Earnest Sweat 00:13
Today. We welcome Ian Fuller. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Westfuller Advisors, a values driven investment advisory and wealth management firm. Today, he’s going to share with us best practices for integrating social justice into investment strategies and opportunities investing in the impact investing landscape. With that, Ian, thanks for joining us on swimming with alligators.

Ian Fuller 00:38
Yeah, pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Earnest Sweat 00:41
And I think first I wanted to, you know, just giving kind of your brief bio, we could have your extended bio. We definitely could share a lot more. But I was curious if you could share with our audience your personal journey to wealth management and investment advising. Yeah, absolutely

Ian Fuller 00:58
earnest. And again, just thank you both Alexi and earnest for having me on the show. I’m incredibly excited to be here today. You know, I would say looking forward almost 20 years of having been in the business, it’s something of a circuit disrupt that I took thought I wanted to be a scientist or political scientist, more specifically, early on in my career, had an aspiration before entering into finance, to possibly work within a think tank or United Nations, and that’s where I started my career at the United Nations, working at the United Nations Population Fund in my early 20s, quickly realized that that was not actually going to have a kind of impact and economic security that I saw for myself and felt important just for my own personal livelihood, but also were The kind of communities I was very interested in creating a positive impact for. I didn’t use impact oriented language at that time, but that was very much in the background. I thought I was thinking about it. And pivoted to business school, where I wound up using that something of a glide path to enter into finance and start my career in Merrill Lynch, working with this extraordinary dynamo, often viewed as an iconic class Lola C West, who became sort of mentor, consiglieri and in time, business partner for what would become West Fuller,

Earnest Sweat 02:11
That’s awesome. I think one of those pieces before it kind of jumped more in, is like that, that I heard from you was, you know, you had an original assumption in your career, work for the UN and then there was a, okay, a personal you like, not only economic freedom from others. You’re like, I probably should have, you know, how did you come to your citizen subjects? Yeah, so, how did you come to that decision, and how did that influence, kind of, what you decided to do, do next, specifically to get that balance of impact and economic opportunity for yourself and others.

Ian Fuller 02:46
Yeah, and it’s a great query, and I appreciate you kind of drilling down further into that earnest you know, what I would say is that I come from a sort of lived experience, from impact to communities. I’m very much a New Yorker. Grew up in the New York metro area, and we just grew up with, you know, degree of what I now call, affectionately, economic insecurity, some degree of volatility, and yet we had cultural access. We had access to books and arts in a certain sort of cultural richness, but didn’t have that sort of economic security that I knew to be just important for myself and for others and for the communities that I really cared about. And I think that’s probably at the time in which I started to see access to capital as being a gateway towards creating a flourishing economy. Again, I didn’t frame it that way. But I think that was like the missing element for me, as I thought about, you know, the kind of career I wanted to have, the kind of work that I wanted to do, and what was going to be personally fulfilling, but also have a broader kind of community impact as well. And

Alexa Binns 03:50
as long as she’s not here to speak for herself, would you just mind bragging a bit about Miss Lola West,

Ian Fuller 03:58
absolutely. So Lola is 77 and if you don’t mind me saying she is still kicking ass at this extraordinary age, she’s a fountain of wisdom. She really just has an extraordinary community network of people that she knows how to leverage that look to her for wisdom. In fact, I continue to look for her wisdom. I’ve been working with her for 20 years, and what I’ve often said about her is that she saw me before I saw myself, and really took a bet on me, but she’s done that with so many others. And I often will say as well that Lola sort of belongs to the universe. She’s been just an extraordinary giver, contributor to so many amazing organizations, to so many amazing people, and so it’s been a real gift to have her in my life as a mentor, and in that way, I’ve had a number of extraordinary women of color, very specifically shape my career, take significant bets on me early on in my career in finance, to groom what you see is before you today, running a multi billion dollar investment advisory

04:55
firm. What were the your

Earnest Sweat 04:58
experience in kind of like. Lynch and others that led to the founding of West fuller advisors.

