Financial Influence and Impact Investing with the Next Generation

Christine LeViseur Mendonça
Shore to Shore Advisory, LLC
Changemaker & Advisor

Ally. Changemaker. Humanitarian. Friend. At heart, Christine LeViseur Mendonça simply loves people. She is the Founder of Shore to Shore Advisory, a boutique advisory firm focusing on working with clients who aspire to leverage their economic, philanthropic, financial, and social influence to work towards solving the problems that matter most. With nearly 20 years of experience working at the intersection of social good and business – Christine understands how to navigate and balance the pulls of pragmatism and the fringes of innovation – to drive towards goals amendable to clients and their teams alike.  

Christine previously founded Humans on the Move, a social impact advisory focused on connecting the private, humanitarian and public sectors. That work continues with clients through Shore to Shore Advisory.  

Christine is an international speaker and convener with a focus on the role of next-generation leaders, to leverage their political, social, and financial influence to address the challenges facing our communities and globe. She has spoken at the United Nations in Geneva and New York, C20, Girls20, Columbia University, the Conference Board, MaRS Discovery District, and the Centre for Social Innovation.  

Christine is presently a Senior Advisor to NEXUS Global Youth, following her role as the founding co-chair of the NEXUS Working Group on Refugees and Forced Displacement. She has previously served as a founding board member to the UnFunded List, a board member of Voice For Refuge, as a senior advisor for the Mentor Capital Network, an Advisor to MaRS Centre for Impact Investing, as a board member of Latinos in College, Tampa Bay WaVE, and as a Master Guardian ad Litem. 

Christine received her MBA at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in 2010 and earned her BS in Business Administration in International Business at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She has also studied at ITSEM in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the American University in Paris, and the University of South Florida. Christine is a dual citizen of the United States and Brazil. 

Kirby Rosplock 
Welcome to the Tamarind Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock. And today we're talking about a super important topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is focusing on the next-gen and how they're reclaiming or re-imagining their power and their influence, and the important discussion topic of impact investing. Today, we have Christine LeViseur Mendoça with us, and she is a spark plug. She is a change-maker, advocate, ally, and advisor. She does so many different things strategically with clients, particularly with next-gen family members and wealthy family offices. And we're gonna hear a little bit more about her work, her background, how she came to this work, and also more about what next-gens are thinking and doing to step up and be involved in the important discussion of impact investing. So Christine, welcome. 
  
Christine Mendonça 
Hi. I'd like to kind of share a little bit about my background, so it makes sense. Why do all the things I do? I grew up in a family where I was philanthropically involved from a very young age of five. I was following my mom to volunteer commitments in the community. And so I always knew that as I was growing up, giving back was really important. Then at the same time, I remember as early as a young kid, helping out with the paperwork behind the family stuff. And that included actually helping stuff the envelopes for proxies on investments for my parents. And, so, I've always kind of had, like, an eye to the business stuff and an eye towards finance, community, and philanthropy.  My background is in international business. I did that for my undergrad, and my graduate degrees. I have worked and studied abroad, and spent five years in the steel industries. So it’s not sexy or really sustainable, but I was the fifth generation of my family to work in it and I did corporate finance and got to travel around the United States, integrating small businesses into a big multinational company. And I enjoyed that work, but 2008 happened and I was in grad school.  I had to kind of pivot to the work that I'm doing now and kind of around impact investing. So I kind of got started right around the time the term impact investing was coined. I have been lucky to be a part of some really amazing projects and see some really amazing funds grow and families come on board. We're in this really unique time right now, though. It's really fun to be doing the work because so many of the things we've been talking about for over a decade are coming to fruition; as well as there's this massive transfer of wealth that we've been talking about for over a decade. It's actually happening. And it's interesting and fascinating to see it happen in real-time. 
  
