Sustainable Finance for Climate Impact
A four-week online course designed to help sustainability professionals level-up on their impact investing and climate-related financial education. Explore how sustainable finance has transformed how portfolios are constructed and managed and learn how this might align to your personal finances (or your company’s), including banking, insurance, and investments with action on climate change.
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 equips you with the knowledge to confidently assess how financial platforms—such as banking, insurance, and investments—can be managed against environmental and social goals.
You will learn how money flows through the capital markets, the basics of investing, the principles of sustainable finance, and how to connect these concepts to identify opportunities (for you or your company) within today’s financial landscape. Specifically, you will leave this course knowing how banks deploy deposits, how to ensure that they are invested responsibly, and how you might influence these investments, as well as what your insurance company invests in and how you can influence those investments. The course will also cover the feasibility of investing sustainably in retirement plans or brokerage accounts to achieve environmental or social impact while still earning a market rate of return.
By the end of the course, you will have practical steps on how to align finances to environmental and other social causes, whether for your career development or for your own personal goals.
Who is this program for?
Climate-conscious individuals and professionals ranging from sustainability managers to business and non-profit professionals, financial advisors to individual investors, and more, who want to:
- 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
- July 15, 2024
- 1:00pm 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.
