Wayne Silby_enhanced_None

Wayne Philby, co-founder of Calvert Investments, discusses the role of spirituality and meditation in his journey in social responsible investing. He shares how participating in a Buddhist right livelihood program inspired him to create Calvert, a mutual fund that reflects his generation's values. Philby also talks about the intersection of spirituality, investing, and business, and how it influenced the Social Venture Network. He mentions the use of float tanks for meditation and the importance of quieting the mind to access deeper insights. Philby believes that integrating spirituality into business and investment decisions can lead to greater awareness, presence, and connection to a higher purpose. He also mentions the potential influence of plant medicine and spiritual experiences on the future of the world. Welcome to today's podcast. I'm super, super excited to have Wayne Philby, who's a dear friend and mentor as our guest today. Wayne is a pioneering figure in the realm of social responsible investing as the co-founder of Calvert Investments, one of the first and largest socially responsible mutual funds in the US. With an incredible career spanning across the globe, Wayne has really been a leader that has inspired so many others, both through the work with Calvert, but also in founding Fintel and playing a key role in the founding of Impact Assets and many other key organizations. So super excited to have Wayne with us here today. Wayne, we'd love to start off. I know that for you and the founding of Calvert, that participating in a Buddhist right living program was a key part of your journey. I'd love if you could just share a bit more about that story and the role it played as an inspiration to you. Sure. I'm happy to, Jenna. When we began Calvert, we actually did a money market fund, which was one of these new things. I had some more in financial engineering and actually, we were the highest yielding money market fund in the country. So we were building up some momentum, some staff, and that kind of thing. Then I saw this curious, I was reading New Age Magazine again on part of the 60s generation, and there was this conference on right livelihood. Right livelihood is an eightfold path to enlightenment in Buddhism. One of the paths or one of the tenets, if you will, is to do work that has meaning, impact, purpose, and is right livelihood. So I'm at this conference, and well, it was actually a post hippies commune type event. Maybe 10 or 12 people, we went around in a circle in terms of what we did. Boy, it occurred to me, my God, what I do is I get an extra quarter percent more than the next guy. That was like, that's my gravestone. That's like how we're going to do our work, and that inspired me to think about a fund or an investment, mutual fund that would reflect my generation's values, and really be something that was more aspirational than just how much money can you make. So to be clear, I didn't start off being Mother Teresa or anything like that, but to see like I wanted to make my life have more of a meaning in that kind of the spiritual context, and that's why a big factor in why Calvert Social Investment Fund then was created. That really gave me the impetus, the aha. We also had Harvard Divinity School type board members and others who would add to keep us on a spiritual path. I will say that being involved in an organization where you have a purpose and a meaning, and where is this going, and how do you treat people, and how do you make arrangements with others in a business sense or fair, and you can be proud of, really I think came out of that context. I love that story. Thank you for sharing that. If you think more broadly about the intersection of spirituality, investing, and business, what comes to mind for you? How do you think about that? Well, one time, well, not one time. Being this other fellow Tush Milman, we started this group called the Social Venture Network. It was basically some angel investor types of young entrepreneur types like Ben and Jerry or Anita Roddick at the Body Shop. Again, my generation back then, this was about 87. We also included Naropa as a part of the leadership and the invite. Naropa was a Buddhist study school, Tibetan Buddhist study school in Boulder, Colorado, and invited some of their people to participate and do meditations in the morning, and involve that this is all part of life. This is one spirit. Social Venture Network was very much anchored with a spiritual alignment, a values alignment, if you will. Again, I think that's what kept that community going for 20, 30 years. About three or four years after we did our first conference, it struck such a nerve that Bill Clinton, as President of the United States, spoke at our conference. That was quite a from a kitchen table talk about bringing more values into the business, and investing to the President showing up. That was in five years. That was a phenomenal. Amazing. Amazing. Quite a journey there. I know that float tanks have played an important role in your meditation journey and the insights from that. Could you share a bit more about that and the role it played for you? Well, at one point in Calvert's history, we were challenged by certain new rules, government, the banks, going to be able to do. I was out of sorts a bit, and I needed to be, as co-CEO, I needed to be present there as we dealt with this new challenge, and decided to get a float tank to see if I couldn't chill out in a way, and I heard about using meditation in