Doing Right and Doing Well

By Taylor McNeil

Bostonia Magazine

Fall 2005

Adam Seitchik’s six-story, brick-faced office building near Boston’s South Station is a few blocks — and a world away — from the gleaming glass towers rising up in the nearby financial district. The contrast is fitting. For thirteen years, he worked for large financial management firms, most recently as chief global strategist for Deutsche Asset Management in London, overseeing some $75 billion in assets. But last fall he moved to socially responsible investing, as chief investment strategist and portfolio manager for thirty-person Trillium Asset Management. It’s a niche in the financial world, and for Seitchik (GRS’83,’89), it feels just right — an alignment of his values and his work. “I’ve always wanted to create a more permeable wall between my home and work life, and I really feel this makes it possible,” he says.

Socially responsible investing — screening out companies that don’t fit the values of investors, paired with shareholder activism — is a small but growing movement. Trillium and similar firms use the power of shareholder resolutions, which are proposed at annual shareholder meetings, and more often the threat of them, “to try to effect corporate change,” says Seitchik, whose Graduate School degrees are in economics.

“You start talking to Nike about the labor practices in their suppliers’ factories — safety standards and that sort of thing,” he says. “A company like Nike says they want to talk to you about that, that they want to do a good job. It’s important to the brand.”

Seitchik follows other BU alumni well known in the field: Luther Tyson (STH’48, GRS’68) cofounded Pax World Fund and Amy Domini (CAS’73) started Domini Social Investments. While those funds are open to the average investor, Trillium’s minimum investment for individuals is $1 million; its institutional clients tend “to be values-based investors, such as religious institutions and progressive foundations and endowments,” he notes.

“You need to make a reasonable profit for your shareholders,” says Seitchik, “but it’s also in your interests as a human being and as a company, and in ours as owners of capital, for you to conduct yourself in a way that’s environmentally sound and takes account of the social justice standards of both your employees and your community.”