’s helping them to start with the end in mind, and this is we were talking about this a little bit at the outset, starting with the end in mind, what is ultimately the impact and the outcome that they’re trying to accomplish and to achieve, and asking the question whether investment capital is actually part of that solution. I think just because we’re all interested in impact investing and what investment capital can do doesn’t mean it’s the right solution to every problem. And so asking that question, I think, is really important at the outset, in terms of figuring out where investment capital can be most valuable, and then if it is, what kind of capital is needed? Is it debt, or is it equity, because they serve different purposes and can be useful at different times, you know, to the point about whether venture capital is the right tool or not. Sometimes it depends. And so, you know, asking, what kind of capital is a debtor, is that equity? And then oftentimes, you know, we’re working in communities, particularly in a lot of the place based work that we do where they have been historically, under invested or not invested in at all. And so there are inefficiencies, and there’s a question of scale. And so you also have to think about, how do you sort of create the piping to go from the capital at the scale at which the owners and the holders of that capital have it, to the scale at which communities need to absorb it. And there’s intermediation that needs to take place there. And I think at least in my time in the field, I’ve seen that in Korea significantly, there are far more fund managers, intermediary CDFIs, loan funds, all advisors, you know, all the folks that are necessary to help create that piping. I think that that whole sort of intermediation has improved significantly, but you do have to be thoughtful about how you create that piping to connect the capital to to communities, and how do you structure that in a way to address the risk, thoughtfully address the risk return profile of the investors who have the capital and have restrictions around how they can deploy it, so that they actually are enabled to to deploy that capital, but also still make that capital useful so the people who are receiving it, and that’s where all the interesting creative structuring takes place. In the middle and where, you know, the skill sets of the folks that intermediation girl is really so important because, you know, it takes a lot of folks figuring out how to do that creatively. If it were simple, we wouldn’t be interested. It would have already been. Solve, somebody else would have done it, and it wouldn’t be a challenge. The reason it is a challenge is because it’s not simple. It’s complicated.

Alexa Binns 20:07
Do you mind giving us an example of one of those structurings, like, what, what that creative structure is? Yeah, I

Tina Castro 20:15
I think we could probably talk about some of the work that’s happening right now in LA related to wildfire response. So, you know, there is, there is really a desperate need to get capital into communities, for example, Altadena, to support and really drive the recovery from the wildfires. And there are plenty of folks who are interested in deploying that capital. They are constrained by their own risk return criteria. They’re you know, think investment policy statements, think governance, think committees, all, you know, all the things that rightfully are in place to do a good job of deploying capital in a disciplined way and being good stewards of assets. On the other hand, there are families and business owners who have lost their homes, have lost their businesses and are trying to navigate insurance settlements, you know, paying for rent while they’re still paying for mortgages, you know, all those different things need capital, and so how do you get them the money they need in the time they need it, while addressing the concerns of folks like, you know, all the big banks, the Bank of America, the JP Morgans, all the funders, the, you know, the California Wellness Foundation, the California Endowment, the California chief, and all these folks who want to contribute, but you’ve got to figure out how to create that piping In the middle, how to bring all those actors together, and how to put together that capital in a way that is of service to those folks who need it, but still recognizes the constraints and the limitations that those capital owners, those asset owners, work with at least, I know you’ve really been very much in a lead seat for Avignon in driving that work, so I don’t know if There’s more you want to say about that example.

Earnest Sweat 25:26
I want to get into how you all think about diligencing First time fund managers, but one kind of, like philosophical question I have around impact investing is, I would assume it’s around 30 years old or a little bit older, so it’s been around for a while, and you both have described the complexities of just, you know, the practice itself over these 30 years, but now since, kind of like the rise of a new technological shift with AI that’s impacting literally all aspects of our lives. You mentioned the rise in natural disasters, and around the third week of January in 2025 a lot of other stuff changed. And so my question is, is impact investing a little stale? And if so, how, how do you think the industry should change to address all these changes?