Kirby Rosplock 
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's staggering.  We were talking about the New York Times article written fairly recently called “The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History is Here, With Familiar Rich Winners.” I just want to bring this up.  I think it's relevant to this conversation, that there are 73 million Baby Boomers that are turning between 60 and 80. And we're looking at approximately 84,000 trillion projected to be passed down from older Americans to Millennials and Gen X heirs through 2045, 16 trillion will be transferred within the next decade, so it's happening real-time right now. It's shocking that the Baby Boomers hold about half of our nation's wealth, which is about $140 trillion. These conversations between Boomers and the Millennials, and X-ers are so vital, right, to the continuity of what's going to happen next. So let's talk about those conversations. What does that look like, Christine? 

Christine Mendonça  

I think it's really interesting because I think we think about the rate of social change, and environmental awareness, and everything. And we think of it as going not fast enough, or maybe it’s going so fast, depending on what generation you’re from. And so, one of my favorite conversations that I’ve had in the last week has been with someone who was the 4th gen in her family and talking about how the second-gen (they're in their eighties) are thinking, you did this wrong when it came to their philanthropy, right? And stepping back as a millennial, having the empathy to say, you did the best you could, with the knowledge that you had. We have the privilege of having cell phones, and information at our fingertips, that your generation just didn't have, right? Yeah, and so, that's been this interesting piece, but at the same time, because we have all this information at our fingertips, next-gen specific there, and specifically people who are settling into the opportunity of having influence over that wealth, whether it's at the foundation level or if it's at the actual, like, investing the corporate or the family office level. They're starting to ask questions that maybe their advisor's teams were maybe expecting, but they're asking deeper and deeper questions about where investments are and what kind of role they play because philanthropy is part of the way you make change. I think a lot of next-gen get frustrated because they don't see that as the only way or it's not as successful or as fast as they like to be making change. 

 
Kirby Rosplock 
Well, let's go there for one quick minute and parse out, what do we mean by philanthropy versus impact investing because I think a lot of times, and maybe this is a generalization, the elder generation kind of lumps it all together. Like, oh, it's just the same thing, but it's really not. I think the next gens really view it more as having completely different impacts, no pun intended, but different results, right? So maybe, in your mind, talk about what you see as the major differences. 
 

Christine Mendonça 
So, like, philanthropy’s key role is filling that gap between what the government system is (whether it's local, national, or federal). So, from big NGOs down to your small community-based organizations. They actually kind of serve that gap of whatever the government's not able to do, right? At the same time, it can be a catalytic opportunity to see if you can create new businesses and new markets. Philanthropy is often the world at that place. It's not returned seeking capital. I'm trying to do good or fix a gap. Impact investing is still interest-seeking and doing good, but it's putting money to work that's seeking a return, right? Now, that return might be outsized. You know, it could be ahead of the stock market-based returns, just like it would be for venture capital or it could be a much smaller return because of the environment that you're investing in. Right now, it all depends on what the purpose, the size, and the type of investment. The purpose of it, the size, and type. I think that you're hearing more and more about people focusing on those investments that are considered more traditional alternative assets, where they're seeking that venture capital type return or the private equity type return around impact investing. Whereas early on, there is a lot more conversation about it being, you know, being a negative return or small, but that was what dominated the conversation. They've all existed, but I think there's an increased interest in finding those opportunities that are more of a venture capital curve.  Does that make sense? 
  
Kirby Rosplock 
That makes sense and are those kinds of conversations that you see happening most frequently with the clients that you serve or are you seeing all of these types? 

Christine Mendonça 
I'm seeing all of it. I’m often seeing next-gens step back and say they understand that impact investing is a part of that, or that the label is a part of the alternative asset scope of what they are looking at, but they're trying to look at the entire sphere. So not just alternative assets, but like where are we holding equities and bonds? How do I take the impact investing lens, and apply it to publicly traded securities? How do I look at the other assets I have and what are the implications of that? And so, there's a lot of, kind of, conversations that are had, not just based on, hey, how do I take this much money and put it into a clean energy, or a carbon capture startup? It's more like, How do I look at my entire portfolio of assets that I think I might have access to in the next five years, and really think about, wow, what do I need to do to move them so that they align with my values? And understanding it.  I think, even if you step back, it's like, how do my values fit into what I have or where I could go? That's the bigger question. 