Ian Fuller 05:05
Yeah, you know, it was interesting. If you had asked me at that time, in my early 20s to mid 20s, I would have thought I was going to stay there my entire career. I had the traditional trajectory of, I’m going to become an MD. I was making all the networks I had sort of cultivated the C suite as consiglieres for the business, and that was really the route and trajectory I thought we were on. But enters a sort of great financial crisis. This is in this sort of mid 2000s leading right up to 2008 and at that time, it really felt like the entire rug was pulled out from underneath us, not only across the entire financial services sector, but very much Merrill Lynch at its coreMerrill Lynch was certainly one of the whipping children of that period, for go as far as saying corporate Malthusians, but sort of corporate rudderlessness. And we realized at that time, both Lowell and I, that sort of a long tenure there was not in the cards, or no longer in the cards for either of us. I began thinking through with a group of people, what would it look like to create an investment advisory firm that really embodied our values, that was client centric, that held integrity and legacy, the things that would become West fuller. What would it look like if we were to create that on our own? And so we launched, I will say, like the first iteration of that sort of blew up fabulously, as so many early ventures do, and lo and I reconstituted with a group of new partners and wound up re-launching as West fuller in 2011 and so 14 years on, this is where we are today. We have the pleasure also of running an extraordinary strategic partnership with our friends, Vivian Capital Partners underneath the big West fuller outsource Chief Investment Officer business, which focuses on foundations that have a real commitment towards aligning their capital with their mission. And those two bodies of work, both West Fuller that focus on private wealth management working with social justice oriented nonprofits as well as families. And then our institutional side, Vivien West Fuller that focuses on mission aligned institutions, has just created this really extraordinary base of clients that are committed towards doing sort of finance differently, if you will. Again, this idea of values aligned investing, thinking about legacy, thinking about what community impact, all while trying to achieve market rate financial performance.

Alexa Binns 07:20
And so when somebody comes to work with you, whether it’s one of these nonprofits or families, what’s that? What’s that sort of initial lesson learned? Or what do you find yourself sort of having to impart on them on day one?

Ian Fuller 07:40
Yeah, you know, I’d say at this stage of our careers, we’re at a very privileged position, generally speaking, with a client comes to us or when we’re invited to go into an RFP, if it’s on the institutional side, that particular client has decided they want to do this differently. They want to do this sort of work of investing in a very different way. They want to work with a series of advisors who bring not only an institutional perspective, but also one that understands the things that they care about, whether that’s climate, whether that’s community, whether that’s society, more broadly and generally speaking, that’s when clients will seek us out to do that kind of work. They’re coming from sort of the major incumbent firms often saying, we still want that kind of overall institutional rigor, but we want a piece of heart and head that combines what this begins to look like, and someone can really steward me as a partner, co conspirator, collaborator, and that’s really where we find kind of the magic of the relationships that we build and partnerships that we build with our clients.

Alexa Binns 08:35
Yeah, we heard from Bob at Nathan cums foundation why they selected you in their RFP process. And I think he did describe that this is a process, you know, it was like an ongoing lesson that that brought them to you and and I appreciate that there’s sort of an educational component of this, of why you would need somebody like the West. Fuller team,

Ian Fuller 09:02
yeah, that’s exactly right.

Earnest Sweat 09:06
Ian, so many times in our previous episodes, we discuss from an LP perspective, you know, how GPS start and launch funds, or how corporates launch an LP or kind of fund investment practice, but I don’t think we’ve had anyone discuss kind of the early days of starting an advisor, investment advisory firm, outsource CIO, of CIO, and you mentioned, I picked up that, you know, you guys had a start, a stop and then a start. So could you talk about that process? Yeah,

Ian Fuller 09:47
absolutely earnest. I’m happy to and I will say it’s been a very long journey. Again. We’ve been in this business for 14 years. My colleagues at bibian as part of the bib and West full war partnership for over 20 plus years, each of us doing our. Active lines have worked for quite some time, serving on the big M side, some of the world’s largest global pension funds, public pension plans, very specifically on the west floor side, serving a valueless, aligned community of clients in that at the same time, when we started, people weren’t using language like impact thinking about lived experience, right? I think we’re in a very different era of how we view the world, and so it’s very slow going for the first several years on the west floor side. Very specifically, as I talked through our journey, it was challenging. We were under capitalized. I often used to say, I don’t say this anymore, but I often used to say we had only gotten here through the force of our personalities, in many respects, right, sort of like faking it to make it and I think that’s probably true of so many emerging managers. We were an emerging advisor at that place, and frankly, when we left Merrill Lynch, one of our largest clients at the time, was a billionaire, somewhat maliciously said to ELO and I, you know, it took me a decade before I got back to where I was when I left my company, and I was like, man, you’re crazy. You know, all the hubris that one has in your late 20s, early 30s. So that’s definitely not going to be us, but I will tell you, it took us probably the first 10 years just to get to $200 million and then it’s been the next three years that we’ve crossed 2 billion, right? So it’s very interesting, kind of how assets under management compound over time, but in those early days, I will say probably for the first five years. And I get to say this now more transparently, at year 14, but in those first five years, I didn’t know if we were going to make it. Some days, it was just incredibly hard to make this business work. It’s a heavily regulated environment. You’re going against very well resourced competitors, and it takes a certain level of craziness, a certain level of hubris, naive tee like all of those things, and obviously great intertwined and a high degree of luck to cross that threshold of really making it. And so we’re still on that journey. We’re here learning every day. You’ve heard from some of our partners, Nathan Cummings Foundation, all of this is very much a learning journey, but certainly those early years were harrowing, to say the least, and yet we stayed committed to the work that we love doing. And so here we

Earnest Sweat 12:07
are. And so Ian, what’s now that you guys are 14 years in, what is the differentiation and pitch that you provide to these foundations, families and nonprofits?