Lisa Richter 26:38
Okay, well, the first thing that I would say about impact investing, it echoes Tina’s earlier point that if it was, if it was easy to invest in some of these markets that haven’t been served, it would have happened a long time ago. So our industry, historically, has been, I’ll call it a cot industry, or, you know, some people describe every deal as a snowflake or hand crafted and and, you know, the good thing about that is that we’re not coming with a cookie cutter and saying, you know, did you know my cousin and my brother at Stanford? And if so, yet, check, check. You know, think about giving you, you know, an investment. No, it’s like, who are you? What do you care about? What are you trying to accomplish? What have you done that shows how you do things, how you solve problems, how you build networks, how you think about opportunity and risk. And, you know, that’s a completely different paradigm for sourcing and evaluating opportunity. And the question is, then, are there ways that we can make that more efficient? Because it is definitely not efficient in the sense of quick and easy and standardized and repeatable, while still holding on to the power of being open to opportunity and not standardizing. So you know, I personally believe there are endless ways that artificial intelligence can help us, whether it is market research to understand prior patterns and norms, you know, whether it’s things like understanding, you know, what kinds of materials are emerging to affordably build houses that are fire resistant. You know, there’s just so much more we can learn quickly to help us both envision opportunity as well as evaluate risk that I think you know, that’s tremendous and and also just learning how to take these complex processes and topics and formulate them in ways that are more accessible to a broader swath of investors, because we do believe that the potential of impact investing is much bigger than what’s yet been realized, and that is going to be realized as we better communicate that these opportunities are here. They’re exciting, the returns are in line with what you need, and the risks are manageable. So you know, then, how do we validate all of that? And being able to just pull market data much more quickly and assemble it for this, for the storyline, I think is huge. Now, there’s many more things we could say, but let me start there.

Tina Castro 29:46
Yeah, I think that Kate’s mind for me, when you ask the question, is we talk about impact investing as if it’s something separate and distinct from investing. I think all investing is impact investing, every dollar they. Invest, every dollar you spend, every dollar you deploy, has the impact in some way or other. It can be positive, or it can be negative, and you may choose to talk about it, or you may choose to sort of set that aside and talk in terms of risk and return, but it has an impact. I think what we talk about as a field of impact investing is maybe more just a focus effort at talking about how we proactively and consciously use investment capital to have positive impacts, and what kinds of positive impacts are we talking about? So to the extent that investing is not getting stale, I believe impact investing is not getting stale. I think the challenge is more perhaps the frustration that comes in rolling that boulder uphill, you know, day after day, year after year, and feeling like as hard as you might be working, you may not be seeing the outcomes. And there are, you know, bigger problems that come over every horizon, around every corner.

Alexa Binns 32:53
I like the rebrand. Yeah, you’re saying we are positively impact investing. And what all of you are doing all you other folks, you’re doing negative

Tina Castro 33:07
impact one way or another.

Speaker 4 33:10
Hate to break it to you, but, but you are the black hat here in this situation.

Lisa Richter 33:19
Well, you know, there’s always a critique with impact investing, or any kind of values that align investing, that it doesn’t earn the same returns. And I remember Tina’s comment during the Great Recession that some of the conventional advisors were, excuse me, as she put it, taking a victory lap if their portfolio was down minus 39% versus minus 40% so, you know, we we are. We’re not investing with the same how shall I put it? We’re not representing that. We’re trying to way outperform the market. We are trying to say we can typically perform like the market over time, even if some of our investments are of that concessionary nature, because they tend to be uncorrelated with the market, and the managers that are in there have very different criteria. So just really quickly to say, in the Great Recession, regulated banks were shutting down right and left and foreclosing right and left on their borrowers, but the the loan funds that are not were not regulated and were governed by investors with Mission criteria, were able to be patient with their investors and see this whole thing out, and had very low losses, like 2% losses. So you know, we have to look at all the components and how they fit together. But I did want to pick up on your point that we are in a climate politically that is not one of the more conducive. I. Um, and I’ve been around long enough to know that there are these periodic shifts in whether there’s a lot of support, either from federal policy or at the state level for increasing access to capital. And what I have seen, particularly in the last, you know, 10 years, which is some very important shifts in there is that even when the policy environment is less supportive, and you know, in some in some instances, outright combative, that there are many who retreat to the capital markets as a way that they can still express their values. And this becomes a really powerful tool. And I think that right now we have a moment not to be combative ourselves, but to demonstrate that what we’re talking about is something that is a win-win solution. We are talking about creating access to capital for the more than 50% of the population that has never had equitable access, and this has been documented, you know, in many conventional studies, is on lock greater GDP, and, you know, benefits for all of us.
Earnest Sweat 37:23
you all have when we talked in our pre conversation, you’ve developed a strong reputation around diligence with emerging managers, especially those who don’t have kind of like The normal, traditional backgrounds and track record. Could you describe to the audience what your approach is when the track record isn’t clear cut?

