Flexibility vs. structure in the investment management world ft. Laura Coy

In this episode of The ESG Experience, Helee Lev and Ryan Nelson are joined by Laura Coy, Head of Philanthropy Strategy & ESG Integration at William Blair, to examine how a multidimensional business can integrate ESG while overcoming a historically siloed organization structure.

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Read the transcript of this episode below:

Helee Lev: Hello, and welcome to the tenth episode of The ESG Experience podcast brought to you by Goby, the ESG platform. I’m Helee Lev, Goby’s Chief Revenue Officer.

Ryan Nelson: And I am Ryan Nelson, Goby’s CEO, and we’re your hosts for this podcast.

Helee: Whether you’re an ESG expert or just dipping your toe in the ESG universe to understand how it can help with engaging stakeholders, mitigating risks and attracting investors, this podcast is for you. Together, we’ll navigate the alphabet soup of ESG, discuss ideas, review strategies, and share industry news and trends.

In today’s episode, we are going to be discussing how a multidimensional business works to integrate ESG into a company that’s traditionally very siloed, and we’re pleased to be joined by Laura Coy, Head of Philanthropy Strategy and ESG Integration at William Blair. Welcome, Laura.

Laura Coy: It’s so nice to be here with you both.

Ryan: Yes! Great to have you.

Helee: I was going to embarrass Laura with her bio, but first I wanted to welcome her. So a bit about our guest today. Laura is a seasoned philanthropy ESG and citizenship professional with more than 20 years of experience building programs, partnerships, community, and sustainability initiatives. William Blair is the premier global boutique with expertise in investment banking, investment management and private wealth management. At William Blair, ESG factors are among many considerations that inform their investment decisions inextricably linked with their fundamental assessment of the quality of corporate management and sustainable value creation potential. So, yeah. Welcome! We’re happy to have you, and impressive background which is how you landed a spot on today’s podcast.

Laura: It’s a journey.

Ryan: Well, obviously, I guess you can say obviously I’ve heard of William Blair, and I am somewhat familiar with William Blair, but I did not realize how multidimensional the organization is and certainly, that’s what leads to the complexity. And we’re excited to hear how you’ve kind of approached that, but you said the journey. Always excited about the journey and learning a little bit about the personal journey. Love to hear your story and your career path a little bit as I really enjoyed kind of following along on LinkedIn and seeing the kind of commitment to philanthropy thread almost all the way throughout your career. So how did you arrive here?

Laura: Yeah. Great question, Ryan. I had a little bit of some insights into this industry. My dad was in corporate philanthropy in the ‘70s for John Deere, and it made an impression on me, and I’ll tell you why. Back then, there was probably a predisposition for CEOs to be generous, to write checks and to give some earnings back to the charitable causes that might have been purely personally motivating, but what I recall was also witnessing how more companies were thinking about philanthropy as a way to do good and what they’re good at doing or to create pipelines of product innovation or customer relationships that would create your value. Of which, John Deere, obviously, looking at the farming and agriculture industries, created a program to partner with the 4H to develop a future farming population and to really foster the small farming agriculture businesses that were being lost at that time.

And now, you kind of take a look at, I was just peeking at their Corporate Social Responsibility report and their Sustainability report the other day, and you look at that trajectory from the ‘70s to 2022 where they’re developing tractor equipment with artificial intelligence and capabilities of anticipating climate and mitigating safety issues across the globe. It was fascinating. And then like if you couple that with a political science degree, they’re intrigued with society and its intersection with government. I think back in the ‘90s, we kind of started using the term “Public-Private Partnerships” and the importance of building those to solve complex social issues which quite honestly I think is what evolved today into ESG.

I have always been fascinated with the roles that the different entities, whether that be government, public sector, private sector, individuals themselves play in that role. I think what’s interesting is looking at it and then actually working with those sort of different functions. So I spent a good chunk of my early career as a fundraiser, helping organizations, advancing health, science and environmental initiatives raise the philanthropic capital they needed. And then, migrated that expertise to help a large publicly traded company develop some operational and strategy around their philanthropy that evolved pretty quickly into Grainger’s first Corporate Social Responsibility report; an enterprise-wide ESG function. And we will talk a little bit about the importance of an enterprise-wide perspective, I think, later because I don’t think William Blair is unique in that there are several different departments that are working with different stakeholders on the same problems, but with different resources.

