Our investments shape the world we are living in.
If we are concerned about the state of world it is imperative we take responsibility for our agency in the world expressed through our investments.
Essential Knowledge for Transition (EK4T) offers courses and individualized coaching for individual investors and financial advisers to move towards Aware and No-Harm Investing™.
Coaching
Essential Knowledge for Transition also offers course alumni a 6-month customized coaching and consulting package to help individual investors and financial advisors implement Aware and No-Harm Investing™ in their personal portfolio or wealth management practice.
Marco Vangelisti, Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) is a 100% Aware™ and No-Harm™ Investor with a longstanding commitment to Positive and Restorative Investing™. He is a founding member of Slow Money and has been on the leadership team of the Slow Money Northern California Network from its inception in 2009 to 2020. Prior to his shift in focus toward no-harm, positive and restorative investing, he spent 20 years in the finance industry, where he managed investment equity portfolios on behalf of large foundations and endowments and developed statistical risk models for equity and fixed income markets around the world. Marco was a Fulbright scholar in Mathematics and Economics at the University of California in Berkeley, earned an MBA at the Milan-based “Enrico Mattei” school in his native Italy, and a Master of Fine Arts at the intersection of public art and ecology in the U.S. He taught portfolio management, asset allocation, performance analysis, and risk analysis at the San Francisco CFA Institute for 12 years. He is dedicated to democratizing financial literacy and no-harm investing.
I can’t remember the last time I participated in something as deeply thought-provoking as Marco’s course. He weaves a cohesive narrative that ties together the workings of our financial system and the state of the natural environment, and the impact we have on these systems (both as individuals and financial planners). As someone who is well-versed in capital markets, I was particularly interested in Marco’s exploration of the assumptions which underlie our financial thinking – both those that we currently use and those we don’t. And when we upend the assumptions, where does it leave us? Marco answers these questions with analytical rigor and elegant simplicity.
I want to manage my money with integrity, and I want to be a responsible steward of that money on behalf of my spouse and children. For a long time, I thought that those two goals were mutually exclusive. Either I invest in mutual funds that pillage the poor and the planet, or I watch my resources shrink every year. Marco Vangelisti's TANHI course showed me a way out of that false dichotomy. With precision, charm, humor, and patience, Marco showed me exactly how to evaluate investment options for ethics and sustainability as well as return on investment, and gave me a way to transition from predatory capitalism to regenerative investment. I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to put their money where their heart is.
Even if you are a dedicated environmentalist and a student of financial markets, I am sure you will learn something new from this course. The real question is what you choose to do with that knowledge. As financial life planners and members of the MQ community, this course offers essential knowledge for helping our clients align their money and values.
Marco is a wonderful educator who can communicate complex realities in ways that make sense. He draws from his own rich experiences as a fund manager and local investor to build knowledge that help you leave ready to make better decisions about your finances.
I took Marco’s course Towards Aware and No-Harm Investing with my father — me, a social justice and financial activist, him a Harvard MBA. Marco’s teaching style was accessible for both of us, and allowed me and my dad to come together around topics that might have been harder to make palatable on my own! It led to rich conversations about risk and returns, social impact and how to discern between gifts and investments. I’d recommend this for other families looking to meet in the middle on how their values shape their investment decisions.
Morgan Curtis