Tina Castro 37:47
So I think when we’re completing diligence and we’re trying to assess an investment opportunity, there are all the traditional ways that have been sort of put out there in the loop for how to do that. We talk about track record and manager contribution to show skin in the game and all the things that we’re all familiar with, there’s a reason why. And I think what we try to do is we try to look beyond just sort of checking the box with does the track record work? Whatever did the manager make his contribution? And why are we asking those questions? What are we trying to determine by asking those questions? And so when we ask a question about track record, I think what we’re trying to see is, is there some indication of whether we feel like this individual, this team, is capable of doing what they say they’re going to do. And the easy way to figure out whether we think they can do that going forward, is to look and see if they’ve done it before. But those rules have been put in place in the way that they are for a purpose. They were put in place in that way to serve a particular set of folks by a certain set of folks. And so they don’t always serve old folks. And so what we try and do when we’re approaching diligence is to try and get at the same the ability to assess the same things. Ask the question, do we think these folks can do what they say they’re going to do, but if they don’t have a track record, because they haven’t been given an opportunity to build a track record, can we ask, can we make that assessment using other information? Are there other indicators to look at that are going to help us answer that question? And so I think that is the approach that we take to diligence in general. Is yes, we understand all the questions, we understand all the analysis, we understand all the rigor, but go beyond just checking the box on the way the framework is today and the way it’s been constructed today, because we know why it’s been constructed, the way it’s been constructed, and who it’s intended to serve, and who it’s not. And we try and move beyond that, to try and answer the same question, provide the same analysis, get at those same indicators, maybe in different ways, that open up the door for a different set of folks who haven’t had. Opportunity to get through that door yet, and we’re fortunate that we get to work with clients who I think are open to that and open to taking that alternative pathway, and open to making those assessments in different ways. And so that is, that is how that’s the approach that we take, is we try to be creative and expansive in the way that we get at the answers to these questions that we think are important questions to ask. But there’s, there’s different ways of getting at it.

Alexa Binns 40:28
I’d love to narrow in specifically on your thoughts on venture capital and which clients you’re seeing, which clients you’re recommending, the strategy and sort of how maybe it is these emerging managers, specifically in VC. And would love to also hear if there’s clients here saying this isn’t a fit and why. Where does it fit in the larger scheme?

Lisa Richter 40:55
I was going to start something here. I was going to build off something you said earlier, Tina, which is your what is the right type of capital for what the investor is trying to accomplish. And so we have a particular client, and maybe Tina would talk about this, because she worked more closely with this client who has been trying to improve post secondary success, and they felt that the best way to get at that was with web based or digital tools that first gen students in college and returning citizens and others who needed post secondary education could use to facilitate the process for them to keep up Motivation on all of that. Well, there was no way to really penetrate the large national marketplace that needs these types of things without business models that incorporate significant growth. And the only way that you can fuel that kind of a business model is with venture capital. And so that was the ideal tool for what this investor wanted to accomplish. I think we would probably hope to see venture capital as part of every impact investor or investors portfolio. I don’t know that we would ever think it’s not a fit, unless we’re talking about, you know, an individual that’s earlier in their own trajectory of savings and can’t put dollars at risk, but for an institutional investor, we think that there’s no better way to unlock opportunity accelerate certain kinds of critically needed Changes level the playing field on who can build wealth, create jobs in in areas where they haven’t been created, and just drive all kinds of innovation. So those are some thoughts. And Tina, you probably have others.