Ryan: Yeah, the kind of big picture philanthropy journey overall is certainly interesting to me how, kind of like you said, it’s the CEO of a company you know and then what is that person interested in doing or something. The fact that a company has a point of view in philanthropy and that now has become a mature type thing that you do in a very intelligent way and all of your employees probably participate in it in some way, it’s very, very interesting that philanthropy is for companies to perform and not just individuals to take on. That’s pretty cool.

Laura: But what I might say like I think there has been a little bit of a convergence of U.S. based companies really using philanthropy as the anchor to their ESG whereas in Europe, a more regulated climate-oriented environment. We kind of talk, as professionals, sometimes about how the best in class of both geographies has come together into this summation of an integrated ESG approach using a different toolkit of resources. So it is an absolutely amazing evolution.

Helee: Yeah, and I was just going to say in our comings and goings whether working with customers or peers in the industry, I have not seen even just within your title of Head of Philanthropy Strategy and ESG being coupled together. And it looks like that was fairly recent for you as far as just title-wise, but now that you have explained it, the intersection of the two totally makes sense. And it’s a unique way to look at it, but a logical way for sure.

Laura: Yeah, and a lot of that too is just, if you think about it, at an enterprise level, right? Like there are so many resources that we have at our disposal as a business. And at the same time, there are so many different stakeholders appropriately demanding that, whether that be a client or an employee or a community stakeholder. So that integration I think is both strategic, but it’s also like then how we show what we are. It’s there’s this balance of walking the talk. So you can be very commercial around your ESG approach and you can be very authentic, and I think those two go hand-in hand which is to kind of think about that integration as a bit of a center of excellence. So whatever we’re learning and applying to our own business, we are then sharing with our customers in the communities so they can derive the benefit of what our challenges are, what our learnings are, what our successes are, and what our failures are.

Helee: Yeah, I love that, and it makes sense. I think you guys have done a good job. You’re outstanding of when you say walking the walk so you’re not just putting it out there. It’s not greenwashing. It does come back to the core of who William Blair is, what you guys are trying to do in your sphere of influence which is really awesome and admirable. So that being said, you guys have been at this for a while and perhaps, you’re a leader in the space. In your role, what are some ESG data trends that have stood out for you? And I say data trends, either good or bad, or ones that are logical or not. I was on a call yesterday with a private equity firm who said, “You know what? I don’t like scoring. I don’t like scoring within ESG. I don’t like peer ranking within ESG. It motivates the wrong behavior.” You know but from our perspective, without the scoring, without the teeth, without the KPIs, without the data trends, it is hard to measure improvement or measure impact. What do you think?

Laura: You know you said at the beginning, “alphabet soup,” right? When I was at Grainger in the Investor Relations department, that was the debate. Oh my gosh! It was the tsunami of the different ratings and the rankings and each having their own individualized approach of accessing either publicly available data or not and create a score based upon those available data points or interpretation of. I am excited about data. I can’t believe I just said that. I think there are some great trends in data. There are two things in particular, and I think I must say I just put out a report today on trends to look out for, but the consolidation of how reporting frameworks are working together. Because I have to tell you, you know earlier in my career where it is purely head of the ESG professional responding to inquiries and compiling the reports to achieve those scores for a publicly traded company, you know you’d answer the same questions five different ways. There’s summary, agencies...

You’re looking at personal data points and other parts so the consolidation that’s happening is very hopeful. Because at the end of the day, you don’t want a company to waste time on responding, you want them to be actually focused on the ESG priority so they’re going to make a material impact on their business and their commitment.

My second hopefulness around data is that notion of materiality and the acknowledgement from the rating agencies that of course every single priority within ESG is important, but when you go back to that notion of doing good at what you’re good at doing, the other perspective on that is what is really material for your business and where can you make a difference. If you’re a manufacturer, that might supply chain. If you’re a financial services firm, it’s largely based on human capital. So that notion of materiality and how that’s manifested, Goby has just been a tremendous partner for us in that pursuit. It’s something I’m very hopeful about and it resonates.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, at Goby, we very proudly get excited about data so you’re in good company there and you don’t have to be shy about that, but yeah, you’re exactly right. It’s great that everybody is mobilized around capturing data and turning it into information, but the idea of very quickly operationalizing that and getting past that effort and all the energy gained and talking about how much data you have into actually doing material things, finding out what’s material and then executing on it and becoming more strategic and building tactical plans from that strategy. So that’s obviously what we’re trying to do is operationalize the challenging parts so the real value can be the focus.

