The Future of Finance Podcast

This episode is part of the ongoing System-Level Investing series, produced alongside The Handbook of System-Level Investing.
 
A trillion-dollar index manager and a $15 billion family office can both practice system-level stewardship, but the leverage points, and the duties behind them, are not the same.
 
Host Georges Dyer is joined by John Hoeppner, Head of Strategic Relationships & Active Ownership at Builders Vision, who previously led U.S. stewardship and sustainable investment at Legal & General Investment Management America (LGIM America). Hoeppner is the author of Chapter 5, "Different Organizations, Different Leverage Points," in The Handbook of System-Level Investing, edited by Jon Lukomnik and William Burckart. The chapter asks a foundational question: does system-level stewardship look different depending on whether you represent thousands of index fund clients or a single family's mission, and if so, what does each seat actually make possible?
 
Key themes:
Why willingness to "take a point of view" shaped Legal & General's influence as a universal owner
The fiduciary duty question behind "better beta," and why the payoff is nearly impossible to show a client
How a narrower, mission-directed mandate changes what counts as impact at Builders Vision
Industrial decarbonization and the case for cement as a target sector
Builders Vision's role convening investors around ocean plastics and green cement
Why asset owners, not managers, tend to set the pace on system-level risk
 
A candid look at what changes, and what doesn't, when stewardship moves from a trillion-dollar index shop to a single family's mission.
 
Catch the rest of the System-Level Investing series on the channel.
 
Join us at the IEN 2026 Annual Forum, November 18-20 in Toronto, ON. Register: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2026-annual-forum
 
Become a Member: https://www.intentionalendowments.org/join_us
 
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Resources:
 
The Handbook of System-Level Investing (ed. Jon Lukomnik and William Burckart): https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-System-level-Investing-Trillions-Rethinking/dp/1939282594
 
Builders Vision: https://www.buildersvision.com/
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General Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
0:22 Welcome & episode intro
1:22 Hoeppner's career arc: Cambridge Associates to Builders Vision
3:25 Discovering system-level investing: The Shareholder Commons and universal ownership
4:33 Legal & General as a universal owner: taking a point of view
9:13 The jump to Builders Vision: mission, structure, and the three systems
11:34 Manager versus asset owner: fiduciary duty and "better beta"
15:01 Prioritizing risk and pushing managers for more
20:40 Where Builders Vision focuses: energy, oceans, and cement
24:35 Public and private capital, and the Walton name
29:15 Convening investors and engaging on policy
34:53 Rapid fire and closing thoughts

This episode is part of our ongoing System-Level Investing series, featuring the chapter authors of The Handbook of System-Level Investing. Host Georges Dyer is joined by Max Messervy, founder of Oakledge Advisors and former Head of Sustainable Investment, Americas at Mercer.
They dig into Chapter 12, "How to Work with Your Consultant on System-Level Issues," authored by Messervy. This chapter is built around one foundational question for institutional investors: is your consultant relationship actually structured to serve your interests, or theirs?
Key themes:
How consultant mandates are structured: general vs. specialist, retainer vs. discrete project
Where conflicts of interest can arise between a consultant's business model and a client's fiduciary interests
The gap between day-to-day field consulting teams and in-house sustainability/impact specialists
Concrete steps for defining what you want from a consultant, evaluating their response, and deciding whether to expand the relationship or go out to RFP
This episode offers a candid look at one of the most consequential, and least examined, relationships in institutional investing.
Don’t forget to subscribe to catch the rest of the System-Level Investing series on the channel.
IEN's 2026 Annual Forum is November 18–20 in Toronto, ON. Register here: https://www.intentionalendowments.org/ien_2026_annual_forum
Become a Member: https://www.intentionalendowments.org/join_us
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Resources:
The Handbook of System-Level Investing: https://us.amazon.com/Handbook-System-level-Investing-Trillions-Rethinking/dp/1939282594
Oakledge Advisors — https://www.oakledgeadvisors.com/
Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance — https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/ihleg/
General Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro 
01:04 – Max's path through Ceres, Mercer, and founding Oakledge Advisors 
05:50 – Why asset owners use consultants, and the different types of mandates 
09:11 – How consultants are paid: retainer vs. discrete project 12:20 – Where conflicts of interest can arise between a consultant's business model and a client's interests 
16:37 – Discretionary vs. non-discretionary consulting, and the rise of OCIO 
19:21 – When a consultant becomes a "barrier": field consultants vs. in-house specialists 
25:18 – Is consultant expertise on system-level investing catching up?
30:40 – Sticking with your existing consultant vs. issuing an RFP
34:39 – Specific ways to engage your consultant on system-level investing
36:44 – Three ways to evaluate a consultant's readiness

If system-level investing is now an operating imperative, the next question is how institutions actually see and manage these risks across the whole portfolio. Lynn Paquin (CalSTRS) and Adam Connaker (Surdna Foundation) introduce the Total Portfolio Dashboard—a new decision-support tool designed to help institutional investors identify, manage, and act on system-level risks and opportunities across asset classes and strategies. Built for CIOs and investment teams operating in a world where beta is increasingly shaped by system health, the Dashboard translates complex system dynamics into a portfolio-wide view that connects asset allocation, stewardship, risk management, and governance.