Ian Fuller 12:19
Yeah, you know, I think it’s several fold, but I think what comes down to it is, values alignment at its core, lived experience and understanding of exactly where our clients are coming from. Each of our partners across the firm and across our partnership more broadly, have an understanding of both coming from impacted communities. We are people of color. We’re immigrants. We are coming in many respects, from marginalized communities. And we’ve also, at the same time, been trained at some of the world’s largest financial services conglomerates across the world, whether that was starting at Goldman, Sachs, Merrill, Lynch, Lehman Brothers and so forth. And so we’ve had the training and rigor of institutional investment practices core to the work that we do, and yet we also bring that lens of understanding and values alignment and why this work matters simply beyond just Are we able to achieve alpha with respect to specific strategy? We know we’re achieving alpha on behalf of a greater purpose. And so I think that gives our work a certain degree of urgency and alignment in ways that really create a differentiation from the work that we do we see across the field, quite frankly, and I think that’s been part of the for one element of our success. I think we get that question often, as we had a year in which we brought in over a billion dollars in new client assets between our overall Partnership, which is significant in our space. And didn’t come overnight, by any means. But I think when people ask us that it is, it is that sense that whether it’s an institution that’s looking at our OCIO practice alongside Vivien West fuller or family, they are looking for a firm that takes this work very differently, that has a different approach, and that, frankly, will go above and beyond from a client service perspective, and that’s still the work that we do at its core each and every day.

Alexa Binns 14:03
Is there a methodology for integrating clients values into the investment decisions or advisory consulting that you do for them? There

Ian Fuller 14:12
very much is alexand, I appreciate you asking that. I think it’s something that we continue to iterate on, but I’d say there is very much a methodology that we use, and what it comes down to, at its core for us is the sort of virtues, if you will, the investment policy statement. You’ve probably heard this, we tend to think of it in perhaps, put it on somewhat hailed ground as we think about investment policy statements. Many folks that may have seen it, and they’ll say, Okay, it’s a two page document that just talks about governance and responsibilities and duties, and here’s our sort of long term strategic asset allocation model. What we try to use that document as is a springboard for integrating the values, for really having an institution or family, understand what’s important to them, and use that, in turn to become our North Star, effectively our guide star for how we do all the work that we’re doing. So in the case of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, whom you spoke to. So we took months to really build an extraordinary document, a new sort of living document for them that would embody all the things that they truly care about. In the case of Nathan Cummings foundation, it’s what they refer to as the rearing son, racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice. You may have heard that from Bob ban dropped and we went really deep with their overall investment committee, of the broader stakeholder universe to find every way that we could integrate those values, and do it in a very methodical, almost evidence driven way, whether we were thinking about integrating diverse managers within the core of the portfolio, thinking about, how are we integrating environmental justice? How are we thinking about really rolling out the harms of communities, and at the same time, how are we leveraging those practices to drive alpha for the portfolio, to support operations and grant making, and so very much a methodical process that we use, but also one that continues to evolve as we try to get better each and every

Alexa Binns 15:52
day and and for our GPS, who are listening, who recognize that you’re the gatekeeper, you’re the one who’s going to be recommending some managers over others. Are there any trends that you’re seeing in terms of what LPS who are seeking at your services are really passionate about these days, or what are some of those key things that they’re looking for? Indeed,

Ian Fuller 16:16
I think it’s a it’s a great question, Alex, and I’d say, like all LPs, our clients, of course, are very focused on financial performance, and then what I often say is, like, that’s our baseline, like financial performance strong institutional practices are the baseline for the work that we do when we’re evaluating managers. The next core of that for our clients, though, is, how are you actually creating impact oriented outcomes through the work that you’re doing? And so our clients want to know and understand the investment thesis that you have, and is it a repeatable process? Can you generate the sort of outcomes that we’re trying to achieve, whether that’s thinking about health equity, educational equity outcomes, financial inclusion, environmental justice reforms, whatever that may be. How is the sort of financial model integrating at its core with an impact orientation to drive positive outcomes. And so I’d say those are the two core things that many of our clients are looking for right now. What seems to be sort of a growing interest, which I’m really excited about, coming from the communities that I come from, is sort of an ownership lens focus for many clients who are thinking through wealth creation as being a legitimate form of impact, and I will say, coming from impact community and one that’s been starved of capital, that strikes me as a very exciting movement, that large scale limited partners are now seeing that as a legitimate form of impact, but also, of course, of wealth creation, Not only for their own organizations or for family, but also that the underlying sort of beneficiaries of that institution. The last slide that I’d say is a growing interest is like a community, a deep community orientation. Many of the clients that we’re working with, particularly in the foundation endowment side, are very interested in driving their mission alignment and programmatic work in direct commitment to community, and so we’re beginning to see many investors, while at the same time not wanting to be constrained by geography, looking for ties where there’s a clear impact to local community that they can see, feel and touch in the communities that they’re trying to

Earnest Sweat 18:18
benefit. Ian and I know we keep referencing your partner, Bob from Nathan cums, but one thing he mentioned was this due diligence, 2.0 commitment. And I know you are part of that. I wanted to get your perspective on why you’re, y an advocate for that initiative, and why you think others should be as well?

