Tiffany and I first met each other in 2013 through Resource Generation. And then we launched Chordata in 2017. We were seeing that there were these radical and wealthy young people that wanted to invest in the solidarity economy.

But when they learned about certain kinds of [socially just] projects or funds, their investment advisors told them it was too risky. Or that they could only move a $5,000 investment out of a $50 million portfolio, so the resources just weren’t flowing.

So we saw an opportunity to walk that path with people and say, if you’re committed to wealth redistribution, investing in racial justice, in order to shift wealth and power, we can help you do that, we can shift your investment portfolio.

And that’s what Chordata is. We support people through investment advising and we have a 9-month cohort program.

It’s pretty counter-cultural, but there are plenty of people that want to do just that. I think what we’re trying to do with our work is to put a beacon out there and say, if you want to walk this radical path, we can support you in doing it. I think a lot of traditional investment advisors are afraid of these kinds of investments as taking on more risk or investing in experiments that aren’t proven. But if that’s what wealth holders want to do with their money — to get into experiments, beautiful experiments in the solidarity economy — then you can have a role as an investment advisor and support them in following that path.

Yes, my first week in school, there was this protest against the way Mumia Abu Jamal had been falsely incarcerated. And I was like, Whoa, political prisoners. That scared the crap out of me, that somebody could be set up for speaking their truth.

And then I got into anti-racist politics and got really radicalized. It set me up to then go to Atlanta to do an internship with the NAACP, and that just set everything else up after that.

I think part of the heart of our work together is Kate and I coming out of donor organizing, and all of these social justice principles that surround how people think about the politics of giving. So instead of thinking that wealthy people know how to fix all of the world’s problems, it’s about impacted communities which have the answers to address whatever issues they’re facing.

And so we just use that same lens of social justice principles with investing. And community control can look a lot of different ways. One of the most inspiring examples is the Boston Ujima Project.

Yes, absolutely.

I think part of what we’re trying to push towards is this shift from individualized thinking to taking responsibility and being a part of a community. To move from the individualism of centering your own ideas to supporting communities in their economic self determination.

A lot of the work that we’re seeing is people bringing their heart and the values they want to see in the world. Centering interconnectedness and interdependence. We explore how those values can be a part of the businesses or investments that we’re doing together.

In thinking about what kinds of values an entrepreneur should have, I think we’re trying to push towards a sense of collective care. Another piece that Tiffany and I talk a lot about in doing this work, across difference and across class and across race, is that we need each other. And we really believe that, as we’re building an economy that works for everyone, we need to practice working together across differences. And we need to build new economic infrastructure that brings everyone in, and values everyone’s labor.

Just yesterday, I was hanging out with my friend, and was talking about what I love about our work. Kate and I work to develop relationships with all these incredible investment opportunities, and we love that. And then we also have these incredible relationships with our clients. So part of the work is bridging these relationships so that people actually feel connected to what their investment portfolio is.

Another frame that we think about around investment is the way it’s a long term relationship. You’re locking up your capital with certain companies, and your fates are tethered to each other for five years, seven years, ten years.

Actually I think in some ways, it’s worse than that. Because it’s not just the passive accumulation of wealth. There’s real harm and extraction and exploitation happening all over the world. So yes, there’s this mental shift around first realizing the harm that’s happened, and then also being an active part of working towards repair, which means stepping into your leadership and your power and shifting the economy in the ways that you can.

Right, you don’t have to do it alone, you can come out of this isolation and into community and feel empowered to do powerful, good things.

We work with a lot of different funds. I think maybe in the future, we’ll create our own fund. But right now, the way we work with people is as investment advisors. People come to us, let’s say they have $5 million, and we help them invest that into a variety of funds. So that might include some community development financial institutions, some co-op loan funds, some direct investments, some community controlled funds.

Yeah, it’s really powerful work and it speaks to honoring different people’s leadership and creativity, and really being honest about what’s needed. I love when people can be in more direct, authentic relationship in that way. And you can ask, okay, is this better as an investment or a grant? What kinds of investment terms would actually help your business thrive in a deep way? Those kinds of questions.

Yes, we like to talk about “decoding” people’s brokerage statements. When I started working in socially-responsible investment in 2016, I would look at clients’ brokerage statements and I would just want to black out. Because we’re saying this is socially responsible investing but then you’re looking at all these ticker symbols and numbers. And I just could imagine a lot of our clients who came from Resource Generation having that same exact experience of just blacking out.

So when we launched the first Chordata Capital cohort, this nine month learning program that we did, one of the first things I thought would be important for participants is: you have to know what you own.

And when we look at how our assets are invested, if we feel like looking away or just putting the statement in a shredder, that is one of the ways we disconnect from the violence of what our portfolio is actually doing.

And so what we would do is get together on Zoom, put ticker symbols into Yahoo Finance and then talk about a particular corporation or mutual fund. And maybe we would say, oh, here’s a doozy when we come across a certain kind of private investment fund where it’s a team of all these white dudes with one person of color who’s the administrative associate or whatever. And then you see, that’s the impact that you’re having. And then you have to ask, what’s the compelling reason to stay with these people?

Yeah, something we talk about a lot is all these feelings people have about finance, that it’s opaque, that it’s inaccessible, that they can’t understand it. That’s all on purpose, you know, it’s by design.

Yeah, keeping you alienated from your power and your capacity to make different choices. It’s been really exciting to figure out what resources we can share, through zines or through storytelling, around supporting anyone that has capital on hand to make these investments in the solidarity economy.

There’s a lot happening. I initially came into local investing work through working at Schumacher Center for New Economics. Then I worked with Michael Shuman when he was a part of BALLE that has now become Common Future. I feel like that’s another place where people are doing this work. The New Economy Coalition is another. Those are cross-class, multiracial groups of people building the solidarity economy together.

And the New Economy Coalition has a great map of work across the U.S. Beautiful Solutions has a gorgeous database of stories of redistributing power and wealth. Next Egg is a project rethinking retirement.

And then for people with wealth, Thousand Currents runs decolonizing philanthropy programs like their Buen Vivir Fund. And Solidaire does donor organizing around giving but has started to do investing work in a really beautiful way. Leaders at foundations can check out Justice Funders.

And Tiffany and I launched Chordata Capital out of after being inaugural fellows at the Just Economy Institute. There’s lots of different organizations in this ecosystem.