With frameworks in place, attention turns to the realities of long-term implementation. Carole Laible of Domini Impact Investments recounts what began as a seemingly straightforward task—setting goals for forest asset management—and evolved into a complex systems challenge. As subsystems collided and objectives conflicted, the path forward proved nonlinear and at times confounding. This session offers a candid account of detours, trade-offs, and lessons learned, highlighting the practical complexity investors face when managing real assets within interconnected systems.

This episode is part of our ongoing System-Level Investing series, featuring the chapter authors of The Handbook of System-Level Investing. Most capital market assumptions used across the investment industry are built almost entirely on historical data, which is a methodology that's worked for decades but may be reaching its limits as climate change reshapes long-term economic trends.
 
Host Georges Dyer is joined by Scott Kalb, former CIO and Deputy CEO of the Korea Investment Corporation and now Director of the Responsible Asset Allocator Initiative at Tufts University's Fletcher School, along with William Burckart, CEO of The Investment Integration Project and an associate editor of the Handbook.
 
They dig into Chapter 14, co-authored by Kalb and Paul O'Brien (Wyoming Retirement System board; former Deputy CIO of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority). This chapter is built around one foundational question for institutional investors: do your capital market assumptions account for systemic risk?
 
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Key themes:
- What capital market assumptions (CMAs) are, and why they're the foundation of every institutional asset allocation model
- How Kalb and O'Brien built a climate-adjusted CMA by running 40 major providers' assumptions through NGFS climate scenarios
- Why most CMA providers still lean heavily on backward-looking historical data, and what that means for long-term risk
- How asset owners can start the conversation with their own CMA providers about integrating climate risk
This episode offers a candid look at one of the least-discussed building blocks of institutional portfolio construction, and why it may need updating. Catch the rest of the System-Level Investing series on the channel. #responsibleinvesting
 
Join us at IEN's 2026 Annual Forum, November 18–20, 2026, in Toronto, ON. Register here: https://www.intentionalendowments.org/ien_2026_annual_forum
 
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Resources:
The Handbook of System-Level Investing (Jon Lukomnik & William Burckart): https://us.amazon.com/Handbook-System-level-Investing-Trillions-Rethinking/dp/1939282594
Responsible Asset Allocator Initiative (RAAI), The Fletcher School at Tufts: https://raai.tufts.edu/about
TIIP (The Investment Integration Project): https://tiiproject.com/
The Predistribution Initiative  (PDI): https://www.predistributioninitiative.org/
Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS): https://www.ngfs.net/en

Many institutional investors are caught in a bind: fiduciary duty requires them to weigh material risks like climate and workforce stability, while political pressure increasingly discourages them from naming those risks at all. Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, President & CEO of CapEQ and author of Just Change, joins Georges Dyer to unpack that tension, and what boards, CIOs, and asset owners can actually do about it.
Key themes:
Why political actors defining "materiality" from outside the institution creates market instability, not clarity
How to document investment methodology so ESG/DEI considerations are explicitly tied to financial thesis, not treated as messaging
What Freedom Economy offers investors navigating legal risk around values-aligned investing
Why waiting on election outcomes isn't a strategy, and what local, relationship-based coalition-building looks like instead
IEN's 2026 Annual Forum is November 18–20 in Toronto, ON. Register here: https://www.intentionalendowments.org/ien_2026_annual_forum
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Resources:
Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, "Fiduciary Duty: Why ESG and DEI Are Still Important Considerations for Investors" (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2026/04/06/fiduciary-duty-why-esg-and-dei-are-still-important-considerations-for-investors/
CapEQ: https://capeqimpact.com/
Just Change: How to Collaborate for Lasting Impact: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Change-Collaborate-Lasting-Impact/dp/1599327767
Freedom Economy: https://freedomeconomy.org/
The Handbook of System-Level Investing, Jon Lukomnik & William Burckart: https://us.amazon.com/Handbook-System-level-Investing-Trillions-Rethinking/dp/1939282594
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General Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction01:05 – What CapEQ Does, and Who It Serves02:37 –  Why Markets Depend on Clarity to Function04:19 – The Executive Order and the Proxy Advisor Rule07:27 –  Fiduciary Duty and the Shareholder Resolution Data09:18 –  A Framework for How Investors Are Responding15:22 –  Documenting Methodology: Tying ESG and DEI to Financial Thesis18:10 –  Freedom Economy: Legal Support for Values-Aligned Investors27:27 – Practical Advice for Asset Owners and Allocators32:44 – Tynesia’s Vision for the Future of Finance