Kirby Rosplock 
And sometimes it's how do those values resonate or do they resonate with the family or the legacy family or the greater family of origin? Where do they fit? I have experienced in my own work, that sometimes there's attention where it's like, no, no, we make as much money as possible with our money. Then there's, oh well why can't we do good while we're making money with our money, but not compromise the impact of the result of the money we're making?  Like, we're investing in fossil fuels and cigarette companies and companies that potentially do harm to our environment, to our people socially. So, I think it's really fascinating. The generational component to this, and I'm sure you find it all the time in your work. 
 
Christine Mendonça 
I think that's really fascinating and I also think that there are ways. I often meet with next-gens who are really, really passionate about the work they're doing, and they're really passionate about trying to push the envelope or the fringe on that particular space, whether that's around sustainable fashion, or that's around climate change. That's around equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. I'm trying to say, that you've come to me because they've hit some kind of a barrier, whether that's within their family or within their advisors. And they're frustrated because they're passionate to make change and for some reason, they can't. That passion doesn't necessarily translate into action on the other side. What's interesting to me is you can't be a flame thrower, who's sitting in a room saying we've got it like, we have to divest from this. We have to do a shareholder resolution on this. We have to do this,  and we have to do that. They're going to be met with, no, we can't. We have rules. We have these governing documents. I can't just divest, you know, millions of dollars out of this one company, because you don't like the way they’re doing this work in Texas. 

 
So, let's try to figure it out together. Oftentimes, stepping away from all the family engagement and saying, okay, if it's a publicly-traded company I kind of walk them through what shareholder advocacy engagement is and how to understand the nomenclature around it because it's so confusing. Both hedge funds and focus investors are called activists but they are totally different things. They are after very different prerogatives oftentimes, right? So it's understanding what the right words are for it, but then explaining that, you know, for example, over half of the Fortune 500 is headquartered in Delaware. So, there'll be very specific rules that those companies have to follow, and those words have to follow.  

When it comes to entertaining shareholder proposals, it has to be good for the business. So, if it's a climate change issue, or if it's an issue around diversity, equity inclusion, you have to make a business case for it, as much as you want to make the social or environmental case for it, right? And that's kind of like, where I come in to say, okay, I'll go through and read all of the, you know, 10 K's, and I will listen to the different investor calls and sit down and help parse out what those arguments are. And then also find out if there's somebody that's already doing this because if somebody's already doing it... that's the other thing, shareholder activism doesn't always have to happen in a vacuum. If there's allyship or there are other investors that are going after the same thing. So maybe as much as you want to go off and do something, you try and find other investors who are concerned about the same issues that you are.  So all come together and put forward engagement around an issue. I lead with engagement because I think that the talk in the press, and stop me if I'm rambling, is about shareholder proposals, but shareholder proposals are the last thing. Having a dialogue, it starts with talking to management, and you can't do that unless you understand their business. 
  
Kirby Rosplock 
Well, I think what you're also bringing tremendous awareness to is that family member owners who are thinking about an individual stock that they own and that company maybe you want to impress upon changes.  You really have to come full circle, too. Who is this company? How are they owned and operated? What is the governance, and the legal documentation state? How do I play by the rules, if I want to effect change? Then, can I affect change in a way that is meaningful enough to still maintain my ownership? Like, if I could sell that stock and just vote with my feet, right? That's a whole other discussion we could have on how people decide to engage or not engage. It’s just saying where you can invest. Companies that have this kind of practice from governance or this kind of board makeup if they don't have women or other minority interests on their board itself. I think it's really incredible how much drill down you do to help bring awareness to the family, and the next-gen investor about how change happens. That's not just because they are upset about business practices or their environmental impact. 