So let’s talk about William Blair’s journey to a sustainable future and impact investing. Of course, William Blair, you serve a diverse set of clients and stakeholders and provide distinct services and perspectives across business lines. Tell us how your commitment to sustainable and responsible investing manifests itself differently in each part of the business. And I will kind of rattle four of those off here for a second: investment management, private wealth management, investment banking and research and institutional sales; multidimensional.

Laura: Multidimensional, yes. It’s a little bit of everything which is why this is such an amazing place to be focused on as work, to be honest with you. I might not go in that order, but we’ll talk about all those different constituents and stakeholders. So if we think about private wealth management, for us, those are high net worth families, individuals, family office level clients who are really thinking about, obviously, their personal assets and the purpose of that capital. If you think about the employment of ESG considerations and how you manage those assets, I mean that’s everything from gender lens investing to looking at, maybe taking out certain equities who aren’t performing to your values base or ESG priorities that you set forth or are really kind of just defining the purpose of your capital.

I work a lot with our clients who are philanthropically inclined. So a good example of that might be a family who has a foundation and they’re funding climate change and they have a 5% minimum distribution requirement that they’re achieving and probably exceeding every year in their grant making, but maybe they haven’t looked at the progress of those philanthropic dollars to see if that value transcends into both what they’re investing in their communities as well as the companies or the types of capital that they’re investing to make those grants.

On the investment management side which is really our institutional business, we’re managing institutional money. You know it’s two-fold. It’s obviously prioritizing that with our clients. You know largely pension funds or international funds that they themselves are prioritizing ESG and looking to partner with companies that are doing so as well as taking a proprietary perspective on the buy side as well which William Blair has built out quite magnificently. We have an amazing team of leaders within investment management that are leading their department’s ESG integration.

And then you think on the research side, right? Covering more than 600 publicly traded companies. Why not use a similar philosophical approach to elevating? What companies are doing, they’re very positive in their ESG strategy and helping those companies to be so it’s pretty exciting.

And then, of course, investment banking, we kind of get into that a little bit more too, but there is a huge rise in the value product and around companies that are doing well. I mean some might argue that they actually perform better financially if you have a down supply chain and good governance in place. If you look at that from an M and A perspective, if you look at that from a pre-IPO perspective, positioning yourself to be ready to be evaluated or to tell your story in a powerful way or seek access to capital from impact investors. You know those are three areas that are huge within investment banking. Not to mention, the other thing I’m going to say I’m really positive about is private equity, the influence that those firms are looking at when they incorporate ESG principles into their portfolio companies has a huge impact on society. So those are hopefully some anecdotal and or perspectives on how four very distinct business units come together around ESG.

Ryan: Yes, I appreciate all that insight. I can see how different business lines, or I mean
pressures, regulations even and different types of pressures and things that would cause them to specifically focus on this. Even on the private wealth management side, I specifically know people who avoid capital markets because they just can’t get comfortable with funding something that they wouldn’t be proud of. So I feel like we’re solving for that now and actually creating things where the people with the most strict approach to investing will have an opportunity to really feel good about and be confident in how they’re contributing. It’s good for them to generate their future wealth and to grow their wealth, but they want to make sure and do it in a way that is certainly not negative and hopefully positive. So to really have the tools that you believe you can do that is really cool.

Laura: Yeah. I mean then you add on top of that, beyond the equity of like green, sustainability, and social bonds that are being issued by sovereign and some sovereign entities. You know fixed income strategies as well. I mean it really is going way beyond the public market in the message we’re seeing. You could build an entire portfolio beyond your equity that is aligned to your value system.

Helee: And to your point before just about the financial returns, I think we’ve talked a lot on this podcast a bit about causation, correlation, coincidence and you can still get different schools of thought, but even just in circles that we’re running in, I think people will definitely agree, all things equal, not sacrificing returns, let’s do the right thing, let’s be sustainability and ESG-minded, but I’m starting to see the first folks that are saying. There was an event I attended in New York recently where, of course, European-based fund, but they’re saying that they will actually sacrifice some returns in exchange for the risk mitigation that comes with making the more sustainably sound choice. So even if the return looks a bit smaller, if they are mitigating a ton of risks because they are making a smarter long-term investment, that’s a trade-off that they are willing to make which is just a perspective that I hadn’t seen before. Because at the end of the day, you know returns are king and that’s what people are trying to do so interesting to hear your perspective.