Ian Fuller 18:47
Yeah, and I did go even farther than saying just an advocate. We’re evangelists of that movement. Okay? I love that, yeah, which is, you know, from our perspective, it is about creating the greatest opportunity. Said, you may have heard Bob speak to this, and certainly Ray Ramsey, the CEO of Nathan Cummings Foundation, has a beautiful, elegant way of framing this in terms of, we want to create the broadest opportunities set available to us, and we do that by prescribing to some of the elements of the due diligence 2.0 and so for us, it’s not simply looking at the traditional institutional Due Diligence metrics that may often be have been used and frankly, keep out so many well qualified, high talent, high potential managers. Our perspective is, how do we actually see the widest pool of talent? And we think the sort of provisions that are inscribed within due diligence 2.0 whether that be taking a different perspective on track record, looking at the track record that may exist from previous institutions, looking at a very different orientation around sort of minimum assets, having an understanding of solo GPS in some instances, how are we really thinking through a more nuanced understanding of a manager who we believe will, in fact. To produce high grade Alpha returns, and also, in our case, often impact as well.

Alexa Binns 20:06
Can you share any stories of the manager selection process or somebody that you’re particularly excited that you’ve backed? Yeah,

Ian Fuller 20:14
absolutely not. I’ll, you know, double click on one of the examples that Bob, in fact, mentioned while on the show, which is impact America Fund, launched by Keisha Cash, and just an incredible manager who’s been out in space for well over a decade. At this stage, I think, as many of you know, and really focused on sort of four themes that are deeply aligned with our clients. And at the same time, again, very much a sense of, how are we producing alpha for our underlying and limited partners, but through the lens of focusing on education, the care economy, small business, capital and support. And really, if you think about those sorts of sectors within the economy, those are often areas that have a disproportionate outsize impact for communities of color or marginalized communities more broadly, and those are the kind of investments that we have traditionally been very interested in and targeting on behalf of our clients. Now at this stage, Keisha 100 million plus dollar fund three and so forth, right? So she sort of has transcended all of that, but certainly in her early stages, she would have been a high quality manager that may have been missed and sort of fund one, fund two by more traditional institutional LPs. And from our perspective, that is, it sort of embodies the kind of talent, if we’re taking a sort of anachronistic perspective on how we underwrite managers when selecting the best rate managers for client portfolios.

Alexa Binns 21:41
I This, this parallel that you ended up having to make a career decision for yourself to be pursuing a path where you felt like you were making a comfortable living and doing really well for yourself. And now this is sort of the trendy realization that, yes, in fact, one way to give people, one way to make impact is economic mobility and and I think there’s, there’s something really lovely here, that as you grow assets under management, I like to think that maybe this is a nice not just a testament to your capabilities, but also A testament to the fact that people are recognizing that, you know, GPS should and can focus on making some of these commitments in their own careers too, that the money will be there. Yeah,

Ian Fuller 22:33
That’s exactly right. You know, I think we’ve, we’ve had the fortune of sort of just having a very long term perspective, whether in commitment to our values and our passion early on, and I didn’t know we were going to bear out this way, to be very clear with Alexa. So it’s very much sort of a blind step of faith, but it was really important to us to do what mattered. And fortunately, I think over time, we’ve found a community of clients that have a very similar alignment.

Alexa Binns 22:59
Yeah, yeah. She deserves to. She deserves that great success in her fund. You know, that is a

Earnest Sweat 23:08
Now we’re going to take a quick break to speak with our sponsor on today’s expert series. We have this special episode of the artist, earnest. We have the amazing Tash. TASH has a frequent track record of driving transformative initiatives in the financial sector, with a strong focus on empowering underrepresented in Oakville towns, her leadership experience spans key roles as Silicon Valley County and JP Morgan Chase and Co. That we’re excited to add. Thank you for having me earnest. First, I wanted to play a little so we’re here in Miami.

Tosh Ernest 23:49
Your group is yours. I’m based in Miami. God’s favorite,

Earnest Sweat 23:52
and I can tell you have a Miami classic Miami accent. So could you just tell me how you gather?

