The Future of Finance Podcast

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

Roy Swan, Head of Mission Investing at the Ford Foundation, joins Georges Dyer to talk about his new book, Positive Sum: How Zero Sum Thinking Broke Capitalism and How We Can Fix It. Drawing on his experience running Ford Foundation's mission-related investing program, Roy makes the case for positive-sum capital allocation, not as a values position, but as a measurable efficiency argument. For endowment leaders, CIOs, and trustees weighing how fiduciary duty applies in a more complex world, this conversation grounds the debate in economic theory, historical precedent, and portfolio-level evidence rather than advocacy.
In this episode, Roy and Georges discuss:
The research behind the $50 trillion figure — economic research Roy cites on lost economic output from exclusionary, zero-sum systems, plus supporting data from Citigroup and MIT Sloan on worker disengagement
The mathematical origins of zero-sum and positive-sum thinking (von Neumann and Nash) and why the distinction matters for capital allocation
How Ford Foundation's mission-related investing program is structured across themes like affordable housing, financial inclusion, and responsible technology
Why fiduciary duty and positive externalities are increasingly inseparable for foundations, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds
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.
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
IEN 2026 Annual Forum 📅 November 18–20, 2026 📍 University of Toronto, ON
🔗 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2026-annual-forum
Roy Swan’s Book Positive Sum: How Zero Sum Thinking Broke Capitalism and How We Can Fix It: https://a.co/d/046uE19t
RAND Corporation, Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 (Carter C. Price & Kathryn A. Edwards) → https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html 
Citigroup research on the cost of racial and economic inequality (est. $16 trillion, ~2000–2020) https://www.citigroup.com/global/insights/closing-the-racial-inequality-gaps-20200922
MIT Sloan / Good Jobs Institute research on worker engagement and its cost to the economy (Prof. Zeynep Ton) https://goodjobsinstitute.org/
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General Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Why Foundations Separate Endowment from Mission
08:39 Sponsor: IEN 2026 Annual Forum
09:11 The Mathematical Roots of Zero-Sum vs. Positive-Sum Thinking
13:36 Milton Friedman and Why Nations Fail: Rethinking Economic Orthodoxy
23:07 The $50 Trillion Cost of Zero-Sum Thinking, Explained
26:32 Worker Engagement, Culture, and the KKR Proof Point
28:47 Inside Ford Foundation's Mission-Related Investing Portfolio
41:37 Who Needs to Lead the Shift to Positive-Sum Capital
52:27 Roy's Vision for the Future of Finance

In this episode, Georges Dyer is joined by Caroline Escott, Head of Investment Stewardship and Co-Head of Sustainable Ownership at Railpen, the in-house manager for the UK Railways pension schemes overseeing £34 billion on behalf of over 350,000 members. Together they walk through Railpen's December 2025 case study “Systemic Stewardship: The Financially Material Imperative” produced with the Investment Integration Project (TIIP) and Sinclair Capital, distilling five years of live implementation into a framework any asset owner can learn from.
What you'll learn:
How to deploy company engagement, policy influence, and collaborative initiatives as distinct levers and when each one is the right tool for the job
How to identify "systemically important" companies in your portfolio whose governance decisions create ripple effects across entire sectors
How to adapt your stewardship approach when the regulatory and political environment shifts without abandoning your financial materiality goals
Where to start if you're a smaller or mid-sized asset owner without Railpen's internal resources or scale
For CIOs, trustees, and investment teams thinking about how to move from ESG integration to genuine market influence, this episode delivers a concrete, evidence-based framework built over five years of live implementation.
Resources mentioned:
📄 Systemic Stewardship: The Financially Material Imperative - Railpen, TIIP & Sinclair Capital (December 2025): https://www.railpen.com/insights/reports/systemic-stewardship-the-financially-material-imperative/
🌐 Investment Integration Project (TIIP): https://www.tiiproject.com
🌐 Sinclair Capital: https://www.sinclaircapital.com/
🎙️ Business Pants Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/2q1oewA1uEEmTjwKZfDJnp
📋 Railpen Annual Stewardship Reports: https://www.railpen.com
General Timestamps:
 
00:00  Introduction & US SIF Forum 2026
02:10  Why Every Large Investor Should Think Like a Universal Owner
06:45  The TIIP Case Study — Grounding the 3 Levers in Fiduciary Duty
12:00  Lever 1: How to Use Company Engagement for System-Wide Change
20:30  Lever 2: Why Policy Engagement Is Often More Efficient Than Company Engagement
29:15  Lever 3: How to Build Collaborative Initiatives That Actually Work
38:40  How to Adapt Your Levers When the Regulatory Environment Shifts
44:50  How Smaller Asset Owners Can Apply All 3 Levers Without Railpen's Scale
50:20  What Happens When Asset Owners Use Their Collective Sway
 
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The Future of Finance podcast is produced by the Intentional Endowments Network. New episodes explore how institutional capital can be deployed to build more resilient, prosperous, and sustainable financial systems.
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*Disclaimer*
 
The information presented in this episode reflects the views and opinions of the guest and does not constitute investment, legal, or regulatory advice. The Intentional Endowments Network does not endorse any specific products, services, or organizations referenced herein.

