Rachel Robasciotti
Rachel J. Robasciotti is founder and CEO of Adasina Social Capital, an investing and financial activism firm acting as a vital link between the financial markets and social justice movements. Her contributions include mainly commitments to increase the flow of Black, indigenous and people of color within the investment industry. She is also involved in many other projects, namely as Treasurer of the Board of Directors for Resource Generation Board Member for One Fair Wage, and Advisor of the Indigenous Women’s Investment Fund for Native Women Lead, as well as a previous Director of queer people and gender violence-related foundations.
What we learnt
Rachel Robasciotti shared her personal journey into the impact space and discussed the work of her company. Rachel explained that Adasina focuses on wealth management with a social justice investing strategy, particularly serving women, gender expansive individuals, and people of color. Her motivation for entering the impact space stems from her experiences growing up in a segregated and impoverished black community, where she witnessed the effects of racial, gender, economic, and climate injustice.
Rachel emphasized the importance of mobilizing investors for social justice causes. While there may be short-term financial trade-offs for not investing in certain industries, she believes that sustainable long-term returns are achievable by investing in companies that engage in sustainable practices. Adasina's investment thesis focuses on delivering market-like returns without the need for concessionary capital. Rachel provided data showing that their Adasina Social Justice Index outperforms unscreened indexes, demonstrating the viability of social justice investing.
When it comes to determining the criteria for their screens, Rachel highlighted the collaboration with social justice partners. Adasina selects organizations led by and working on behalf of the communities most impacted by social injustice. These partners help identify impactful metrics and, in cases where data doesn't exist, work together with Adasina to develop new datasets. Rachel provided examples such as the creation of a dataset on forced arbitration for sexual harassment and a dataset on sub-minimum wage payments by publicly traded companies.
Developing these datasets can take anywhere from six months to two years, depending on the issue and the number of companies involved. Adasina's approach involves translating the social justice organization's goals and issues into meaningful metrics for investors. Rachel emphasized that Adasina has a Social Justice Department dedicated to bridging the gap between social justice movements and the investment world.
Regarding collaborations with other institutions, Rachel explained that Adasina focuses more on facilitating coalition building and data sharing rather than partnering directly with other asset managers. They aim to bring investors together to collectively act in solidarity with social justice movements.
Rachel shared a significant example of how Adasina's work shifted power dynamics. Their campaign against forced arbitration for sexual harassment resulted in over 10 million workers no longer being subjected to it. Their advocacy also influenced legislation that impacted over 130 million workers. She emphasized that Adasina's approach of listening to and supporting the goals of the communities most impacted is a shift in traditional power structures.
Overall, the conversation with Rachel provided insights into the work of Adasina Social Capital, and the impact they created by mobilizing investors and collaborating with social justice movements.
If you had a magic wand…
The number one thing that we need as an asset manager is more assets under management. However, racial and gender discrimination gets in the way. There is a 1% unfairness that hinders our progress. If I had a magic wand, I would remove the racial and gender bias from the asset manager selection process. This would result in demographic parity, with 51% of the assets managed by women and 39% by people of color. I believe this would create a different world than the one we're living in. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles in the way. Our Due Diligence 2.0 commitment, which can be found at commitment.com, is our roadmap for removing systemic bias from the process, with a focus on racial disparities. However, women are also facing similar issues.
Key quotes
“We select the partners with whom we work based on a few criteria. One criterion is that social justice organizations are actually mobilizing the community in service of a particular goal. We are looking for organizations that are led by the community of intended impact and do work on behalf of that community. This means that while it would be lovely for a white-led organization to work on behalf of the black community, they might not necessarily be the organization that we would prioritize over a black-led organization doing work on behalf of the black community. It's about the leadership, who they're working for, and their ability to engage with us about the way that investors can advance their movement.”
‘What's different is that we financial professionals tend to spend a lot of time talking to each other about the outside world, and usually, we're only working with data that already exists. This is we've done differently at Adasina. We talk to people outside of finance, and when there is no data, we help develop it.’
‘It takes an investment professional who knows what investors need and also knows what would be meaningful to the social justice organization. There's a lot of translating work that happens. The need for translation comes down to the terminology and words used, disambiguating there. But it also comes down to saying, "Great, this is your issue. How do we translate that into a meaningful metric for investors? And how do we work with you to ensure that we're gathering the information that we need about the public companies that are involved?" So, it's a lot of work. That's kind of the secret sauce of what we do: translating.’
‘You can think of it this way: ESG is saying, "What impact does the world have on this company?" That's mostly what ESG is trying to figure out. But impact investing and social justice, specifically justice investing, is saying, "What impact is this company having on the world?" Those may seem like they're different, but in a highly connected world, they get closer and closer.’
‘There's a reason we follow social justice movements, not only because we want to advance their goals, but also because it's a more efficient way of making an impact. They're already working on the issue, raising awareness, right?’
‘Regarding small-scale projects, if you mean private investing not in the public markets, small-scale projects can have an impact. However, unless they're connected with other small-scale projects and coordinating along certain principles, themes, or bigger goals, it's unlikely to achieve systemic-level change.’
‘I believe that technology is creating a more interconnected world than we've ever had before. In an interconnected world, the impact of a corporation's behavior, whether it's a public, big public company, or private company, does not go unnoticed. So, I think technology is making us more interconnected, and it's making impact investing more relevant because people care about how a company is impacting the world as much as the world's impact on the company.’