The Power Of DEI To Improve Risk-Adjusted Returns In Private Equity

April 28, 2022

(Forbes) Assets managed by diverse-owned firms have only increased by a tenth of a percentage point to 1.4% of the $82.2 trillion US asset management industry since 2011 despite extensive investor commitments to increase the diversity of their investment portfolios. Clear research on the performance, risk and financial diversification benefits of diverse managers is necessary…

Warren Buffett Faces Renewed Climate Change Challenge by Investors

April 25, 2022

(The New York Times) Mr. Buffett has repeatedly resisted shareholders who want Berkshire to provide detailed climate disclosures that encompass the whole company, not just parts of it, and spend more on sustainability. His stand may seem odd to some people, given that he has at times backed progressive causes, including higher taxes on the…

E.U. Takes Aim at Social Media’s Harms With Landmark New Law

April 22, 2022

(The New York Times) The law, called the Digital Services Act, is intended to address social media’s societal harms by requiring companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content or risk billions of dollars in fines. Tech companies would be compelled to set up new policies and procedures to remove flagged hate speech,…

Social Media Companies’ Climate Disinformation Problem is Hidden from the Public

April 21, 2022

(Friends of the Earth) A new scorecard released today by Avaaz, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA shows that social media companies are leaving the public in the dark about how they’re curbing the spread of climate change dis/misinformation on their platforms. The report comes as the UN’s latest climate report named climate disinformation…

Why it’s so damn hard to make AI fair and unbiased

April 19, 2022

(Vox) Let’s play a little game. Imagine that you’re a computer scientist. Your company wants you to design a search engine that will show users a bunch of pictures corresponding to their keywords — something akin to Google Images. On a technical level, that’s a piece of cake. You’re a great computer scientist, and this…

VCs Are Scaling Up Climate Software Investments

April 18, 2022

(Crunchbase News) Now, the sums going into climate software aren’t huge as a portion of venture capital investment overall. Rounds for the 27 companies on our list, for instance, account for less than a quarter of a percent of total venture funding. What stands out, however, is how quickly this smallish space has been scaling…

Why Diversity is Necessary To Make Venture Capital Future-Ready

April 13, 2022

(Crunchbase News) Reflecting on all the achievements of Black investors, I am encouraged by our progress. However, I also believe venture capital needs to set the example on how to continue this positive momentum and to evolve the approach toward increasing diversity in investment management. In the old model, VCs went to the same schools,…

Crypto Industry Helps Write, and Pass, Its Own Agenda in State Capitols

April 10, 2022

(The New York Times) The debate took less than four minutes. In the Florida House last month, legislators swiftly gave final approval to a bill that makes it easier to buy and sell cryptocurrency, eliminating a threat from a law intended to curb money laundering. One of the few pauses in the action came when…

We Have the Technology to Solve Climate Change. What We Need Is Political Will

April 7, 2022

(Time) Decades ago, the state of California tried to strike a major blow against climate change, and failed. The state passed an ambitious rule in 1990 mandating car companies slowly begin replacing their offerings with electric vehicles (EVs). But in 2002, the state backed off the policy. Part of the reason was political—car companies, aided…

The Biggest Crypto Effort to End Useless Carbon Offsets Is Backfiring

April 7, 2022

(Bloomberg) Users of a little-known crypto platform called Toucan now account for purchases of more than a quarter of all carbon credits by the world’s largest verifier of offsets. This newest crossover between crypto and the climate is having unexpected consequences that appear to be backfiring. Crypto enthusiasts aren’t usually among the top buyers of…