Finance Decarbonization
A four-week course that illuminates the negative climate impact driven by the world’s invested capital (hundreds of trillions across banking, insurance, and capital markets) and teaches strategies for climate-positive capital deployment at scales ranging from the organizational to the personal.
The course starts May 29, 2024. Enrollments close May 28, 2024.
Live sessions: Wednesdays 4-5:30pm PT
Course level: Introductory
Taught by
Chad Spitler
Founder and CEO of Third Economy
- 4 weeks/4 hours per week
- Create a climate-centred personal finance plan
- Class recording available
- Completion certificate
- 100% online
About this course
This course will outline the concept of using capital for climate-positive outcomes, employing your personal finances as a case study. You will learn how money flows through capital markets; investing basics, and the concepts of sustainable finance; and how to connect the two to identify opportunities for leveraging finances in impactful and sustainable ways.
Using your personal finances as a sandbox, you’ll learn the basic principles of sustainable capital deployment that can then be mirrored at the organizational scale. Examples include exploring how your bank deploys your deposits and the opportunities you have to ensure they are invested properly; understanding what your insurance company is investing your premiums in and how you can influence that; and the plausibility of investing sustainably in your retirement plan or brokerage account to achieve environmental or social impact while still earning a market rate of return.
Who is this program for?
- Understand how investment capital affects climate change
- Explore how various approaches to sustainable investing can help facilitate revenue generation
- Make climate-informed financial decisions using sustainability data from financial service providers
- Sync your personal finances (e.g. bank account, insurance, or investment accounts) to your personal climate interests
What climate skills you'll learn
Understand capital markets
Learn how money flows through channels and institutions and who the key decision-makers are
Sustainable investing and finance
Grasp the principles of values-based and impact-investing and the role of ESG and activism in finance
Assess financial service providers
Locate sources of sustainability data for financial institutions and use it to assess their sustainability profile critically
Wield your financial influence
Discover practical ways to align your personal finances with climate impact, and opportunities to engage key decision-makers in organizational settings
FREE EVENT
The climate impact of investor capital
- May 21, 2024
- 4:00pm PT
The Terra.do difference
Live lab groups
You will meet weekly with the instructor and fellow learners to share perspectives
Skills-based learning
You will engage in individual real-world assignments to immediately apply the skills you’ve learned
Personalized attention
Meet with the instructor 1-on-1 and get individualized feedback on your assignments
Asynchronous and synchronous learning
Flexible learning options to fit your learning style
Meet the course creator
Chad Spitler
Founder and CEO of Third Economy
Chad Spitler is the Founder and CEO of Third Economy, a sustainable investment research and advisory firm. With over 25+ years of experience building sustainable investment capabilities and corporate sustainability strategies, Chad was recognized by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) as one of the 2020 Directorship 100 Governance Professionals. Formerly a Partner at PJT CamberView, Chad and his team helped public companies develop engagement strategies with their investors particularly around complex or contested shareholder matters.
He is most widely known for his role in helping to build what are now BlackRock’s Investment Stewardship, Sustainable Investing and Corporate Sustainability teams. As a Managing Director at the world’s largest asset manager, Chad led the team responsible for analyzing how environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors may impact financial performance, and integrated that analysis into product development, proxy voting and corporate engagement.
His work helped facilitate billions of dollars of capital into sustainable investments and catalysed public companies to integrate long-term thinking into their business strategies. Chad is a member of the Dean’s External Advisory Board of the University of Michigan’s School for the Environment and Sustainability. He is an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University and Presidio Graduate School, and holds an M.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
