By Kerry Keihn
This week the Earth Equity team had the joy of being part of the Conscious Capitalism Asheville Chapter Kick-Off. It was a great event with an awesome turnout – over 60 people were so passionate about business as a force for good they showed up for an event at 8 am (before our host, New Belgium, could even serve beer!).
Conscious Capitalism is an international movement made up of mission-driven companies who want to make a profit and benefit our communities, environment, and the world at large. There are Conscious Capitalism chapters all over the globe, but surprisingly there was not one in Western North Carolina until Susan Walters Minker and Alan Minker with Bend of Ivy Lodge pulled together a group of interested community members in May of 2018. I met Susan at a networking event and shortly after joined the mastermind group she and Alan created. After much brainstorming, the group decided to launch quarterly events open to the community – the first one was the kick-off event this week. If you missed the kick-off event, we would still love to have you at the future quarterly events. The next one will be on June 25th(location and exact time TBD). To stay in the loop, you can subscribe to the newsletter here– make sure to check the ‘Conscious Capitalism Announcements’ box.
At the kick-off event, we heard from some great conscious organization leaders including New Belgium, Mountain BizWorks, Bend of Ivy Lodge, and Earth Equity’s own CEO, Pete Krull. Pete spoke on Higher Purpose – one of the four tenets of Conscious Capitalism (Higher Purpose, Stakeholder Orientation, Conscious Leadership, and Conscious Culture). He shared how by searching for his WHY, as Simon Sinek would say, it drove him to found Earth Equity Advisors 15 years ago. Earth Equity’s Why/Higher Purpose/True North has always driven team planning sessions, the impact investing options for our clients, and how we interact with our community. It’s to make the world a better place – we empower our clients to magnify their impact through responsible investing.
Future Conscious Capitalism plans include launching a speaker series, which will bring in leaders in the Conscious Capitalism movement across the nation to Western North Carolina. If you have ideas for unique events you would like the local Conscious Capitalism group to host, or topics you’d like covered during quarterly events, please contact me!
It’s so exciting to see how seriously conscious business practices are being taken, and how many people are interested in this. At Earth Equity Advisors, we continue to believe that businesses can and should help solve problems rather than creating them. We are so grateful that many others share the same vision!
