Investors Call on Equipment Manufacturers to Cease Sourcing from Democratic Republic of the Congo

February 2, 2010 – Trillium Asset Management Corporation has joined a coalition of investors in calling on major electronics, medical device and automobile component manufactures, to ensure that the companies are not aiding conflict and human rights abuses by purchasing supplies from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The investors, who represent almost $200 billion in assets, have issued a statement calling on companies to condemn the use of minerals whose trade promotes the conflict in the DRC and take immediate steps to ensure that these minerals are not used in their products.

The Investor Statement calls on companies to address the role conflict minerals play by implementing a system for determining the origins of materials, creating a non-conflict material policy and working with their suppliers to ensure adherence to it.

The DRC, which has been plagued by a civil war since 1998, continues to lose 45,000 people each month to violence and disease, even though the war officially ended in 2003. In total, more than 5.4 million people have lost their lives and millions more have been displaced.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called the widespread sexual violence against women in the eastern Congo “a crime against humanity.”

The militias that are responsible for the conflict use the abundance of coltan, gold, tin and tungsten deposits (which make the DRC one of the most mineral rich countries in the world) to finance their operations.  These militias, who control most of the mines in the eastern DRC, demand bribes, unofficial taxes and other payments for the minerals. The minerals are smuggled into neighboring countries including Rwanda and Burundi, smelted and eventually used in making laptops, cell phones, medical devices, airplane engines, and other consumer goods.

Some companies are already addressing this issue, most notably Hewlett Packard, which has implemented a metals traceability project. In addition, the EICC (Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition) and GeSI (Global E-Sustainability Initiative) have recently commissioned the nonprofit organization RESOLVE to map the supply chain of various metals including tin and tantalum, which is made from processing coltan.

For more information:

“Investor Statement Regarding Conflict Minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” January 11, 2010.

“Boundaries of Responsibility,” Investing For a Better World, October 2008.

“Investors Urge Companies to Keep Minerals from War-Torn Congo Out of Supply Chains,” Social Investment Forum press release, January 14, 2010.

Trillium Organizes Tour of ‘Cancer Alley’

In early June, Trillium Asset Management Social Research Analyst Susan Baker led a group of 40 investors on a fact-finding tour of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” The investors, who were gathered in New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, represented faith-based institutions and socially responsible investment firms collectively holding billions of dollars under management.

They traveled 200 miles by bus to tour the heavily industrialized and highly polluted stretch west of New Orleans.  Guided by prominent experts from local environmental justice, indigenous community, and coastal restoration groups, including the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, investors were provided with an in-depth examination of the history and current day environmental impacts of industrial corporations on Louisiana communities.  The tour’s ultimate destination was Mossville, LA (known as the “unofficial polyvinyl chloride capital”) to talk to residents who have been disproportionately burdened by the toxic hazards emitted from 14 industrial facilities owned by companies such as Conoco Phillips, PPG Industries and Georgia Gulf. The concentration of vinyl chloride in Mossville, a known carcinogen, has been measured in quantities significantly exceeding ambient air quality standards set by the EPA to protect human health. In 1999, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that residents of Mossville, had blood dioxin levels three times higher than the national comparison group. Supported by shareholder advocacy and legal actions Mossville residents have fought long and hard to make their community viable again.  At the conclusion of this extraordinary tour, Trillium, ICCR, and the Investor Environmental Health Network committed to bring our collective shareholder voice to bear on the environmental injustices compromising human life and health in Cancer Alley.

For more information, contact Susan Baker at sbaker@trilliuminvest.com

Related links:

Environmental Justice Victory in Norco, Louisiana

Schwab Institutional Honors Joan Bavaria

Joan Bavaria honored with Charles R. Schwab IMPACT Award^® for her vision and leadership in the investment advisory business

On September 25, 2008  Schwab Institutional^® announced that Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) founding president and CEO Joan Bavaria was recognized with the 3rd annual Charles R. Schwab IMPACT Award – an award honoring Joan as an individual trailblazer whose sustained vision, outstanding leadership, client commitment and community engagement clearly demonstrate the value of independent investment advice. The IMPACT Awards^® are an industry-wide awards program to honor advisors and firms that have advanced the industry through their visionary leadership, operational excellence, technology innovation, and impressive growth.