Tosh Ernest 23:59
Yeah, so my accent is from a part of Miami called Hialeah. I’m just from across the pond in the UK, London, and I’ve been here for 15 years. Wow. So

Earnest Sweat 24:13
tell me about red or bio, but tell me about how you got to this mission of really being an advocate in the financial sector for under representing health and

Tosh Ernest 24:25
founders, yeah. Well, my journey began with advancing that pathway at JP Morgan. Chase. I was at JP Morgan for about 12 years, and in the last five of those years, we were able to put together a program that really looked to create on ramps for banking for black America. Black America has the GDP of Russia. However, a lot of that isn’t in our economy, because 56% of black Americans are under-banked or unbanked, and so JP Morgan, being the nation’s largest bank, looked for initiative. That would help create those on ramp, so proud to have been a part of some of them that still exist today. Project black with aerial alternatives, our team wrote that strategy, and we created mutual funds, money market funds, and a lot of different ways to help investors, particularly invest in black, founders, entrepreneurs and individuals in passive ways that made them money and they didn’t even really have to think about it. That’s impressive, like

Earnest Sweat 25:30
We think of this as an emergence of more of an initiative that helped all of us here, representation everywhere. You know, some people are kind of like whether they knew or were late to the show, right? But you have been committed to this now. And now you’re, you’re building out the cactus 2045 mission. Could you talk to us about, going to give us background on what that is? Yeah.

Tosh Ernest 26:00
So Cathy 2045 is driven by a profound belief that innovation thrives when diverse perspectives are at the table. In 2022 for example, underrepresented groups received just 2.5% of all venture funding despite women led businesses outperforming male led businesses by 163% in revenue. So by 2045 America will find itself joining the global majority as a majority melanated nation, and the untapped potential of these groups represents a transformative opportunity to reshape the innovation economy. So that’s why capitalist 2045 exists not merely about inclusion. It’s about harnessing the power of this demographic shift to fuel our economic growth, elevate diverse voices and future proof industries by directing capital where it’s been historically under utilized. It’s not just about closing gaps. It’s about creating an ecosystem where innovation thrives on inclusivity and diversity. I think about, you know, the golden rule for creating profit, it’s asymmetric risk returns. This has proven, I mean, 163% it’s an under- saturated opportunity, but asymmetric risk returns that are completely untapped. In fact, Morgan Stanley perks the missed profits from untapped opportunities each year at $4.4 trillion in missed profits. So it’s not a Diversity Equity and Inclusion play. This isn’t money making scheme that no one’s caught on to quite yet,

Earnest Sweat 27:41
yeah. Usually frames can kind of be like, yeah. Social Impact, really with capital like initiative, like can one can the best out of everyone,

Tosh Ernest 27:52
when overworked and underrepresented pounders are outperforming your homogeneous investments by 163% you’ve got to ask yourself, what intrinsic biases are stopping you from pursuing those profits?

Earnest Sweat 28:07
So you did a great job. First of all, the numbers are set because I’m aware of the first but just hearing it every time is so staggering. So when you understand where the opportunity is, where the trends are going to affect some demographics of our country, there’s still a tall task. But what, how did you guys prioritize what issues to do then and then calendars 20.5

Tosh Ernest 28:34
You know, I think that the initiatives we’re looking at are the ones that I like to think about: core, community and crowd. So each initiative has to fit into one of those buckets. And so when we think about core it’s everyone we know, the investors and the innovators in the ecosystem. But as we’ve seen recently, you also need to capture the community and a crowd, because there’s a lot of intrinsic biases that stop people from concentrating on the core, which is where it matters. So at calculus 2045, we focus on scalability, what things can scale beyond the core, because that’s where we need to reach. Sometimes you’re just speaking and preaching to the choir, but as any good church knows, I know your dad’s a pastor, so he knows you’re gonna need more than the congregation. So we need everyone. This isn’t just a sdb play, this is an everyone play. And so we want to make sure we’re not just speaking to the call, but we’re getting to the community and the crowd, and so I would say scalability is one of the important ingredients that we look for when we invest in initiative.

Earnest Sweat 29:50
Have you all dealt with the kind of one pitfall I’ve seen since 1620, 20 has been. A lack of data aggregation can capture data of success and more, just like let’s run on by running on bonds all the time, unfortunately. So what measurable outcomes had been achieved? Increasing access to capital resources for women? Bipoc by Lex, bad. You

Tosh Ernest 30:24
I think that that’s exactly right. We need to be data driven and insight sled, especially when we know that diverse founders and startups generate 30% higher returns than their peers. And that is something that we have seen, both in the ecosystem and with our portfolio companies, SVB, that female founders boost revenues by 163% compared to their male led peers, and yet these groups still only represent 2% of total venture capital dollars invested. So for us capitalist 2045 has been a game changer in this narrative by really focusing on the numbers. How can we make sure that these often overlooked founders are getting in front of the right type of investors, they’re getting a fair play and fair shot at getting the resources they need. And for us, it’s about making sure that the ROI is always there. We don’t see the impact on investing as being two dichotomies. We see them as being the same thing, because you’re going to get your impact, you’re going to get your ROI, and you’re going to get your investments. There really is no downside, and I think exposing people to the numbers is where we start to make a difference. Hearts and minds are fallible. Hearts and Minds shift with the wind. Numbers don’t lie, and what gets measured matters, and what matters gets the dot, let’s and so we want to make sure you know, you’ve heard the golden rule. Those who haven’t got to make the rules. We want to make sure that more people get the gold so they get to make the rules.

