The 26 year-olds with most meaningful jobs in finance
Investing with an eye to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues is coming in from the cold. In the past month Goldman Sachs has issued a doomy note about climate change after forming its own sustainable finance group, JPMorgan has issued a note on the black swan risks of climate change, and the Bank of England has warned businesses to take climate change seriously. Extinction Rebellion aside, ESG jobs which were once peripheral are increasingly mainstream.
If you're starting your career in finance, there are some role models out there. The socially responsible investment conference (SRIC) has just named the 30 top socially responsible investors under 30. Not all of them are exactly investors; we've listed the most informative exemplars below.
1. Usman Ali
Who? Ali works for Mobius Capital Partners in London, where he's an investment analyst covering ESG investments with a focus on emerging and frontier markets. He graduated from the university of Hull with a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and started his career at Caravel Management.
Age: c26
Where? London
2. Narottama Bowden
Who? Bowden works for S&P Dow Jones in New York, where he's a senior product manager for ESG indices. British by birth, he has a masters in environmental economics and climate change from the London School of Economics and a degree in developmental economics from SOAS. He began his career at Trucost, an S&P Global company which assesses risks relating to climate change, natural resource constraints, and broader environmental, social, and governance factors.
Age? c26
Where? New York
3. Suzanna Buck
Who? Senior impact investment associate at Domini Impact Investments in New York. Buck graduated from Columbia University in 2014 with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.
Age: c26
Where? New York
4. Alexandra Chamberlin
Who? Chamberlin is a manager of private impact investments and analytics at Capshift in New York. Capshift is a turnkey investing solution for financial and philanthropic institutions in the U.S. Chamberlin graduated from HEC in France in 2017.
Age: c24
Where? New York
5. Shaheen Contractor
Who? Shaheen is an ESG research associate at Bloomberg in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2015 with a masters in sustainability management.
Age: c28
Where? New York
6. Trevor David
Who? David is a manager at SustainAnalytics, which provides corporate governance research and ESG ratings. He graduated from Canada's University of Waterloo with a degree in environment and business.
Age: c28
Where? Toronto
7. Elizabeth di Bonaventura
Who? Di Bonaventura works with Buck at Domini Impact Investments, where she's a senior institutional relationshio associate. She has a Scottish Master of Arts (Honours) in International Relations from The University of St Andrews.
Where? New York.
8. Emily Dwyer
Who? Dwyer is a research analyst at Brown Advisory in Boston. She focuses on ESG research and sustainable investing priorities. Dwyer studied a BA in economics and enivironmental science policy at Smith College.
Where? Boston.
Age: c29
9. Katherine Kroll
Who? Kroll works with Dwyer at Brown Advisory. She's also a sustainable investing analyst. She studied political science and enironmental sciences at the University of Vermont.
Where? Also Boston.
Age: c29
10. Sean Martin
Who? Martin works in business liason at Institutional Shareholder Services in San Francisco. He describes himself as a consultant who helps institutional investors integrate ESG data analytics into their decision making processes. Martin has a masters degree in environmental management and policy from Sweden's University of Lund and a BA in sustainability and business law from the University of Arizona.
Where: SF
Age: c26
11. Matthew Nabhan
Who: Nabhan is the only person on the list to actually work in a big bank. - He's an associate at Morgan Stanley, but describes himself as a finance and sustainability professional. Nabhan has two degrees from the University of Boulder in Colorado: one in business administration and one in environmental studies.
Where? Philadelphia
Age: c26
12. Ivan Nechunaev
Who: Nechunaev is a senior investment professional focused on ESG at Terra Nova Capital in Dubai. He has an MBA from Wharton and graduated from Grand Canyon University in finance and economics. He's currently on a year-long business trip, spending 12 months in 12 different emerging markets (one country per month), looking for investments and raising ESG awareness among hundreds of local companies.
Where? Dubai
Age: c28
13. Sophie Peeters
Who? Peeters works for the World Bank's international finance corporation, where she promotes the development of green and social bonds markets.
Where? Washington.
Age: c25
14. Gabe Rissman
Who: Rissman is a sort of environmental tech investing entrepreneur. He runs real impact tracker, which scores and ranks funds according to their environmental and social impacts. He also co-founded Stake, a web platform that allows investors to ask funds and companies they own to improve their social and environmental impact. Rissman graduated from Yale.
Where? New Haven.
Age: c24
15. Jessye Waxman
Who? Waxman works for Green Century Capital Management in Boston as a shareholder advocate where she encourages companies to think about, 'commodity-driven deforestation and supply chain sustainability and transparency.' She has a degree in environmental science and policy from Duke University.
Where? Boston
Age: c26
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