Joan Bavaria, widely recognized as one of the early pioneers in socially responsible investing, is a true visionary in the investment advisory field.  She founded Trillium in 1982 with a focus on serving clients with a concern for the social and environmental impacts of their investments. Today, Trillium is the largest independent investment management firm in the U.S. dedicated solely to socially responsible investing, with 40 employees and more than $1 billion in client assets.

For nearly 40 years, Joan’s vision has been to use the capital markets as mechanisms for social change.  An early innovator in the concept of community investing and microfinance, she helped bring the community loan fund idea to Wall Street.  At Trillium Joan has created a workplace that is a sustainable model for long-term employee ownership: the firm is majority employee- and woman-owned and donates five percent of pre-tax profits to charitable causes.  Trillium offers a progressive set of employee benefits and maintains a strong, diverse board of directors.

In 1981, Joan co-founded the Social Investment Forum, the national organization that serves as the primary association for practicing social investment professionals. She is the founding chair of Ceres, a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with corporations to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.

“It is an honor to win this award,” said Joan. “I proudly accept it while also acknowledging the many wonderful collaborators who inspired me and shared my belief that investors could balance their social values and financial objectives.”

Schwab Institutional presented Trillium Executive Vice President Cheryl Smith with an IMPACT Awards trophy at a ceremony during IMPACT^® 2008, one of the country’s largest annual gatherings of independent investment advisors.  Joan was granted a donation from Schwab Institutional to her charity of choice, the Opportunity Finance Network’s CARS™ program. The CARS™ program is a comprehensive third-party analysis and rating system of community development financial institutions which aids investors in their underwriting process.

Profiles and videos on the IMPACT Awards winners are available online at impactawards.schwab.com.

View the Joan Bavaria video here.

Freedom of Expression at Risk

On December 20, 2007, The Seattle Times published an op-ed by Trillium Asset Management Corporation Vice President Farnum Brown and Michael Connor, the executive director of Open Mic, a nonprofit working to promote a vibrant, diverse media ecosystem through market-based solutions.  Brown and Connor demanded:

 COMCAST, Verizon, and AT&T need to come clean.

Those three – and other cable and telephone companies – need to disclose exactly how they decide to restrict the freedom of expression of hundreds of millions of Americans. They need to explain exactly how they decide to limit Americans’ access to the Internet and other information services. As consumers, investors and citizens, we have a right to know.

Click here to read more…

What’s Going On In The Markets, Vol. IV

Market Update: Recession should be avoided but the risk is there

November 2007

After a strong run, the market stalled in June as the full impact of problems in the mortgage securities market began to unfold. Financial stocks, about one-fifth of the overall market, fell more than 20% in value from the beginning of June through the first four trading days of November. The contagion did not immediately spread, evidenced by the over 10% rally in technology shares during the same period.

However, when a sector as big as financials suffers a major correction, it is difficult for the broad market to continue rising, and now even the market-leading tech stocks have stumbled on fears of an economic recession. Fortunately, many of the major financial players have disclosed their losses, and there is some hope for stabilization. Meanwhile, volatility has returned with a vengeance, as 2-3% daily price moves in market indices have become almost a commonplace. There is now no doubt that the housing bubble has burst, and with it we are seeing the financial stress that often accompanies a mid-cycle slowdown in the economy.

We have maintained all year that the US economy would slow as the lagged effects of two years of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve take hold. This appears to be happening. The end of Fed rate-hike cycles also tends to be followed by some financial crisis. In 1985 it was Illinois-Continental Bank. In 1995 it was the Mexican Peso crisis. In 2007 it’s sub-prime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). In each case Fed tightening causes a weak link in the economy to snap–a weak link caused earlier in the cycle by too-easy money.

Sometimes the financial crisis leads to recession; sometimes it doesn’t. In 1985 and 1995 the Fed lowered interest rates during the crisis and the economy recovered. We believe the odds are 2-in-3 the current financial crisis will resolve without sending the general economy into recession. Corporate earnings remain strong apart from problems in the financial services sector. Inflation is contained. Unemployment is low. Productivity is high. US exports are booming as a result of strong demand from developing economies and a weak US dollar. And the Fed has plenty of room to cut interest rates if need be to stimulate the economy.