Earnest Sweat 32:07
And we know in any kind of new win initiative, there’s no perfect meeting, right? These are subs, right? So I just want to know, from your experience, we hear so much about the actual individual founder or fund manager who is under really kind of challenges, but as someone who’s trying to support their success, what challenges have you faced, trying to come upon these insurance classes and kind of intersect here? And how have you created things like, how have you addressed these obstacles for supporting our funders and our founders? Well,

Tosh Ernest 32:48
I’ll say this, the challenges are significant, but they’re not insurmountable. We know that the journey for underrepresented founders is often marked by bias, limited access to networks, and systemic barriers. For example, male founders exit with about 210 million on average, while underrepresented founders receive just 91 million. This is on exit. So the venture capital ecosystem remains skewed, with only 1.4% of assets under management controlled by women, black or Latinx fund managers, despite diverse portfolios outperforming, I can never say this enough outperforming their counterparts, so these systemic barriers require urgent and thoughtful action and capitalist 2045 tackles this head on. We build diverse networks advocating for equity and investment decisions, and we work to change these entrenched patterns that hinder access to capital. I’ve got to say that data transparency and targeting advocacy through our partnerships is something we’re very, very proud of. For example, we’re proud to be key partners and in some cases, founding members of important industry advocacy groups such as all raise the MBCA venture forward. So much VC black BC, culture shift in labs and many, many more, we also work with these groups to dismantle biases and decision making processes by fostering awareness and accountability amongst capital allocators. It’s up to all of us together to tackle the systemic issues, and it requires consistent effort and collaboration across many sectors. There are no days off. And now back to our LP interview.

Earnest Sweat 34:26
I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you, given we’ve had a lot of momentum over the last four years within a lot of these social issues, but there’s also been some kind of backlash as well. Indeed, where do you think things are going to go over the next 510 years? And kind of where are you all West Fuller and your. Partners. What are you trying to influence with all that, with all that going on?

Ian Fuller 35:05
Yeah, no, I appreciate you kind of raising this up, because it’s certainly part of the Zeitgeist at this stage, earnest, right? We’re seeing this broader anti Dei, anti ESG backlash, and what I’ve seen, quite frankly, for our client base, and again, we serve kind of a self selecting group of clients who have a deep commitment around values aligned investing it more broadly, is a broader polarization in some respects, right? I think at least in the short term, that seems to be an increasing trend. So I think those who are sort of true believers and had a definite commitment towards doing this work are sort of doubling down. And we’ve seen doubling down, of course, while doing it thoughtfully being prudent, really trying to make sure that they are mitigating all forms of just public reputational risks, if you will, at the same time wanting to do this work at a more rigorous level, to really drive not only financial returns, as you heard from one of our partners, but also the kinds of impact that they have long been committed to. So we’re continuing to see that increase, and I think that’s been part of the tail wind of success for our practice, both our institutional side at Vivien West Fuller as well as the West floor more broadly. But then, in addition to that, you know, I don’t, what I would say right now is that I’m not as well. I’m concerned about the broader political context that we’re operating in for a whole host of different reasons. I do see this as a period where we transcend some of this in time, right? I fundamentally believe that investing with your values is fundamentally good investing. And I believe that finding value, which I’ve always been sort of a value investor, right? Not simply a value is an aligned investor, but also a value investor. Where are we finding value? And I think fundamentally, we’ve seen overlooked communities, diverse managers and other sorts of interesting investments as investments that have been overlooked by the broader mainstream investment environment, and that’s where we see value to be had. That’s where we see sort of alpha accretion, if you will, for investment opportunities. And we’ll continue to be focused there. And so I think that movement is going to only increase in time as we think about sort of growing inequality, as we think about increased political polarization, I know at this stage, and perhaps in this next just two to four years, it looks very different, and I understand that we’ll have to be more agile and a depth on how we navigate that. But I don’t think that this broader movement around sustainable investing or values-aligned investment is really going anywhere. And what we’re seeing, if you look at the global context, is, in fact, an increased interest on the importance of this, increased standardization, increased rigor, and I think that that will continue to return to the US context within the next five to 10 years and more broadly, because there’s just a lot of things that we need to solve, and we need the public markets and capital more broadly to help solve some of that. I

Earnest Sweat 37:57
I love that answer, because I am in it, I hear a commitment. And as Alexa knows, talking to a lot of friends in the business, outside of the business operators, whatever, but people are passionate about a lot of those issues you brought up, I have to remind my fellow you know, late 30s, 40s, somethings that it is our time, because things cost, hope cost, that’s right. Progress costs, whatever that is, time, effort, frustration, whatever it costs. And so I love the fact that you, you in the organizations you partner with, are committed and understand that this is the natural process with progress.