Christine Mendonça 
I want to drill down on the fact that I feel it's really about finding the issues and the companies, you know, oftentimes are looking and seeing what companies are being targeted for the same issues. It's also, are there companies that are going to be impacted maybe in the short or medium term by legislation outside the United States that would force them to do the same things that they were seeking to change. So, recently I put together a white paper for a client and I kind of made it available publicly in a shortened form about the child labor issues here in the United States. There were a couple of shareholder proposals this proxy season that were focused on labor exploitation, but those companies (a lot of the ones that were listed in the media as having children in the supply chain in the US) want to operate in Europe. And they're going to have to fill out and file a human rights due diligence report every year if they want to continue to operate in Europe. So there's a business case now for a lot of investors to say, hey, look, you need to address this. So sometimes, it's figuring out strategically where you don't have to go in with the flamethrower. You go in and engage and say this is a business decision you need. It's not just, sending out a press release and saying, I don't believe in having kids in my supply chain. You have to do this because if you want to continue to have access to the EU, you're going to have to certify that you don't have kids in your supply chain. 
  
Kirby Rosplock 
Well, right, and even for me as a vendor for certain larger corporations, it's pretty common in due diligence. They're asking me those same questions. Do I have any sort of child labor? I mean, of course, I don't, but it's amazing how much this is now impacting big to even smaller companies because they feel responsible for everyone in their supply chain, not even just the direct employment, you know, direct employees. So, I find that it's interesting and pervasive when you really start to look at the ramifications of just that issue alone. Yeah, transparency. No, creating broader awareness and documentation. I think that's going to be a big part of our world, too. 
  
Christine Mendonça 
It is a big part of our world and I think that it's this how do you have conversations that are constructive and business-focused that achieve both the objective that you're looking to have from an impact standpoint, but also are coming from a, hey, this is really what investors are looking for, because it makes sense financially. Oftentimes, those boards and those managers are going to say, well that’s not something for my bottom line and that's a nice to have, but not a need to have. You have to reframe the conversation to be no; for example, your customer base is going to be more diverse in the next 50 years than it ever has and you have to have both employees and products that are for that community. 

Kirby Rosplock 
So, talk to me. How do you help your clients? Just think about the metrics for success, because they might have different standards for what they want to me, for the impact investments they're currently involved in, versus the impact at the client level, or the, say company level. So, talk to me a little bit more, just about a planning approach that you take in, and how you educate them to build a plan that will work for them. 
  
Christine Mendonça 
Yep. So, I will talk about short-term, medium, and long-term goals.  I often remind them that investments, whether those are direct investments, or you're looking at your public equity shareholder advocate, are long-term goals, but we want incremental progress, right? 
Depending on the industry and what the investment is, we'll ask for metrics, but I always ask for, on top of metrics, qualitative backup. So, because I'm a firm believer that anyone can put numbers into a spreadsheet, but I want to have some level of qualitative backup to those numbers. Whether that's stories, whether it's video, whether that gives me some information, so I can actually see, as both an advisor and with my clients, that you're doing what you say you're doing. And I think that's the start and it depends on what the investment is. Is it a quarterly update? Is it an annual update? I've worked with people who have had investor reps sit in on investments so that sometimes I've done it for a client before. I don't like to, because that kind of takes me away from other work, but that is something that if it's a risky enough investment, I see a purpose for that. It's framing it up and I think the metrics conversation is really important, in the sense that its metrics are critical. You can also cripple a business by asking for too much. So you have to find a medium, right? 
Just like you would on the non-profit side, metrics are important, but you've got to make sure they have time and space to do the actual work we're investing in them to do it. 

Kirby Rosplock 
Yep. And do you find that some of the families you're working with kind of similarly have an expectation? Are those, maybe, next-gen family members getting involved? What is their personal success towards this area? You know, it might be like, what have they learned? You know? What role have they stepped up to take? How do they demonstrate how they're making a decision or doing due diligence? So I just wonder if that also becomes part of this bigger application or learning process. 