And then, obviously, with these different business units that you talked through with regards to your own organization at William Blair, you know the push and pull within an organization is real no matter what even if there aren’t multiple business units, even if it isn’t a big company. It could just be a push and pull between personalities or philosophies or executive leadership wanting to do different things or believing in different things, or any plethora of things. So you’ve been through that, you’ve personally probably been in the crossfires, the crosshairs of that and you’ve navigated it. So what advice would you give to a firm that’s perhaps just starting off? How would you encourage them to address the conflicting viewpoints between business units or personalities you know having the hindsight that you have?

Laura: Yeah, perfect. Well, your first comment, thank you for elevating the importance of the long-term view. It’s so hard when you are a publicly traded company to avoid the quarterly earning pressure. I remember like putting together a CSR report and taking a breath for like a month and then working on the next CSR report. So I think companies are actually just educating their shareholders more about the benefit of that long-term value creation. I think we’re going to see more of that.

There’s a lot of data out there and others that are tracking the performance of companies who are either scoring well or have strong ESG programs, but we do kind of talk about it from the carrot and the stick perspective. Like some of this is just how you govern and how you operate which might be the stick and some of it is the carrot which is like wow how do we optimize our human capital and how do we make a difference. And by the way, because we do these initiatives, the tenure of our workforce in a workforce that is increasingly leading is actually going to benefit us from a profit perspective. So thank you for bringing up that long-term perspective. I think some of it is just how corporations talk about their performance. And, of course, keeping an eye on things like B-Certs and B-Corps and those companies that have now mandated measures around that social and financial return, which we think is quite interesting.

I mean it’s actually a poll. It’s kind of this conversation. I am so lucky to work at a firm where this is authentically part of our DNA and our culture. I never doubt for a second that this is on the minds of our leaders because they’re talking about it. They live it. I mean I aspire to their values and the mission values they created for our workforce to employ in our everyday life. People say top down, bottom up, but I mean it really has to be, I hate to use this word “organic,” but it has to be authentic, and it has to be organic. So even if sometimes the patience that we might ask people in our pursuits only because we might have 50 great programs, but we’re trying to prioritize which ones are going to have the biggest impact on materiality. Or we’re trying to figure out the data set that we can confidently measure and set goals around and hold ourselves accountable to those goals.

The long-term view is just as important when you’re inside a privately held company like William Blair. Like we want to put things out there. We want to measure what matters. And in the meantime, we give you our alphabet soup because we’re just doing a lot of really good stuff, and we’ve got to get it organized and centralized and prioritized. But I think for those companies that do have the leadership that are those who are authentic, who are living diversity and inclusion in their own lives and at work who are prioritizing climate, who are employing good governance. You know that’s always going to be something to aspire to and then really investing in the business to build the internal operations of an ESG program is vital and then quite honestly just inspiring employees to be a part of it. And I use that word “inspiring” purposefully. Our foundation’s mission is to inspire the next generation of philanthropists.

This isn’t you know you might need a code of conduct, or you might need a policy, but at the end of the day, we want people coming to work who are motivated and inspired to make our communities, our firm and our clients stronger and better. So I think it’s an interesting recipe. And I don’t know that it’s a one size fits all, but if you’ve got some of those ingredients, Helee, like the company is going to be in good shape and they’re probably focused on the right things and really earnestly so.

Ryan: Yeah. I love the word “authentically done.” I always refer to kind of this story of search engines like Google. Back in the day, you could kind of outsmart them to get people to come to your website, right? Like you put this word in there a lot or you hide this in there. And as those things have gotten smarter, you can’t fake them out anymore. You truly have to be an authentic business that has connections. People have to view things that they’re viewing on your website and things that they’re reading for a certain amount of time. It has to connect to others. So this whole idea of being authentic and being challenged if you’re not. Basically, it’s too transparent if you’re not authentic is the right way to say it.

So I’m glad to see that we’re having more conversations with organizations because of individuals in leadership positions that authentically think this way and want this to be a thread in their organization. So 15 years ago, it was more like do we do this or is this a thing or what’s it called or do we not care. It’s absolutely only about the return. Fifteen years ago, it was literally like leave me alone with this and now, it’s very organic and authentic often. Even though we are building frameworks and trying to provide guidance and there are things that you have to follow.