the tank. What happened actually is in the tank, sometimes you can have ideas just below the surface, but unless you quiet your chatter mind, the ideas don't bubble up. That was a really good move because I got an idea of how to new productize our main activity in a way that worked, and could save the company. But again, we have this awareness that we have these cells that are just below the surface and our chatterbox mind so often doesn't really allow us to access that. I followed up more on this kind of meditation, and I'm not a big meditator, but I did in Beijing start a float tank company where we help people learn to meditate. The interesting thing about a float tank is it's a sensory deprivation tank, so all your senses are taken away from you. So you're just left there with your mind and a blank chatter. I mean, the water is skin temperature, you can't see anything, your ears are below the water, you can't hear anything. So you're sort of there with yourself, and what we try to teach is how we have this mind chatter, which is so hard to turn off in meditation. In the tank, the mind chatter is like a billboard on the wall, and you're like, oh my God, I'm thinking that who is that person? Oh, that person had that mother, had that brother, had that family upbringing. Oh, that was me, but that's not exactly me. I have a deeper knowing self. We partly did this in China, partly because we felt like kind of a give back. It's a high-pressure society and a way to offer, we call it Zen flow as the name of the company, and it's rolling along, and we have a lot of interesting people come by and have various experiences. But the key part of this is knowing that you have a self that's different from your mind chatter. And really, meditation, once you sort of get in touch with that, it helps you both have kind of up the joys and split some of the sorrows through life by just being more present with who you are as opposed to who you think you are and who you think you should be and those kinds of things that come down. And in fact, last night here in Los Angeles, I was with a bunch of neuroscientists and all these discussions on the brain, on consciousness, and how consciousness is developed or whether we're living towards a singularity or we have some kind of cosmological discussions were interconnected to just how our brain works. And some people are using technologies like focused ultrasound and others, which I actually funded a study with meditators to see how meditators using this focused ultrasound that creates less anxiety, creates more of a sense of presence and compared that to, I don't know, they had maybe 30 different meditators that would go through this process and they got their paper published. But it's so interesting to think about technology also helping us be more aware of ourselves separate from the emotions and the traumas and the past experiences that we create judgments from. So being in the universe in a way without judgments and the meditation just being in a simple presence. I mean, it's easy for me to say because I get dislodged as much as anybody else, but it's so wonderful to have that handle of meditation, being present and connecting up to a spirit that allows you to get through certain days. Yeah, amazing, amazing. I'm curious what advice you would have for people who are looking at integrating spirituality into their business and investment decisions. What advice would you have for them? Well, I mean, I think that some of these experiences were also informed by, I was part of an ayahuasca ceremony at one point and some of the people there, one guy was in charge of Google's quantum AI group and another guy was one of the top neuroscientists in the country. And combining some of that kind of spirituality, which is where the rubber tappers met the Catholic priests in the Amazon and this particular hallucinogen or this particular plant, this ayahuasca, became part of their church and became part of their spirituality in terms of being able to be open, receive, express ecstasy. And it was just so fascinating to see the number of people where, I mean, we start off saying the prayers to Jesus' mother and Joseph in this particular church called Santo Daime. And again, business people, I asked this one guy as a future, and this guy is really like, I can't say his name, but he's one of the top, he was just on, I just saw him on television, in AI and quantum computing. And I asked him, I said this, some of this plant medicine, and by the plant medicine, I mean this opening to a greater spirit, a connection, is the future of the world. Again, Google, quantum computing, AI, I mean, this is, he said, yeah, you could make the statement that some of the new world is being informed by plant medicine, meaning by the spirit that evolved and that was unleashed in that situation. And it's just interesting also how others, being able to release yourself into the spirit helps you with, well, even me, and the Social Investment Fund, I definitely use the tank also to keep thinking of ways that one could extend compassion and cut out some of the problems and issues that haunt you, but be able to be present and to be able to meditate. And it's hard to describe, because if you grasp it, it goes away. And if you just lightly touch it, it appears. It's sort of, they say, let go tightly, grasp lightly, our kind of thing, in this universe. I'm curious on this point of, obviously there's so much going on in the world and with the media that can bring people down, right? But how do