Video excerpts from a presentation by Tara Hart, Vanguard Chief Resilience Officer (Rebecca DeMarco), at the Wall Street Green Summit, New York City, on March 12, 2024.

FULL TEXT:

Emotional Armor for Eco-Warrior Investors

[Slide 1: intro]

Thank you, I’m very happy to be here at the Wall Street Green Summit, pushing a product that turns over quite a new leaf: the very first resilience toolkit for climate-conscious investors.

It’s something Vanguard has had in the works for about two years. They brought me in first as a consultant and now as their brand-spankin’-new “P.R.O.” Psychological Resilience Officer, the first C-suite position dedicated to resolving employee and customer cognitive dissonance.

My job is to help Vanguard’s 20,000 employees and 50 million investors—more than $8 trillion in assets—emotionally adapt to the stressful business of enjoying stable returns from an unstable climate.

Since I’m in a room of finance bros—and pros, I see you girls—I have to be honest: I’m not a finance pro (or bro). My background is in PR and HR, I worked for over a decade in consumer health comms. (Yeah, I’m older than you think, but let’s put that aside till happy hour.) Dropped into the deep end, I’m realizing what you already know: this is where it happens: No public company, in any industry, can do what they do without Wall Street.

So. We have a lot to talk about so I’m going to move fast—but as finance professionals in a collapsing climate, moving fast is what we all need to be doing, yeah?

[Slide 2: VG ship]

At Vanguard, we’ve had our eye on the long-term ever since Jack Bogle created the index fund. But what he didn’t foresee 50 years ago is how fossil fuels would threaten the sustainability of our planet—and how popular demand to get off fossil fuels would threaten the sustainability of our index funds.

[Slide: VG ship stormy]

As a major shareholder in most S&P companies, Vanguard enjoys influence over them all, and over their climate impacts—putting us in an enormously difficult place, emotionally. In a real sense, Vanguard investors are on the front lines of climate disaster.

[Slide: climate-stress headlines 1]

Of course, we all strive to be good planetary stewards while being good fiscal stewards—but given current priorities and market positions, we can’t be both. That’s why Vanguard and our entire industry have the most to gain from adding climate-stress management tools to our HR (and PR) arsenals.

[Slide: climate-stress headlines 2]

It’s not only about customers. One key insight we identified early on is that people need to feel their work does good, or at least they don’t want to feel their work does bad. But most employees are not the captain steering the ship. Inevitably, we have problems with stuff our employer does to hurt the climate (like, for one of a million examples, we all agree most ESG screens are insanely porous).

BUT! We can change without changing careers, and investors can change without changing their portfolios.

[Slide: WHO diagram]

Now, I wanna drop a mind-bomb on you. I can’t take credit but I never forgot it: In the frightening face of climate change, the hardest thing to change is ourselves.

[Slide: how eco-anxiety is being treated]

You’ve heard, “Think globally, act locally.” Well, the local struggle for asset managers is helping clients feel good about prospering despite downstream effects—the seen, the unseen, the unseeable, and the unforeseenable... The consequences of our investment choices that ripple across the moral universe forever.

We can’t help that. But what we can do is adapt: We can change.

[Slide: Cognitive dissonance solution]

Humans are agile. We have plastic brains! We twist and bend and squeeze our way through ethical quandaries of every shape and hole size. And this natural agility can be... dosed... with the right tools.

[Slide: VG logo, Many Happy Returns Climate Adaptation Toolkit]

Meet the Many Happy Returns Climate Adaptation Toolkit, the most ambitious climate-stress mitigation program in the history of finance—now a free bonus for Vanguard employees and customers.  This self-care toolbox makes sure we invest in the rarest commodity of all: inner peace.

Now, let’s break open this kit and see what’s inside. First up:

[Slide: ENHANCED INVESTOR SUPPORT - Sustainability Hotline]

The Sustainability Hotline. Ring-ringf! Mental health counselors available 24-7 to overcome doubt and talk you down from the ledge—of uncertainty, of divestment, of playing it too safe. Right now, seriously—call this number when I’m done—this hotline puts mental health care for investors right where it counts: in your pocket, crammed up right next to your wallet.

[Slide: SANITIZED INFORMATICS - InfoGuardian]

InfoGuardian is an AI-powered content guard installed on all devices to minimize guilt-inducing stimuli and anxiety brought on by investment-related moral dilemmas. Like a parental control, InfoGuardian filters news based on each investor’s portfolio and excludes content about un-desirable impacts of their investments, in the real world, in real time.

[Slide: PEOPLE-POWERED MUTUAL AID - Vanguardians Social]

Most people think climate change will negatively impact markets, even though natural disasters make bank if you have the right mindset. But prospering after disaster requires emotional agility and an understanding peer group. Vanguardians Social is an AI-moderated peer network helping investors stay sure-footed through morally challenging times, so no matter how fraught things get they find support to stay bulllish.

[Slide: PROSPER IN PEACE - Dissonex]

Now. This. The very cuttingest-edge. The hottest frontier: Braaaaiiiins. Right? It’s all about how we feel...

Anyone with a stake in oil and gas the last 10 years knows that ZING you feel, that BUZZ when you see a spike in the ticker on the news, right above footage of a record-breaking hurricane, and there you are, feeling that joy get tainted. It’s complicated. What if there was a pill you could take that separated those feelings: so you could enjoy your investment choices while still checking the empathy box?

Dissonex is a breakthrough performance-enhancing nootropic that tackles the root causes of cognitive dissonance. By soothing the nervous system and alleviating concern, Dissonex optimizes the brain’s natural ability to compartmentalize clashing values.

Hims & Hers is rolling it out first at the enterprise level, so we at Vangaurd are like very excited lab rats: It’s heckin’ cool, we brought some samples, I can share. I’ve taken it, twice today, it’s subtle, it’s safe—it’s even a little stimulating—just enough of a boost. You know the part of the day where the stuff is piling up, you take a break, it’s just doom-scrolling... This is a silver bullet in the mouth. Just a spoonful of medicine to make the world go down.

[Slide: YOUR DOME AWAY FROM HOME - Terradome]

Finally. And why we needed to be here IRL, cuz it’s kinda bonkers: What if, instead of adapting to the world, you adapted the world—to you? Arnie, can you come up? Yeah, thank you.

[Neuroptima rep and model in Terradome walk to front.]

So, the collapse of real-world ecosystems—it’s super bummer. We know. And we’ve found that exposure to a functional ecosystem, even in miniature, alleviates stress.

[Slide: Terradome diagram]

Stick your head where the sun does shine: TerraDome, your personal infinitely sustainable ecosystem. This literally groundbreaking experience simulates immersion in a robust forest, blocking environmental stimuli from the outside. How is it in there?

ARNIE [muffled screaming like a trapped mouse]

In TerraDome I exhale carbon, which feeds the biome, while binaural soundscapes relax my ears! Microflora cleans the air! I am experiencing evapo-transpiration! Going inside a mini healthy climate makes me not stressed about the real one! It decompresses mind and body! I love TerraDome, my dome away from home! [fumbling with helmet while exiting] OK, I’m done. I need to get out. This is stressing me out. Fuck this, I can’t. Enough.

[Slide: QR and logo end]

Great. So. I think that’s what we have for you. Check out happyreturns.care to sign up, or speak with your advisor. I’ll be joining you after lunch, I can’t wait to hear what you’re working on. Let’s talk? And finally, before I go, lemme just leave this here, hopefully to frame the rest of your sessions at the Wall Street Green Summit: It’s easy to worry about the climate... join Vanguard, as we work to make it easy not to. Thank you.