Ian Fuller 38:42
That’s right. That’s exactly right. That’s very well said.

Alexa Binns 38:47
Does venture capital even, um, even have any of the asset classes you’re looking at? Is Venture Capital One that you see some of those opportunities, or are you steering your clients the other way? I’m curious where it fits in. In your

Ian Fuller 39:03
opinion? Yeah, I mean, so absolutely, I think venture still continues to be one of the most interesting, intriguing asset classes at large for our clients, trying to bring sort of economic solutions, if you will, to some of the hardest pressing issues that we face here in the US and the globe north, broadly and absolutely, I think one of the challenges we’ve had, perhaps, like many allocators, over the last year and a half, is just candidly, sort of the nature of where venture was marking with respect to pricing, of just being over allocated there for many of our clients, I think as The markets start to shift here, and we see sort of increased mergers and acquisition opportunities as we’re seeing IPO market begin to come back online, which is really kind of the broader thinking with across most investors at this stage. We do see increased opportunities for venture for our clients. And so we’ll really be thinking hard about where we’re putting our client capital in this space. But venture for us has been an integral part of how we think about portfolio construction, how we’re thinking about our strategic asset allocations, very specifically allocations to private market opportunities. And so while we’ve had to be somewhat more constrained around those direct allocations over the last couple of years, we’re really excited for what that promise holds in the next couple of years forward, and certainly see it as an area that’s going to produce sort of high alpha returns, or has the opportunity to produce high alpha returns, particularly as we look at the next 10 years, in which many market practitioners are thinking, we’re going to have far more constrained returns across the public markets and public equities, public fixed income due to a host of different variables.

Earnest Sweat 41:37
what’s the favorite story or memorable experience that you’ve had in this work that you want to share with our audience?

Ian Fuller 41:46
Oh, gosh, there. There are so many things, but one of the things that I’ll say is, well to start first with just saying, like we’re in an incredibly privileged and fortunate position, right? You can see the kind of clients that we work with or have a dedication to changing the world with their capital, and that just gets me excited every morning. So like every day, I wake up thinking about that as, like, the core organizing principle for the work that we do. But one of the recent examples that we have is an investment that we made with an anthropic and in fact, done in alignment with a cohort of mission aligned investors. This was covered in the press last year. To some degree, we made an investment in anthropology. I’m sure many of you, your listeners, are familiar with the generative AI firm. It was one of the first that I’m aware of in terms of a cohort of mission aligned investors making a direct investment in a generative AI firm, with the idea of, how are we influencing the conversation on public interest technology? How are we at the table for this sort of fourth industrial revolution that is taking the world by storm? And even if you make the argument, which is not unreasonable, that it’s an overhyped sector and sort of concerns around existentialism and all these other rifle critiques, how are we as values aligned investors helping to shape some of that conversation, and while we’re not delusional enough to believe our small investment alongside this overall cohort is going to have an outsized impact in that regard, it was one of the first steps of thinking through how do we engage in this way when we think about active ownership with an opportunity, one that we believe is going to produce strong commercial returns on behalf of our clients, but also that might allow us to begin shaping some of that conversation on how civil society engages with this broader movement around generative artificial intelligence. And so that was certainly one. We have so many stories, though, where we brought clients with this sense of really how to think about just deep values alignment with their portfolio, whether that was partnering with the Nathan Cummings foundation or other foundations that have really had a commitment around we want to think through this sort of unlocking of the total enterprise capacity of the work that we do, whether that’s focusing on grant making, work which is sort of outside of our purview. But how are we leveraging the endowment portfolio to really maximize, create a multiplier effect, if you will, for the things that they truly care about,

Alexa Binns 44:18
and having started out your career thinking you would be a political scientist. Do you feel like at this point you are making an impact in your own way? I’m curious what that, what that sort of like day to day, where you feel like you’re moving the needle?

Ian Fuller 44:37
I do Alexa, I mean, it’s, it’s all incremental, right? And so this, undeniably, will be a lifelong journey. I think that’s why it’s so important for those of us and practitioners in space to hold on to hope. But 20 years on from when I started my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to build sort of a portfolio of things that I really care about and things that I can support. So whether that’s the day to day of our. Our business that’s supporting leading asset owners who are thinking about aligning their capital with impact, whether that’s to benefit society, benefit the planet, often both at the same time, or the many boards that I have the pleasure and privilege of serving on, whether that’s the Margaret Casey Foundation impact assets serving on the Investment Committee for Rockville Brothers Fund, all of these institutions who have a real commitment towards moving capital to environments, communities that otherwise have been not historically had access to it in the form of either diverse managers or direct investments in community, or more broadly, thinking through, how do we change practices within the sort of capital markets more broadly at the policy level, as well as just direct sort of market rate investments to make an impact. And so those are some of the areas that I feel like when I wake up every morning, I’m beginning to have some impact, and again, very much a life long journey. I try not to get ahead of myself with respect to that. But 20 years on, from my sort of musings as a mid 25 year old or so thinking about these things, it’s a joy to be able to do this work now at this stage of my life. Yeah,