you cultivate a sense of optimism and possibility and hope? And so much of the work that you've engaged in is around building this new world order and building a new system. How do you maintain that sense of possibility? Well, I just took a writing course last month on stoicism. Stoicism, again, is kind of one of those, I guess, a Greek philosophy around being able to accept what is and embrace it in a way that, it's not really a passive. There's actually active ways that you work to be present amidst this election, these wars. And the course was very much about using stoicism of philosophy to live in these crazy times. I mean, I tend to think things are a little more unhinged. I know the Wall Street stocks are hitting new high, that kind of thing. But I just have this feeling that these geopolitical issues are really bringing us down or will bring us down. We don't know how to evaluate it. We don't know how to sense that. But in terms of doing that course was one thing for me. But I have to say, I'm not unaffected by the Israeli Hamas, the whole. I'm not being so, I get a little depressed around this. No, I definitely, and I have to accept some of that depression and half of the people are wanting this MAGA. Yeah, no, I can't say I'm doing great around that. And that's why I took the stoicism course to try to turn obstacles into opportunities and attitudes and aspects of looking at problems in different fashions. But I'm still not coming up, not liberated exactly. I do like the Ron Goss podcast. Ron Goss was part of our social venture network and was kind of one of our spiritual gurus. I love that. And I mean, actually to that point, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, and you referenced some of this, but whether there are certain quotations or passages that you find yourself coming back to, or concepts that you find that, I know like Ram Dassio that we're all just walking each other home, or like, you know, these ideas that can be a helpful frame and a reminder as we're engaging in daily life. But are there quotations, passages, ideas like that, that you find yourself coming back to? Well, one of the best quotes that, and this is in leadership, was from Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu was an old Chinese Taoism. And what happened is I was in the very early phases of computer conferencing, and there were 50 CEOs from around the country on this conference, and most of them were Fortune 500 CEOs, like Andy Grove and others. And we started having this discussion on leadership. And what amazed me is that this one quote that I had that I put out there, others came back and had a very similar hit on this. The quote is something like, in great leadership, in great leadership, people work, and when the task is done, they turn and say, see, we have done this ourselves. And I was just amazed at how many of these other, I mean, Marlon Brando was on there. These were their, this was an ARPA, anyway, this is a long time ago. They didn't even have the PC out at that time. My point is that these were your America's best CEOs, and going back to this ancient wisdom of being able to contribute and guide the universe, and yet you don't leave a footprint, and people find that they did this themselves. Great leaders, it's not that people follow and do what great leaders say, but the great leaders create the conditions that the people can do the right thing, emerge and be effective, and move forward. So that meant a lot to me. No, I love that. I know also throughout time, you have engaged coaches within the organization, and work, and engaged in different leadership courses. Could you just share the role that that played in terms of how you've thought about building organizations? Well, at this same conference center, it was really a farm, but you know, a little, if you've thought of a retreat center at a farm, there was this fellow, Mark Sarkey, who was kind of part of the guru, and this was this Right Livelihood conversation. Well, he later helped put together our advisory council, and also put together a lot of practices for Calvert in terms of our corporate coach that helped deal with things like ego, and including my ego, and the ways that people interact, and process, and respect one another. And I know he, he's a friend of mine, was a very fond of Lao Tzu, and would use a lot of that from those, the Dao Te Ching, those writings. And often we'd start out with some kind of a meditation, but a lot of it was about respect, empathy, the kinds of things that spirituality engenders once you can tune into the empathetic, the compassion, which I think is kind of the center of all religion, is this sense of compassion for the other, and I am you, you are me, we're all together. I think one Beatles song, my generation, but that was how I'm built to view the world, and it has that transcendent spiritual kind of thing that we are, we create the universe, we create the universe with God's blessing, with some higher power blessing, and I feel like tuning into that, respecting that, it just furthers and clarifies paths, and especially diverts you away from paths that are gonna get complicated and unfortunate, and go in the wrong direction. So I very much like a lot of the Buddhist wisdom, and others, and Christianity is a great religion too, actually, a practice. So I think the spirituality, recognizing that in others, is also something we all have in common. You know, we're here on this earth, or maybe we're in our minds, maybe we're in a simulation, but somehow