If we’re right and the US economy slows but continues to expand, US stocks should perform well as they did in both 1985 and 1995. Bull markets end with high stock valuations and enthusiasm among investors–just the opposite of what we see in the markets today.

Our Take On What’s Going On In the Markets, Vol. II

22 August, 2007

Last week was another wild ride in the stock market as the subprime mortgage mess came to a head. After falling 3.2% in the first three days of the week the S&P 500 then rose 2.8%, most of it in a dramatic surge on Friday. And so, as happened the week before, last week’s stock market was a roller-coaster ride that ended up very near where it started.

Nonetheless, at the low point last week the S&P 500 had declined 9.5% from its high on July 19. If you round that up to 10% it qualifies as a “correction” in stock prices, something we haven’t had in the four-and-a-half years since stocks emerged from the epic bear market in March of 2003.

So you could argue we were overdue for a correction. Because our outlook is driven by stock valuations and the fundamentals of the economy, we didn’t see this coming. We remain positive on both (more on this below). The problems last week arose rather as a result of financial gimmickry gone awry. If you’ll bear with us we’ll explain how below.

The problems arose over the past couple of weeks in an arcane sector of the bond market known as collateralized debt obligations or “CDOs.” These bonds are backed by various kinds of loans-mortgages, credit card debt, car loans, etc. CDOs were created by Wall Street as a way for lenders like banks and mortgage companies to package and sell some of their loan portfolios. This allows the lenders to transfer the risk of these loans to the bond market while raising cash that allows them to make more loans (and so collect more origination fees).

The buyers of these CDOs have tended to be large, supposedly “smart” institutional investors (a.k.a. hedge funds) who liked the bonds’ higher yields. Being crafty types, they often bought the CDOs with money borrowed “on margin” to further boost returns.

Over the past two weeks professional bond buyers, wary of exposure to subprime mortgages, turned their backs on the mortgage-backed securities market. This quickly caused the “bid” side of the market to evaporate and with it all pricing for these securities. With no pricing available, the CDO market ground to a halt.

This caused big problems for all sorts of financial players. Countrywide Financial, one of the largest issuers of mortgages in the US, had to tap an $11.5 billion credit line as they were no longer able to sell loans into the CDO market. French bank BNP Paribas suspended investors’ ability to get their money out of three of its funds because CDO holdings made it impossible to value the funds’ shares. And Goldman Sachs, the bluest of blue chip Wall Street firms, had to put $2 billion of its own money into some of its hedge funds to keep them afloat in the face of margin calls.

In short, the financial markets were hit by a liquidity squeeze. One of the main ways those afloat on borrowed funds dealt with the crisis was by selling assets they COULD get a bid for. Like common stocks. And so problems in the bond market fed into the stock market and selling begat more selling in a classic panic.

That’s when the Fed stepped in. Last Friday the Federal Reserve took the unusual step of cutting its so-called “discount rate” by 50 basis points. This is the rate at which the Fed directly lends to other financial institutions. It was both a symbolic and a substantive action whereby the Fed signaled it would provide the liquidity that had so suddenly disappeared from the markets.

The same day the S&P 500 rose 2.5%, its largest one-day gain since 2003.

The Fed’s action by no means constitutes an “all clear” signal. But it was powerfully reassuring on two fronts.

First, financial crises if left unchecked can feed back into the real economy. If mortgages are harder to come by there are fewer home buyers, housing prices suffer, construction falls off and carpenters lose their jobs. So the Fed breaking the logjam in the financial markets isn’t just a matter of bailing out hedge funds (Goldman Sachs’ largest global hedge fund fell 30% last week.)

Second, the Fed has also signaled that it’s ready to gun the engines on the real economy (lowering interest rates) should growth slow to a worrisome pace. As we’ve argued recently, this is the ace in the hole, if you will, with regard to recession risks. At 5.25% the current Fed Funds Rate can be lowered A LOT if need be in order to stimulate the economy.

While we don’t know if the economy will slow further, we are confident that if it does the Fed will cut interest rates. Either way, we don’t expect a recession. If we’re right then what we’re experiencing is a classic mid-cycle slowdown such as occurred in 1985 and 1995. In both cases there were financial crises, the Fed cut interest rates, recession was avoided and the stock market did well-quite well, in fact.

