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Jay Lipman

Co-founder and President, Ethic Investing

When he graduated from high school outside London, Jay Lipman, 31, booked a one-way flight to Tanzania to work in an orphanage. He soon caught malaria and had to come home to England. “I realized there is little I can do by myself to change things significantly, but a lot I could do by changing systems,” said Lipman, who is trying to change the system of capital allocation. His vehicle is Ethic, the tech-driven asset management firm he helped create in 2015 to simplify and popularize the creation of sustainable investment portfolios.

Ethic builds separately managed accounts that are optimized to track the market, align with a client’s investment allocation and outperform chosen sustainability criteria. In addition to giving advisers tools to build sustainable portfolios, Ethic helps them guide clients in developing a personal mission statement that reflects their priorities, and provides information about how much pollution portfolio companies have removed, for example, or the kinds of improvements in gender pay gaps they have helped bring about. An outspoken advocate, Lipman also educates advisers on the wide range of sustainability issues through written and video content.

Evan Cooper