So we’ve got leaders that are inspiring and people that you’re believing in and that’s all very important and key and seems to be very helpful to what you need to do. Are there any specific challenges when you talk then about implementing ESG maybe even internally at a financial services firm? You mentioned sometimes if there’s a private equity or how they build solutions and build this into their capital and their principles. Any other challenges? We talked, I think, a lot about some of them. Any other challenges you want to mention or tips that you can give when it comes to working ESG into financial industry?

Laura: So I think there’s the leaders at the top, but listening to the leaders at all levels of the organization and really involving employees in the process. I think sometimes people tend to think very clearly about governance, right? Like all companies are thinking about the “G.” I think we just categorize this a little bit. I think the “E” is pretty clear when people are looking at carbon accounting and carbon footprint. I think the “S” is really dynamic and important. And while it might be one of the harder things to measure, it’s the first place you should start to engage your own workforce in. And I think it’s not a challenge, Ryan, it’s really an opportunity.

So for instance, at William Blair, one of the first things that we did is we started an ESG working group and we got employees together from across all business units. There wasn’t an agenda. We didn’t have a roadmap yet. We weren’t working with a Goby, but it was the kind of bring us together and talk about the different perspectives on the client priorities around, the opportunities for ESG to manifest both in the community and for our clients and our business. And it was really kind of through that selective that we became really good and strong and created a foundation that goes back to that authenticity because the employees’ voice was in the process. And I can’t tell you how many times we’ve interviewed or hired someone and they’ve said, “Wow! You guys have an incredible business resource group” or “Your culture just seems like it’s something I can really thrive in” or “I admired the diverse talent that I was able to interview with throughout this process.”

So again, there’s the expectation and we look at things like RFPs and who clients want to do business with, but if you can reach within your “S” and if you can gauge your employees in this process early on, you’re probably going to overcome a lot of the challenges. Because what you don’t want to do is create a roadmap and then you’re like, “Hello! Here’s our ESG roadmap employee stuff,” right? Because it’s really at the end of the day how the people approach this. So involve the “S,” involve the human capital, involve that before you have a plan so you’ve got partnership throughout the process and I think you’re going to overcome a lot of challenges through that methodology.

Ryan: I like it.

Helee: So I might shift gears a bit with this next topic. You guys, William Blair, your investment management group joined UNPRI in 2011 so that’s definitely cutting edge, if not bleeding edge very early on, over a decade ago. So what have you seen over the last decade since making that decision. Has it been beneficial? Is it something you’d do again? What again have you gleaned just having that personal advantage there?

Laura: Yeah. I think that we used the word “continuum” at the beginning or “journey,” right? You kind of position yourself to make a commitment towards knowing that when you do that, this is going to continue to evolve. It might become more stringent, more people are going to join. There’s going to be broader expectations around this and I think it’s a wonderful way to both innovate and hold yourselves accountable for the ESG integration. It’s an evolution of thinking around this, right? Like are you going to prioritize ESG? Yes. Are you going to engage shareholders and stakeholders and start to incorporate this into your processes? Yes. Are you going to hold others accountable for their ESG commitment and how are you going to integrate that into their performance? Whether they be clients or companies that we cover or suppliers, right? So you kind of go down this path that 10, 15 years ago I would say you probably aspire or ascribe or assign things because it’s the right thing to do, but I think when you see firms now like so many that have signed the PRI, they’re doing this because they have a vision for how this is going to help themselves and other people perform better in ESG. And I think it was maybe more singular back in the day and it has become more of a collective now and we like that trend a lot.

Helee: That makes sense. So what are you most excited about? You have a new ESG officially in your role and your title. As you look at the next 12 months or the next couple years, what fires you up? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What are you most looking forward to and hoping to accomplish for William Blair?

Laura: Oh gosh, that’s a great question. You know on some levels, it’s daunting, right? Because you wake up every day and there’s more complex issues and they’re scaling in ways that are creating more equities than we’ve ever seen before. But at the same time, what makes me so excited is just the opportunity to this integrated approach and enterprise perspective on this, moving forward. You know a lot of people say, “Don’t let good be the enemy of great,” right? Like let’s help each other. Let’s partner in this pursuit. Let’s start somewhere.

Helee: Yep.

Laura: We’re starting from a great foundation. Our employees are magnificent, caring, committed, highly talented, intelligent individuals that collectively I know we will look back on as a firm in another 10 years, and it will be wildly more productive even than it is today which is kind of hard to believe. So hopefully, we can inspire others to do that through our work, and that’s what I love about William Blair Financial services. So those four distinct areas that we talked about before? If we can help those four very specific stakeholder groups with this, you look at that. That is quite a tsunami effect on different industries, different clients, different stakeholders. So I am excited for both the firm and our clients who will go beyond this and accomplish this journey together.