Christine Mendonça 
I think part of it is that more and more next-gens are trying to ask for more responsibilities in their family and are trying to get more say in this.  Give me, like, help me be a bigger part of this. So navigating what that looks like, because the middle generation is still there, and they still have a lot of control, right? Yeah, and so they're stepping into a place where when you're with a multi-generational family, you've got a bunch of different irons in the fire and with a lot of different personalities depending on that. The other thing is, I don't think any two families are the same. They might have similar issues at the high level, but once you get into the nitty gritty, they've all got their little particulars. So it's not like you can have a cookie-cutter approach. So it's very interesting.  I think it just takes time. It takes time to learn what they're looking for and then it takes time to figure out how to get more. Like, help them get more responsibility and, or see if there are other avenues where they can take that responsibility. Is that starting a business? Is that, you know, trying to set up some kind of an investment vehicle on their own where they can go out and seek more of what they're looking for. Is it getting them more involved in, say, the foundation side and giving them an opportunity? I think the family foundation side sometimes has these unique kinds of labs for some of these extra funds to kind of test out some of the impact investing methodologies and thoughts and even a more broader lens over their investment strategies. 
  
Kirby Rosplock 
We could probably talk about this for hours because there's so much to unpack, but if you are just thinking of a few highlights from what we've talked about today or just the work that you do with families, what would you want to leave listeners or viewers with when you think about impact investing, the next generation, and just the urgency, right? Let's talk about the urgency of it. 

Christine Mendonça 
I think it's now. It's happening, right? I think that the two challenges or takeaways are really understanding the industries that you are interested in and getting a sense of how they make money. Where are their expenses really coming from and what their true impact can and could be. I think that the biggest threat to trying to do a lot of the work, when it comes to investing dollars and really trying to drive social and environmental change, is there's a lot of washing happening. So, companies out there saying that they're doing something sustainable or they're saying that they're doing something socially good and the reality is that it is just a marketing label on top of stuff. That is going to be one of the biggest challenges, both for us as advisors, but also for those wealth holders to kind of pick through what's real and what's not. One interesting anecdote is when I started in 2010 and doing impact investing, I went and met with countless financial advisors and told them I was doing this work and they laughed at me and I will say, like, big Wall Street banks are like, nobody's interested in what you're talking about. I said this wealth transfer is going to come and they're going to ask for it, and they were like we only have 10 funds that are ESG. I'm like, you're going to have a lot more because it's coming, and we've hit that point where it's across the board. There are tons. They're not all pure play, save the world type, you know or they're not even save the world. They've got a bunch of companies in there that you're just like, how did they get into that ESG-labeled fund? 
  
Kirby Rosplock 
Great insights. This is such an interesting conversation. Greenwashing might have to come after this and we'll talk more about what that really means. Christine, I'm so grateful for you joining us today. So much good knowledge that you have. This podcast will be linked to some other resources you mentioned, as well as your contact information. So, we're so grateful to have you here on the Tamarind Learning podcast today. 
  
Christine Mendoncç
Thank you. 

Recent reports reveal a troubling rise in illegal child labor across the U.S., involving children as young as 12 working in hazardous conditions and legislation that could worsen this. Since 2018, child labor violations have surged by 69%, often in dangerous industries. Migrant youth are particularly vulnerable, seeking illegal work due to a lack of proper documentation. This overview offers an action plan for clients and partners to address this crisis through philanthropy, financial influence, shareholder engagement, political advocacy, and managing reputational risk. It emphasizes the urgent need for awareness, funding, and strategic action to combat the exploitation of child labor in the U.S.

Interested in learning more about Christine's whitepaper on Child Labor in the US? Check out her article "A Modern Child Labor Crisis in the U.S. : Hidden in Plain Sight" on Medium.