This isn’t to say that stocks can’t fall from here. They could easily revisit the lows made last week. But with stock valuations at their lowest levels since 1995, short of recession we don’t see much downside from here. Indeed, we expect just the opposite.

By Farnum Brown, Ph.D

Trillium Asset Management

An Open Letter to AT&T

August 10, 2007

Mr. Randall Stephenson
Chair and CEO
AT&T Inc.
175 East Houston
San Antonio, Texas 28205-2233

Dear Mr. Stephenson:

Trillium Asset Management Corporation (Trillium) is a leading socially responsible investment firm with over $1 billion in assets under management, including over 200,000 shares of AT&T Inc. common stock. We are writing as citizens and as shareholders concerned about claims of political censorship during AT&T’s webcast of an August 5th live performance by the band Pearl Jam.

As citizens we are alarmed whenever the free marketplace of ideas is impeded by political censorship. As shareholders we are most concerned about the impact such controversy can have on AT&T’s reputation among consumers and its good standing in regulatory and legislative communities.

This controversy arises at a particularly inopportune moment. The Company is advocating against proposed laws and regulations that would limit its prerogatives as a gatekeeper of information flows across the internet. The Company’s defense of such prerogatives has always turned on assurances that the Company would never interfere with content passing through its pipes.

The fact that politically oriented lyrics were edited from a webcast by AT&T would appear to constitute precisely such interference and thereby cast doubt on the Company’s assurances to the contrary.

We’ve read statements from AT&T spokespeople that, first, Pearl Jam’s anti-Bush lyrics were censored in error by Davey Brown Entertainment, the vendor producing the webcast for AT&T, and, second, that AT&T has policies against political censorship.

We accept the Company’s explanation that this was an error and a violation of Company policy. But as investors alert to the value of the AT&T brand, we are chagrined by the Company’s unenviable position in the court of public opinion.

To defend itself against charges that it did something it shouldn’t have, the Company had to admit that it didn’t do something it should have. That is, to defend itself against charges of political censorship, the Company had to admit it didn’t have in place adequate procedures to prevent unauthorized political censorship. To be meaningful, a policy that disallows political censorship must be combined with procedures that ensure compliance.

As a matter of risk management, we urge the Company to make a full review of and public report on the incident. Only in this way can shareholders, consumers, regulators and legislators understand why this incident occurred and be assured of the Company’s ability to prevent similar incidents in the future.

As part of that review we would like to know on what specific grounds Davey Brown Entertainment’s agent(s) decided to take the draconian step of depriving viewers of fully permissible content. We would also like to know if the Company was aware of Davey Brown Entertainment’s actions before this controversy became public. If so, do the Company’s policies require it to inform content providers such as Pearl Jam whenever such actions occur? It is our understanding that Pearl Jam was notified of the incident by fans rather than by the Company.

Trillium has had productive conversations with AT&T in the past, and was among a group of investors that prompted the company to publish its 2006 Corporate Social Responsibility Report during the AT&T-SBC merger. As was true then, in this case we believe that transparency about AT&T’s policies, procedures and performance, including what went wrong in this instance, is in the best interest of the Company and its long-term shareholders.

We would welcome a chance to discuss this issue with the appropriate member of AT&T’s senior management.

Sincerely,

Steve Lippman
Vice President, Social Research

Farnum Brown
Vice President, Portfolio Manager

Our View of What’s Going On In the Markets

The sharp sell-off in stocks last Thursday and Friday grabbed headlines and sparked anxiety among investors. We thought we’d take this opportunity to share our views on last week’s market action and what we think you should make of it.

To start with our conclusion: Unless the economy is headed for recession–and we don’t believe it is–the outlook for stocks remains positive. Now for our reasoning.

The sharp declines in the stock market last Thursday and Friday seem to us very similar to the declines in late February. Both followed periods of very strong gains in stock prices. February’s 3% sell-off followed a 7-month run where stocks gained 19%. The 5% decline last week followed a 4-month stretch where stocks gained 13%. Such sharp pullbacks in price do not seem unusual given the far stronger gains preceding them. This is the way the market advances: a few steps forward, a couple steps back.