Researcher’s View: Reframing Financial Markets Through a Systems Lens Genevieve Hayman, Senior Researcher @ CFA Institute Research and Policy Center To deepen the analytical foundations introduced earlier in the day, Genevieve Hayman of the CFA Institute Research and Policy Center presents findings from her 2025 report (co-authored with Raymond Pang), Reframing Financial Markets as Complex Systems.
 
The session explores why viewing markets as dynamic, interconnected systems—rather than static, equilibrium-driven constructs—can materially improve how investors understand risk and design portfolios. Hayman introduces tools from complex systems science, including agent-based modeling and network theory, and explains how these concepts can enhance systemic risk analysis, illuminate feedback loops, and support more resilient portfolio construction.

Investor bias isn't just a philosophical concern, but a measurable drag on portfolio performance.
 
Daryn Dodson, Founder and Managing Partner of Illumen Capital and faculty member at Stanford Graduate School of Business, joins Georges Dyer to discuss how systematic bias causes institutional allocators to pass over high-performing managers, what peer-reviewed research reveals about how this dynamic intensifies at higher performance levels, and how Illumen Capital's decade-long bias-reduction curriculum is designed to surface overlooked alpha and drive systems-level change in capital markets.
Key themes covered:
How bias causes institutional allocators to leave measurable returns on the table — and why the problem compounds as manager performance increases
The architecture of Illumen Capital's fund-of-funds model: bias reduction training across three operational areas (deal sourcing, talent, and board selection) sustained over a full 10-year fund cycle
Evaluating first-time fund managers across investing, fundraising, and operations — and the structural barriers that affect managers from underrepresented backgrounds
The case for diversity in financial ecosystems: why a more representative asset management industry is a systemic performance question, not simply a political one
Daryn's foundational research, conducted with Professor Jennifer Eberhardt and the Stanford SPARQ Center, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and ranks in the top 1% of papers in its publication period.
 
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Resources Mentioned:
Illumen Capital: https://www.illumencapital.com
Research Paper — "Race Influences Professional Investors' Financial Judgments" (PNAS): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1822052116
Impact Experience: https://www.impact-experience.com/
Stanford SPARQ Center https://sparq.stanford.edu
Book: Enlightened Bottom Line by Jenna Nicholas https://www.jenna-nicholas.com/book
 
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General Timestamps:
 
00:00 Introduction & US SIF Forum 2026 Announcement
02:45 Illumen Capital: Fund-of-Funds Model and Founding Thesis
07:10 Stanford SPARQ Research: How Bias Affects Allocator Decision-Making
13:20 Bias Reduction in Practice: The 3 Operational Areas
19:50 First-Time Fund Managers: Evaluating Investing, Fundraising & Operations
26:15 Why a Fund-of-Funds Structure Fits a Systemic Problem
31:40 Stanford Business School: Teaching Impact Business Models
36:55 Political Polarization, External Stressors & Investor Decision-Making
41:30 CFA Research Policy Council & Institutional Education
44:50 Impact Experience: Sustained Behavior Change Through Environment
52:10 Retro Analysis, Backcasting & the Long-Term Vision for Capital Markets
 
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Daryn Dodson Bio:
 
Daryn Dodson is Managing Director at Illumen Capital, the world's first private equity firm dedicated to addressing bias across financial markets to unlock returns and impact.  Illumen Capital invests in the world’s top impact fund managers and applies research-based interventions in partnership with Stanford University to help fund managers to see past bias to add value.
 
Daryn previously led the Special Equities Program, as the Private Equity and Venture consultant to the Calvert Funds, the $45 billion pioneer of the impact investing field. Through this vehicle, Calvert maintains a portfolio of more than 40 funds on five continents, representing over 350 underlying portfolio companies across a range of themes including renewable energy, biotech, education technology and microfinance.
 
Daryn currently serves on the Board of Directors for Ben and Jerry’s, The National Advisory Board of Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, and The National Theater in Washington, DC. Daryn is a lecturer in General Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he earned his M.B.A., after receiving an A.B. in Public Policy from Duke University.
 
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The Future of Finance podcast is produced by the Intentional Endowments Network. New episodes explore how institutional capital can be deployed to build more resilient, prosperous, and sustainable financial systems.
–
 
*Disclaimer*
The information presented in this episode reflects the views and opinions of the guest and does not constitute investment, legal, or regulatory advice. The Intentional Endowments Network does not endorse any specific products, services, or organizations referenced herein.
 