Alexa Binns 46:10
no, it’s, it’s a fascinating sort of left, right, East Coast, West Coast thing that I feel like if you were on the East Coast in your 20s, political movements and participation. Participating in the political Zeit case, feels like a route to change. And if you were on the West Coast, it was sort of like going other routes, looking for other solutions. And it’s lovely to hear how these two things have combined for you, because obviously we need to adjust. We need to adjust in every way that we possibly can. It’s an interesting

Earnest Sweat 46:48
time, though, too, where all these things are converging together. Ian, because I’ve been reading a couple books last year about just kind of the political environment, and this is quite possibly the first election or and or administration that is in full like Silicon Valley is taking its influence more than Wall Street, right? And so, yeah, you’re going to need more active investing in areas of now, like not only having relationships with the large, you know, banks who influence, you know, the administrations, now you need to, like these big organizations and tech companies that are going to be influenced in the entire society. Indeed.

Ian Fuller 47:34
Yeah, it’s very well said, earnest, I will say, and I didn’t note this earlier, but I will note that one of the other growing trends across our clients is a deeper interest in active ownership. Just as you point to earnest. I’m not sure that they’ve long tied it there, but what we’re starting to see, and have long believed from friends, whether that’s at ICC or majority action or other groups that have long focused on sort of corporate stewardship. How do sort of owners of public stock or being on sort of El Pax and otherwise, how do they begin to influence corporate practices on behalf of sort of broader community and society improvement? And we’re seeing this deeper interest from many of our clients of engaging in active ownership, whether that’s voting their proxies or very actively engaging in shareholder campaigns to improve the plight of workers. How are we thinking about this more broadly? There is definitely an interest in this, and I love hearing you say that where the convergence of our sort of political economy is at this moment, that that actually may take on more urgency and import. I absolutely agree with that.

Alexa Binns 48:44
Is there anything else you’ve learned lately? I’m just curious what, what has been a light bulb moment for you? Yeah, oh

Ian Fuller 48:53
God. Alexa, every, every day, frankly, as I’m learning something new, I think that’s also the beauty and magic of this work. It’s like there’s not a day that I don’t learn something new. I think both we have the proverbial building the plane while flying it sort of thing, and trying to scale quickly, a business that has a high degree of operational complexity, clients that are very demanding because they want the very best out of their durable assets. And so every day I learn something new in that respect. But I think as it relates to investing, one of the things that we continue to learn is just the importance of building extraordinary partnerships with our underlying investors, right? So thinking about our general partners, our asset managers, as long term partnerships, and I think that’s been core to the work that we do. But each year that I come into this business and think through it even more rigorously, just this notion of building true, enduring partnerships with our underlying partners as we think about them across the asset management ecosystem that every day to me, is a new light bulb around how does that, in fact, improve the returns for our clients? But also improve opportunities for impact and for just the ability for us to do the work that we do on behalf of our clients and so so many learnings every day, but that, certainly, I’d say, is one of the central ones that I continue to just enhance each time.

Alexa Binns 50:16
And any final thoughts, whether that’s for GPS, who are going to be reaching out, or LPs, who would potentially be great clients?

Ian Fuller 50:26
Yeah, absolutely. So what I would say is we are open for business, so to speak, as a sort of scaling operation. We certainly want to be in the market. We’re the very best general partners through the ecosystem that are both focused on Alpha creation, finding extraordinary opportunities, but also focused on investing in sort of world solutions, if you will, across the overall ecosystem, both in the US context and global context. And so that continues to be just an enduring part of the work that we do on behalf of our clients as allocators, is finding the very best opportunities. So that’s one. The second that I would say is just this, this sense for many of our clients, that this is a journey. It doesn’t start sort of at day one, going all in on mission alignment. For many clients, they have so many different sorts of codependent variables that they’ve got to figure out, right? They’ve got to think about their meeting, their spending rate, they’ve got to think about, how do we ensure that all of our stakeholders are really committed to this work in this new direction? And for us, it’s not sort of a zero sum game by any means. I think for many of the best practitioners, this work can take five years, 10 years, and maybe longer, to really keep improving. And so for us, it’s about the journey, and not letting the sort of the perfect be the enemy of the good, the work that we do

Earnest Sweat 51:46
absolutely well. Ian, it’s been a pleasure every time it was good as advertised. Thank you both, and look forward to learning more about your organization and hopefully other allocators reaching out to you through this platform. Thanks so much for swimming with the allocators.

Ian Fuller 52:04
Yeah, thank you both for having me. It’s a pleasure

Alexa Binns 52:06
See you later. Allocator