Relatedly and from an investor-sentiment perspective, both declines occurred after investors had gotten a bit complacent following strong price runs. As legendary investor John Templeton said, “bull markets are born of pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.” Last week’s market action demonstrated–and insured–that investors are far from optimistic, much less euphoric. Keeping investor sentiment in check is, again, the way the market advances.

Fundamentally speaking both declines were prompted by problems in the housing and subprime lending markets. In February we got our first glimpse of these problems as mortgage defaults spiked and US housing prices registered their first year-over-year decline since the 1930s. Last week the scope of these problems expanded as the debt markets registered the weakness in mortgages. Same problem, different stage of development.

The crux of the matter remains the same: Will problems in the housing/mortgage markets pull the economy into recession? We think not.

It’s important to note that something like this always happens at this point in the economic cycle. Following the end of a Fed credit-tightening cycle, somewhere in the economy something cracks as a result of the pressure. Often that something was created earlier by money being too easily available. In the mid-1980s it was in the banking sector with Continental-Illinois Bank. In the mid-1990s it was the Mexican peso crisis. Both were true financial crises but neither led to recession.

So there’s always a weak link that cracks and this time it’s housing. Creative mortgages and the housing bubble were a natural if unintended result of the extremely easy-money policy the Fed put in place following 9/11. That they’re both now cracking following two years of Fed rate hikes is also natural, if equally unintended.

We doubt that the subprime lending implosion will stall the overall economy. Slow it, yes. But stall it, no. Most US homeowners and corporations enjoy the strongest balance sheets they’ve had in decades. The US economy is quite diversified with increasingly large exposure to a rapidly expanding global economy. Problems in the housing sector aren’t likely to overwhelm these strengths.

If we’re wrong about this, however, our ace in the hole is the Federal Reserve. Should the economy begin to show signs of faltering the Fed has plenty of room to lower short-term interest rates from their currently high level of 5.25%. Lower interest rates would in turn re-stimulate the economy as well as boosting stock prices. This is in fact the typical pattern, one we saw in the soft landings of both 1985 (after Continental-Illinois) and 1995 (post-Mexican peso).

Today we see investors very nervous and stock valuations lower by some measures than they were at the bottom of the last great bear market in 2002. That’s not the way things look at the end of a bull market. The time to be concerned is when nobody else is and valuations are stretched.

Against the current backdrop if you believe the economy will avoid recession (with or without the Fed’s help) and so expect earnings growth to continue it’s hard not to conclude that stock prices will be materially higher a year from now. Getting there could be a bumpy ride but that, after all, is the nature of stock investing. Successful investors tune out the short-term noise and stay focused on the long view. That’s what we’re doing.

F. Farnum Brown, Jr. Ph.D.
Trillium Asset Management

Joan Bavaria’s Future of Socially Responsible Investing

What will Socially Responsible Investing look like in 15 years? I believe we are in a period of rapid change and growth with a somewhat uncertain outcome. Those of us who are involved in and support socially responsible investing, mission-related investing, corporate social responsibility and all that involves social and environmental considerations in a market economy must concentrate on what needs to happen to continue making progress, clearly visioning our desired outcomes.

SRI, as it has grown over the years, has broadened from a focused small community centered around causes such as the anti-apartheid movement to an impressive, multi-trillion dollar investment system in the U.S. alone (as reported by the Social Investment Forum), where participants might embrace some or all of a long list of goals and concerns. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), started by Ceres and now based in Amsterdam, reports that to date, nearly 1000 organizations in over 60 countries have declared their use of the GRI Reporting Framework The Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), “is a network of institutional investors and financial institutions dedicated to promoting better understanding of the financial risks and investment opportunities posed by climate change. INCR was launched at the first Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk at the United Nations in November 2003, and now includes more than 50 institutional investors that collectively manage over $3 trillion in assets. Members engage companies and policy makers through educational forums, shareholder resolutions, and other actions to ensure the long-term health of their investments.” The reporting and transparency we have sought has “gone mainstream.”

The goals and concerns of the small SRI community a few decades ago were generally those of caretaker, protecting human and natural resources from harm and avoiding exploitation for profit. Reasonable people will differ as to what harm or exploitation means. Over time, we have fostered processes more than an ideology, widening the lenses of capitalism beyond short-term financial gains for investors and bringing important new players to the table. Despite these processes, however, few of the participants have been willing or able to abandon the traditional intention of “investing” – obtaining maximum possible income or profit – and time horizons for measurement have shrunk.