Physical climate risks such as wildfires, floods, extreme heat, are generating more data than ever, but institutional investors still struggle to translate it into decisions. In this episode, Eric Collins, co-founder of CRX.pro and former tech lead at the University of Washington's Climate Risk Lab, joins Georges Dyer to unpack why the physical risk data industry has a "last mile" problem, and what it actually takes to price this risk into portfolios.
Key themes:
Why physical risk data is proliferating but investors still lack a way to translate it into fund-level decisions
A framework for "priced vs. unpriced" risk across insurance, debt, and credit channels
Why utilities are becoming a leading indicator for how markets reprice physical risk
Who actually uses this data – asset owners, consultants, and the managers who serve them
Georges Dyer and Eric Collins also cover CRX.pro's Resilience Benchmark tool for REITs, the shifting political language around "climate" versus "resilience," and the risk of losing foundational public climate data.
Join us at the IEN 2026 Annual Forum, November 18–20 in Toronto. Register here: https://www.intentionalendowments.org/ien_2026_annual_forum
 
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Resources:
CRX.pro: https://www.crx.pro/
UW Climate Risk Lab: https://foster.uw.edu/uw-climate-risk-lab/
GARP, "A Risk Professional's Guide to Physical Risk Assessments: A GARP Benchmarking Study of 13 Vendors" (2025): https://www.garp.org/white-paper/risk-professionals-guide-251023
Fire Weather by John Vaillant: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554938/fire-weather-by-john-vaillant/
 
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General Timestamps:
00:01:28 – Introducing Eric Collins and CRX.pro
00:01:44 – The gap in physical climate risk data
00:04:38 – Eric's path: Vanguard, Grow Intelligence, UW Climate Risk Lab
00:13:11 – Inside CRX.pro's Resilience Benchmark for REITs
00:18:43 – Priced vs. unpriced risk: three transmission channels
00:24:13 – Utilities as a case study in repricing
00:26:44 – Who uses this data: asset owners, consultants, and managers
00:38:46 – Climate risk in a shifting political environment
00:41:55 – Public data access and the foundational data layer
00:43:54 – What's next for CRX.pro
 
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This conversation is intended to inform institutional decision-making and does not constitute investment advice. Listeners should consult a qualified professional before making investment decisions.

Internal guardrails and standards achieve scale only when supported by coordinated field-level action. Featuring Cambria Allen-Ratzlaff (PRI), Fran Seegull (USIIA), Georges Dyer (IEN), and Josh Zinner (ICCR), this session examined field building as a critical—but often underappreciated—lever for system-level investing. Moderated by Chavon Sutton of Cambridge Associates, panelists explored how investors can shape shared norms, information flows, and policy environments, and why collaboration with peers—including competitors—is often essential to addressing risks no single investor can manage alone.

George Suttles is Executive Director of the Common Fund Institute, where he leads the organization's education, benchmarking, and professional development work for endowment and foundation investors. In this episode, Suttles joins host Georges Dyer to discuss how institutional investors are approaching sustainable and mission-aligned investing amid a shifting political and regulatory environment, a conversation relevant to any CIO, trustee, or asset manager weighing how to hold a long-term course through short-term pressure.
Key themes covered in this episode:- How fiduciary duty and sustainable investing intersect for long-term institutional investors- What long-running endowment research shows about the direction of the field- How institutions build governance literacy through structured professional development- The current state of diverse manager allocation amid legal and political headwinds
This conversation offers a grounded, practitioner's view of how institutional capital continues to evolve without departing from fiduciary discipline.
 
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Resources:IEN 2026 Annual Forum 📅 November 18–20, 2026 📍 University of Toronto, ON🔗 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2026-annual-forum
NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments — https://www.commonfund.org/commonfund-benchmark-studies
Investment Stewardship Academy (Commonfund Institute, Yale University) — https://www.commonfund.org/investment-stewardship-academy
Espresso Chats podcast (Commonfund Institute) — https://www.commonfund.org/espressochats
Impact Finance Center's Diverse Managers initiative — https://impactfinancecenter.org/diverse-managers/
 
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General Timestamps:00:00 Introduction01:59 Fiduciary Duty and Staying the Course06:22 Where Institutional Investors Stand Today10:06 How Asset Managers Are Responding15:45 Inside the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments20:41 Building Governance Literacy29:36 Diverse Managers Amid Legal and Political Headwinds38:23 What Effective Governance Change Looks Like45:59 Closing Thoughts and Advice

As fiduciary expectations evolve, so too must the shared frameworks and reference points that guide boards, CIOs, and investment committees. Moderated by Tynesia Boyea-Robinson (CapEQ), this fireside conversation marks the launch of The Handbook on System-Level Investing. Editors Jon Lukomnik and William Burckart discuss why the Handbook is arriving now—amid intensifying systemic risks, rising scrutiny of fiduciary practice, and growing recognition that diversification alone cannot protect long-term returns. Drawing on case studies from leading global investors, they explore how system-level investing has moved from theory to practice and what decision-makers need to understand as market outcomes are increasingly shaped by system health. Get your copy here: a.co/d/0ch6wiRr