Helee: I like that, and I think it’s just good advice too or just a good note to end on. It’s like start where you are. You know like don’t let perfection be intimidating or don’t feel behind. You know the cheesy line is “The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.” And I think people, with regards to the space, they’re very forgiving. So you know it’s good to hear that from an industry leader as well that just you know no shame. Start where you are. If you can do something good, that’s better than doing nothing at all and I think that that’s absolutely correct. And nowadays, of course, there are plenty of partners to help you, right? If you truly have no idea what to do, where to go, what to do in navigating the alphabet soup, where to start, you know certainly firms like Goby and others are willing to help, but mostly Goby. Of course.

Laura: But how you bring people together? Your point is well taken. Like we’re not in this alone, you know? We’re here to collaborate. We look towards companies like yours to be our experts and partners in those pursuits. So each company might be very different, but we’re not alone in this.

Helee: Yeah, and not all companies have the luxury of having a full-time dedicated person to philanthropy or ESG. In a lot of cases, especially in the midmarket, it’s the Head of Investor Relations that has to wear this hat. Or you know in the real estate world we saw over the past decade, it was the Head of Asset Management or Property Management that’s like, “Oh, by the way, can you meet our green team?” So yeah. There’s all different use cases and it can be done. It can be done.

Ryan: Yes. And I have a great organic story about how we bring people together, that I want to tell in a minute as part of a game that we want to play really quickly before we let you go, Laura, but first, I do want to say again thank you very much for joining and for telling the story, the journey that you’re on. And thank you for all the work that you’re doing throughout your career at different places and then the things that William Blair is doing are just really cool and innovative and refreshing. So thank you very much for doing that and for sharing your time and your story today. It’s very much appreciated.

With that, this is in addition to the great conversation, everyone tunes in all the way to the end for this incredible competition in the world of craft and artisan things. I’m going to say the name of something and all you have to do is guess do they make beans, coffee or beer. Beans or Beer it’s called. Is it a coffee place or a craft beer place? That’s all you have to do is guess which one it is by the name. It is called Two Brothers.

Laura: Beans.

Ryan: Sorry, it is beer. Let me...

Helee: I would’ve guessed that too though. I actually would have so don’t feel bad.

Ryan: Well, let me tell the story here. It’s in Warrenville, Illinois, not too far away. It’s currently featuring a couple of their beers at Jefferson Tap which is in the Fulton River District in the city of Chicago. So I hate to dig this up, but at Jefferson Tap, they used to host a thing called “Green Drinks.” And this was a national thing, but it did quite well in Chicago. Sixty, 75 people would come to this thing, but it was called “Green Drinks.” This was back in like 2009, 2010. So there was a group of people in the city that wanted to have these types of conversations and share professionally what they were doing and talk about sustainability and green was the main word, but yeah. I really enjoyed it. I never would have been to Jefferson Tap had it not been for Green Drinks and someone saying, “I think you’re into this. Why don’t you come to this thing?” And next thing you know it went from 10 people, and the next time there was 20 and then 100 people. And now, there are amazing job titles with ESG in it.

Laura: Oh, I love it. Well, you know in Chicago we love our green rivers and our green
beer. So to know that this bar transcends that is a very inspirational brand.

Ryan: Good.

Laura: Can it be both? Both? Can you pick both?

Ryan: Touché. Yeah.

Helee: You’re probably right.

Ryan: There are some caffeines brewed into beers. I know that.

Helee: Yeah, I remember those too. Going to those long before there was a nationally syndicated podcast with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of listeners, The ESG Experience. Yeah.

Laura: Well, here’s a toast to that and to you all for hosting this great podcast today. You’ll have that many followers in no time.

Helee: Well, thank you, Laura, and thank you to our listeners for joining us on this episode of The ESG Experience podcast. There’s a new episode every month so if you did enjoy your time with us, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast directory. Our next guest will be Susan Hunt Stevens of WeSpire and we will discuss driving purpose within a business even with an increasingly remote first workforce. I look forward to that one; hot, hot button issues all over. But yes, thank you to our tens of thousands of international loyal subscribers for continuing to listen and support our podcast and do continue the conversation between episodes. Follow us on your favorite social media channel at #esgexperience, and we’ll catch you next time.