Where Your Money Sleeps at Night, featuring Climate First Bank & Topo Finance
Historically, banking and investing have been seen as climate-neutral activities, but this perception is changing. If you bank with a traditional institution, the carbon footprint of your deposits may be larger than any other activity, even air travel. Your bank may use your deposits to make loans to companies you may not want to support including fossil fuel related companies.
Join Big Path Capital and Ethic for a discussion with Climate First Bank & Topo Finance to learn more about the impact of your cash.
About the co-hosts:
Ethic: Ethic has spent the last eight years simplifying the complex world of personalized, sustainable, and impact investing. We partner with hundreds of advisory firms to help wealth advisors and investors create portfolios that align personal values with financial goals. We are on a mission to harness technology, data, and storytelling to redefine value and empower our clients to invest in the future they want to build.
Big Path Capital: At Big Path Capital, we are innovative leaders expanding the path for business interests seeking multiple bottom line interests, taking the new economy from the margins to the mainstream, seeing the financial world generate good as it generates returns. As a global firm, Big Path Capital is advancing a sustainable economy connecting mission-driven companies and fund managers with mission-aligned investors.
About the speakers:
Ken LaRoe: As an internationally recognized leader in the field of ethical banking and outspoken advocate for values-based businesses, Ken has always had a unique approach to banking and believes that in addition to making a profit, finance can be a force for good. Ken founded Florida Choice Bank in 1999, grew it to over $400 million in assets by 2006 before selling it to Alabama National Bankcorp. Three years later, Ken was able to put this approach into action with the founding of First GREEN Bank – the very first bank in the eastern United States with an environmental and social mission. Under Ken’s leadership, First GREEN Bank expanded across Florida and grew to over $825 million in assets by the time it was sold to Seacoast Banking Corporation in 2018. His values-based business model demonstrated that financial excellence could occur without ethical compromise. Now, with a continued dedication to reverse the climate crisis, Ken is expanding on First GREEN Bank’s legacy with his newest bank, Climate First Bank the nation’s first FDIC-insured digital community bank founded to combat the climate crisis.
Paul Moinester: Fueled by his passion for diving deep into overlooked issues and his conviction that any problem can be overcome, Paul has built a career solving daunting challenges others miss or are unwilling to undertake—a pursuit that has taken him from the marbled halls of Washington, D.C., where he served as a senior aid, to salmon rivers in remote Alaska to the heart of the global financial system. Recognizing the need for an organization and team that could match his desire to build audacious solutions and forge transformative impact, Paul founded Topo Finance in 2017.
Through their groundbreaking research, Paul and the team at Topo Finance have pioneered the field of climate-aligned corporate treasury management. They are the industry-leading experts and consult to the world’s largest corporations on how to transform their financial management into their most powerful lever for climate progress. Their breakthrough research and work is credited with uncovering “the largest remaining source of huge and hidden carbon emissions in our economy” by climate luminary Bill McKibben.
A note: Please be advised that photographs and video will be taken at this event. By attending, you consent to your image being captured and used by Ethic & Big Path Capital for promotional and archival purposes. If you'd rather not be in any photos, just let the team know at check-in.