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| Best Practices |
Action Figures
Suzanne McGee
08/02/2004
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Not all shareholder activists focus solely on performance. Responsible
Wealth (RW) is a Boston-based nonprofit whose members are drawn from the
wealthiest 5 percent of Americans. RW leverages its members’ shareholdings to
draw attention at corporate annual meetings to social justice and related
governance issues, and to push for change. “My experience is that even the most
affluent of our members do not recognize that they have this kind of power, and
are pretty excited when they first find out,” says Scott Klinger, codirector of
Responsible Wealth.
TOP VIEW
Emboldened and appalled by the myriad corporate scandals to unfold in recent
years, many of us have considered leveraging our power as shareholders to lobby
the companies in which we invest to adopt better governance policies. Experts
caution, however, that shareholder activism can be a frustrating and costly
pursuit. |
When Jennifer Ladd joined RW in 1997, she was relieved to
find a mechanism that allowed her to use her wealth in pursuit of her values.
Now 51, the Standard Oil heiress was raised by “thoughtful, progressive” parents
in Cambridge, Mass. She began to think about the obligations that accompany her
wealth while in college. “No matter how nice a person I was as an individual, I
had to accept that my money gave me privileges that others didn’t have,” she
explains today. “That meant that somehow I had to find a way to level the
playing the field.” She became a teacher, earned her doctorate in education and
became philanthropically active, but, she adds, “I remained very conflicted
about my wealth. Then, by my 40s, I was tired of hiding that part of my life as
if I were ashamed of it.” She joined RW and began to attend the annual meetings
of corporations in which she invested to lobby for change.
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