Tina Castro 42:54
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And again, I think it boils down to applying the right tool to the right problem. And so, yeah, I think venture capital is a really incredible tool. But in order for venture capital to deliver for its investors the kind of returns that they need to see for a kind of risk that they’re taking, when you’re talking about more of a traditional market rate approach, then you need to be looking at businesses that have real scalability potential in order to deliver those returns. And so, yeah, it may not be appropriate for an investor whose strategy or whose thesis is around supporting, you know, small mom and pop, more lifestyle businesses, you know, more localized in a community and geography, because those businesses likely are going to reach the scale necessary for venture capital that lends itself more to to a debt strategy of one or another.

Earnest Sweat 45:00
GPS stands out most to you today, and what signals do you guys look for?

Tina Castro 45:05
I think GPS has a very clear thesis around the problem that they’re trying to solve, that has identified a real problem for a large segment, because you do need that scalability. I frankly feel like when we’re speaking with GPS who are approximate to the problems that they’re trying to solve and communities they’re trying to serve, I feel like there’s a level of insight there that somebody that others trying to deploy the same strategy might not have. And so for me, that’s something that I look for and something that stands out and sets them apart from others, perhaps because I think it’s one thing to sort of understand. I don’t know what, what the needs of a low income family are, the tech needs of a low income family trying to provide remote educational access for their students. It’s one thing to understand that intellectually, and another thing to have wrestled with it. And, you know, try and log in for your six year old kindergarten class at the kitchen table. And, you know, dealing with whatever you might be dealing with and platforms that maybe aren’t multilingual, and all the things. So I think when you have entrepreneurs who are proximate to the issues that they’re identifying those problems because they’ve lived those problems, they’ve experienced them firsthand. They come from the communities where those problems are happening, I think they understand them in a way that that frankly, makes them smarter and gives them a competitive advantage versus those who haven’t. And to me, that’s not, you know, in today’s sort of language and dialog, you know, de is become a bad word, you know, it’s not a Dei, not a it’s smart business to find folks who know something about the goals they’re trying to solve and give them the resources they need to solve those problems. That is just, I think, Smart Investing. So that, I think, is what stands out for me with looking at you really

Lisa Richter 47:16
I agree with what Tina just said. I might add, tenacity, perseverance, a brutal kind of honesty and ability to self reflect and see when admitting when something isn’t going right and then make a course correction, being able to assemble the right advisors that can guide good decisions. Which would, you know, maybe a group that complements one’s own strengths. Those are other things I like to see. And I like to see a kind of a sensitivity to what interests investors. So that there’s some confidence that this person can actually raise capital, either on their own or in partnership with others that they have asked to help them.

Alexa Binns 48:12
And as a final question, thank you so much for all this time today, this is you’ve surpassed 10 years now of building a vvar and curious what you are most proud of, I’ll say

Lisa Richter 48:25
I am probably most proud of some of the relationships we’ve had with investors, because we are so privileged in terms of the investors we work with and how motivated they are to drive positive social and environmental change that we have been able to help them do that, and that ties directly to that together. We have had some ability to, hopefully, help to drive some systemic changes in communities, not just putting on band aids, but really changing how resources flow and power flows that opens up opportunities for current and future generations. And then I have to say within the company, and I’m sure Tina would say the same thing, and we are just so fortunate to have talent that comes to be with us, and all of us together develop our skills, as Tina was saying, and to have a team that shares the commitment to what we’re trying to do. So I’ll stop there and over

Tina Castro 49:28
to Tina. Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t remember Lisa on this one. I think Lisa and I are so on the same page about this. Absolutely proud of the work that we’ve done with our clients and helping them to be able to help serve communities and help solve problems and challenges, and we wouldn’t be able to do that, but for the team that we have and the people that choose to spend their time and their talents with us, because, frankly, they’re all super talented, and could choose to work anywhere, and they choose. So they choose to work with us, and we don’t take that choice lightly. We appreciate that, we respect that, we honor that, and we know we wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do as a firm and serve our clients if we didn’t have the team that we have. And so we, I’m, I’m pretty proud of that. If you look at our team and that those folks come to work for us, to me, and you know, feels like a huge win,