Fiduciary Duty in Focus Applying Fiduciary Duties to System-level Investing
 
Tools and dashboards are only actionable if they are grounded in fiduciary clarity. Maurits Dolman (Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, speaking in his own capacity) and George Suttles (Commonfund Institute) examine how fiduciary duty—properly understood—requires investors to consider risks and responsibilities that arise at the level of the financial system itself. Drawing on trust and pension law and comparative fiduciary practice, they argue that prudence today must account for foreseeable, material systemic risks such as climate change, inequality, and financial instability. The session makes the case that system-level investing is not a departure from fiduciary duty, but it’s necessary evolution in an era where long-term portfolio performance depends on system resilience.
 
Discussants: Maurits Dolmans, Senior Counsel @ Clearly Gottlieb George Suttles, Executive Director @ Commonfund Institute

Amy Jaffe, Director of the Energy, Climate Justice & Sustainability Lab at NYU, joins Georges Dyer for a rigorous, wide-ranging conversation on how institutional investors need to be thinking about energy risk, climate justice, and long-term capital allocation right now. As one of the most respected voices at the intersection of energy markets, sustainability, and institutional finance, Jaffe brings analytical precision and on-the-ground perspective to questions that every CIO, endowment leader, and asset manager navigating the energy transition needs to engage with seriously.
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Key themes explored in this episode:
- How NYU's Energy, Climate Justice & Sustainability Lab is training the next generation of investors and practitioners to operate across traditional energy systems and sustainability frameworks simultaneously
- Why sustainability must function as a genuine risk lens rather than a screening product, and what that distinction means for how institutional portfolios are actually built and managed
- The state of the global energy transition in 2026: AI data center demand, LNG supply disruptions, Pakistan's rapid solar buildout, and why natural gas is structurally too slow to manage the new load curve
- How adaptation finance and climate justice work are being deployed at the community level and whether capital is actually reaching the populations and geographies that need it most The Future of Finance is produced by the Intentional Endowments Network, supporting institutional investors in aligning capital with long-term value and resilience.
 
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General Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction: Amy Jaffe & NYU's Energy, Climate Justice & Sustainability Lab
03:20 How Amy Jaffe's Career Spans Energy Markets, Policy & Institutional Investment
08:45 What the NYU Lab Does — and Who It Serves
16:10 Student-Corporate Partnerships: Google, National Grid & Fusion Energy Research
22:00 Sustainability as a Risk Lens vs. a Screening Product
28:30 The Opportunity Side: Affordable Housing & Climate Solutions Investing
35:00 The New NYU Sustainability Master's Program: What It Teaches and Why Now
42:15 Climate Justice, Adaptation Finance & Community-Level Work in New York City
49:00 Energy Transition Outlook: Iran, LNG Disruption & Global Renewable Momentum
58:30 AI Data Centers, Battery Storage & the Limits of Natural Gas
1:05:00 Advice for Institutional Investors Navigating the Energy Transition
 
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Resources:
 
Podcasts
The Energy Gang: https://www.woodmac.com/podcasts/energy-gang/
Books
"Choke Points: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare" by Edward Fishman (2025)
"Energy's Digital Future" by Amy Myers Jaffe: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/energys-digital-future/9780231196826/
Organizations:
Solar One; https://solar1.org/
East New York Farms: https://www.eastnewyorkfarms.org/
Research Index ND-GAIN Country Index: https://gain.nd.edu/our-work/country-index/
 
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Disclaimer The information presented in this episode reflects the views and opinions of the guest and does not constitute investment, legal, or regulatory advice. The Intentional Endowments Network does not endorse any specific products, services, or organizations referenced herein.

US SIF: https://web.cvent.com/event/e6c2819f-b8d1-4861-bc7c-21a6e47c6c66/summary
 
Institutional investors are confronting a structural shift in how risk, return, and resilience are shaped. Climate instability, inequality, democratic fragility, and market concentration are no longer peripheral concerns—they are system-level forces that increasingly determine portfolio outcomes. Yet the dominant tools of modern investment practice, from portfolio theory to ESG integration, were not designed to manage recursive, market-wide risks. Drawing on a decade of field-building and recent work with leading asset owners, Burckart will share how system-level investing has moved from an emerging idea to an operating imperative and reflect on our central challenge: how to translate system-level ambition into repeatable governance, portfolio-wide decision-making, and durable influence on the systems that underpin long-term value creation.
 
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Disclaimer The information presented in this episode reflects the views and opinions of the guest and does not constitute investment, legal, or regulatory advice. The Intentional Endowments Network does not endorse any specific products, services, or organizations referenced herein.