Surveying Socially Responsible Investing, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Mission Related Investing as they exist today you find a completely different external environment than the one I found in SRI in the 70′s. The world of investing has been transformed by technology and by a bevy of ambitious math or finance majors. Investing has also become global, inexorably linking all regions of the world 24 hours a day. Given the pace of change in the past 15 years – the mainstreaming, the growth and the new and important participants – what can we expect in the next fifteen? What are the goals of those who have successfully engaged in a transformational effort, as imposing technologies and cultural pressures threaten to push back their progress?

We are witnessing a growing tension between opposites. First, we have the expanding world of investors cultivating sustainable investments that imply long time horizons and “patient capital,” accompanied by more and more companies that embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) and believe that environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are material to their business. Those promoting sustainable investments are squared off against the high-velocity world of esoteric financial products and fast-moving trading around the globe that knows no community of any kind and cares not at all for anything except results defined by the compounding of capital within truncated time frames. This high velocity world produces hundreds of ways to invest each year, such as the exchange traded funds (ETFs) that are being widely used as proxies for pieces of the general market, or the now established and too plentiful hedge funds, or the private equity funds that proliferate, occupying chunks of space in large investment portfolios with very little social or environment accountability.

Within the SRI community, those who sell services are, rightly, beginning to offer the new products to their clients to help them diversify easily and thus participate in the world economy with minimum risk. This is probably a good thing, as long as the concepts of transparency and sound social analysis are adhered to. But in spite of the proliferation of socially screened or activist products, we are faced with a very stubborn resistance from timeworn arguments.

Many organizations founded for social or environmental purposes still play the compounding math game with little social or environmental input because the trustees or board members fear an undefined and almost never meted out punishment for abrogating their fiduciary responsibilities. “Universal Owner” is a relatively new hypothesis which “states that a portfolio investor benefiting from a company externalizing costs might experience a reduction in overall returns due to these externalities adversely affecting other investments in the portfolio, and hence market return. (Raj Thamotheram and Helen Wildmisth, “Putting the Universal Owner Hypothesis into Action) This is a correct hypothesis, in my view. But in 2006 in the face of extraordinary profits made in the stock of some petroleum companies, many trustees and board members simply reverted to short-term comparisons. The fact that many socially responsible investors did not invest in the stocks that benefited the most, increasing close to 40 percent in that one year, prompted one Trustee to say “So now we know what Social Investing can do for us!” This person is on the Board of an environmental activist non-profit organization and could have been sanctioning investments in the same companies that they fight daily in Washington D.C. and on the ground.

If I were to predict tomorrow based on today, I would say “more of the same” but I hope for more maturity and sustainability. Straight-line growth would involve more products, more vendors, more activities, more corporate reports, and more tension. The sheer pace of change and recalcitrance of key actors could throw all we’ve accomplished in reverse. CERES, GRI and INCR must beg for money every day – they are vastly under-funded for the scope of their challenges. In fifteen years we could be twice as big and successful, an imbedded and necessary part of a more sustainable economic system, or hardly exist at all as the world races backward toward a voracious capitalism that tramples nature and the defenseless.

But let’s envision the positive option in fifteen years – bigger and successful, more mature and sustainable:

We’re at an important turning point in SRI as we have become visible, potent, and a threat. Growth for the sake of growth could lead us to a meaningless, if enlarged, future. It’s vitally important that we steer that growth, promoting core system changes that will ensure that socially responsible investing becomes an integral and permanent part of the market system.

This is reprinted from Special 15th Anniversary Issue.

Cheryl Smith, Executive Vice President at Trillium Asset Management Corporation, recently interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor

Cheryl Smith, Executive Vice President at Trillium Asset Management Corporation and Social Investment Forum board member, was recently interviewed along with Reggie Stanley of Calvert and Amy Muska O’Brien of TIAA-CREFF. They discussed the growing trend of socially responsible investment options available in company retirement plans.

For a transcript of the interview or to watch the video, visit http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/sri/video/monthly_outlook_061407.html