Adasina Social Capital

As 2024 draws to a close, we know that many in our community, ourselves included, are grappling with genuine fears for the future. At Adasina we consciously choose to embrace joy as a revolutionary act – and we hope you’ll join us in doing so this festive season. ❤️ In that spirit, we want to extend messages of hope, celebration, and gratitude from the Adasina team to yours. We’d also like to offer a special thanks to each and every one of you for being a part of this transformative year with us. Let’s carry that impact together into 2025! ℹ️ Please note that Adasina will be closed from December 21, 2024, through January 5th, 2025.

My first-ever sabbatical starts today! ⬇️ Thank you all for your cheerful support since I made the announcement last week. Your encouragement means a lot to me as I embark on this new chapter of radical rest. 💛 Here are a few reminders before I sign off (I’ll pin this post to my profile, too): 🗓️ My sabbatical begins today, December 13th, and ends April 1st 2025. 📩 You can sign up for Adasina’s email list to stay updated on campaign and investment news (link in comments). 📣 I will (sadly) not be active on my LinkedIn account while I’m away. However! In my absence, brilliant Adasina team members will be “taking over” my account to share social justice investing resources, impact investing stories, or anything else they deem valuable and worthy of your attention. So do continue to watch this space. Thank you all, again. I will see you in Q2 2025. ICYMI, here’s more on why I am committing to rest as social justice:

Tesla, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple - recognize any of these companies? As well as all being household names, they are all part of a group that stock market commentators like to call the Magnificent Seven (M7), and we at Adasina like to call the “Malevolent Seven.” You might remember my post earlier this year where I spoke about exactly why we gave them that nickname – I’ll link it here: https://lnkd.in/get4qy5e In the months that followed their August market volatility, the M7 have begun to lose their darling status as mounting documentation of social harms and recognition of potential market concentration risks enter the conversation. We at Adasina are not surprised by this shift in dialogue – and we’ll have more to say about exactly why we exclude six of the seven M7 companies from our portfolio in the new year. Hint: they violate our Social Justice Investing Criteria. 🚫 As I prepare to go on sabbatical through Q1 2025, stay tuned on Adasina Social Capital’s feed for more to come on the M7.

On December 13, I will begin my first-ever sabbatical. After 20 years of leadership advancing social justice in the public markets, I am looking forward to this period of rest. Though I admit, I am suspicious of my own ability to truly rest! Engaging with my beloved LinkedIn followers is one of the things I won’t be doing during my sabbatical, so I wanted to share details with you here: Why a sabbatical? 🤔 This decision goes beyond choosing my own, well-deserved rest. It is also an embodiment of Adasina’s values. For those of us who have engaged in systems change work for the better part of our careers, rest is a vital extension of our social justice values. Defying the expectation within extractive capitalism to value work above well-being makes rest a revolutionary act. The technical details 🗓️ - My sabbatical will begin December 13, 2024 and extend through the first quarter of 2025. My first day back will be April 1, 2025. - While I am away, Adasina will be under the kind and intelligent leadership of our Co-CEO Julianne Zimmerman, our Co-Founder & Chief Operations Officer Maya Philipson, and the rest of the team. - Stay up to date on Adasina’s Social Justice Investing work by joining Adasina’s email list, and following Adasina Social Capital and Julianne Zimmerman. I shared my thoughts on rest and social justice in a new article on Adasina’s blog. I invite you to read it and to join me in prioritizing your own rest.

As we prepare for the incoming presidential administration, we must do everything in our power to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities. Trans people – especially trans people of color – face increasing political attacks on their rights and their identities. 📣 The Know Your Rights guide from Advocates for Trans Equality defines legal terminology and provides practical steps to help trans people protect themselves and reduce harm from political and legal attacks. H/t to Adasina Social Capital’s Impact Team for making me aware of this incredible resource. Please help me get the word out about this document by sharing the guide with your communities. https://lnkd.in/gftW26nZ 

Corporate concentration in our food system is bad for people and for our planet – plus, it is risky for investors. 🚫🌾 We’ve spoken a lot about this issue at Adasina Social Capital, and I appreciate this academic exploration of corporation concentration in the food and agriculture system by Arianna Muirow and Andrew Behar of ImpactAlpha.

We have some exciting news for the signatories and supporters of our Due Diligence 2.0 commitment! After leading the DD 2.0 movement since its inception, Adasina is thrilled to pass the torch to our partners at Rhia Ventures. 🤝 The work to increase the flow of capital toward Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) asset managers continues – and we couldn’t be more excited about the next chapter of this initiative under Rhia Venture’s leadership. Learn more here:

How does it make any sense at all that our *food systems* would be anything other than sustainable? [Hint: it doesn't.] Christopher's book The Profiteers lays out the case in clear, commonsense terms — no jargon or slogans. If you want to learn a bit more about just how extractive, exploitative, and unsustainable our food systems are, check out Adasina Social Capital's Extractive Agriculture Issue Brief, and take action to end extractive ag. https://lnkd.in/dMmYhmXw

Great news to end the week! Impact Finance Center + the Denver Business Journal awarded Adasina’s Managing Director Danielle Burns, MBA with a 2024 Who’s Who in Impact Investing Award 🎉 Please join us in celebrating Danielle and her incredible contributions to the field of impact investing. We are so grateful to have her wisdom on our team, helping us expand the practice of #SocialJusticeInvesting in the public markets. 🙏 Congratulations to Danielle and all the 2024 honorees: Michael Kent Jasmine Rashid Karen Gados Craig Jonas, Ph.D.   Bo Parfet  Phil Swan Ken Tsunoda

📣 Adasina Social Capital and Rhia Ventures are thrilled to share an important update regarding shared efforts to leverage capital markets and advance social justice. Rhia Ventures is assuming ownership of The Due Diligence 2.0 Commitment (DD2.0), originally launched and managed by Adasina. We are deeply grateful to Rachel J. Robasciotti and the Adasina team for this opportunity. DD2.0 was created to catalyze movement of capital to BIPOC managers. It challenges asset owners and financial advisors to leverage their position as capital movers to address systemic racial inequities by allocating more capital to BIPOC managers, communities, entrepreneurs, and stakeholders. Over the coming months, Rhia will lead an evaluation and redesign process to continue moving the work forward. Adasina will remain actively engaged in this process. ➡️ Learn more about DD2.0 here: https://lnkd.in/dCcPNUfE #Investing #DueDiligence #Fiduciary #EmergingManagers