we're expressing some kind of seeds inside of us that were planted by God. I love that. And I know that the I Ching coins have played a really important role, both in the founding of Calvert and onwards. Could you share a bit more about them, and the role they've played for you? Somehow I got this idea that at a management meeting, we were looking for creating a logo for Calvert. We were six of us on a back porch outside, and the I Ching is the book of changes. It may be the oldest book of wisdom known to man. And the emperors used to, well, China was run by this, by consulting the oracle. And this oracle, there were 64 hexagrams, and those were done by using certain kinds of straws, or by throwing coins to consult the oracle about different directions. The I Ching book, actually the introduction was by Carl Jung, because of the collective, the unconscious that comes out of throwing coins, having asked your question, and then there are these various interpretations. And I mean, I knew one money manager years ago who, his book was thick as he, he managed money by consulting this oracle. Again, done by emperors, and many people still do it today. So what happened is we decided, let's think about a symbol for Calvert, a logo that would kind of get us through our tough times, would be sort of our guiding star that when we had challenges, or we had ups and downs in businesses, something we would look to and consult and be with. And so what happens is you throw the coin six times, so each of our managers threw the coins, and the coins either give you a straight line or a broken line. And then there can be a deeper interpretation on if there was tending towards the other line or not. Anyway, the point is, we all threw asking this question, and we all threw a straight line. So, got six people, six straight lines, and you have six hexagrams. And it turns out that that is actually the first and most powerful symbol of the I Ching, which stands for the creative. And Calvert, we weren't always great operationally, but we were definitely on the creative side in terms of new strategies, new ways, and new ways of thinking about investing and that kind of thing, and that has since been a hallmark. The other thing that happened was that when we created our foundation, our Calvert Impact Capital, our nonprofit, I was with the manager, and we also consulted the I Ching. And I know this is hard to believe because it's, in one out of 64, we would have gotten six straight lines. Well, she and I and a few others, we threw coins, and we all got broken lines. And this is kind of the feminine part, or so here we've been kind of pretty successful, able to create a nonprofit that could do some deeper work in certain kinds of ways. And that was more like the intuitive. That was that symbol, and then the marketing people kind of put it in a wave. So, you'll see those symbols on Calvert literature, and that's where it came from. That's amazing, that's quite a day. And on this note of kind of channeling creativity, can you share what your first title was on your business card? It came up for a second. Yeah, I did some research. Really, in the early days, and me and my partner were running the firm, and maybe we had 50, 60 people in the very early days, and job titles. And I'm like, what's my job? What's my real job title? And so, I did a business card, and I titled myself Chief Daydreamer. And in a way, that was kind of my job, because I was always an idea generator. Fortunately, my partner was very good at shooting down so many of the bad ideas I would have. And together, we were quite a team in building Calvert. So, yeah, I think I have that on one of my websites, that business card from like, oh my God, that must have been from 1979, 1978. And we're talking a long time ago. People didn't make business cards like that in those days. And I bumped into people who saved it, and they still talk about that. So that was, and that went into the creativity being the chief sort of emanation of Calvert. You know, we were the first social investment fund that had the broad criteria. Well, we did many firsts. First to stay out of South Africa, part time. First to go back in with a venture fund. A lot of the defense issues, a lot of the moral issues that we would stand up for as investors. Because investors, you know, investors, they own. And these companies, you know, you work in a company, and you report to your boss, who eventually reports to a CEO, and the CEO reports to a board. But who does the board report to? Well, the board reports to its stakeholders. And if we have things we want to say and do, and how this company could be run, there's a responsibility there. And I think that some of the spirituality goes with a sense of responsibility. And sometimes people think a Buddhism or a Stoicism approach is to do nothing. But that's, when you get into it, and especially apply some creative juices, it's not about that. Amazing, amazing. Well, so appreciate you sharing your reflections here today. Wondering, as we close out, if you have any final reflections as we think about the intersection of spirituality, investing, and business, and words of wisdom for folks. I feel that going inside oneself, where, you know, the Godhead can exist, and, I don't want to say purification, but we have so many dysfunctions in our ways of thinking, our anxieties, our worries. Things are getting in the way of us seeing clearly towards the gratitude for which we should have for this planet and for our life. And glass, water, you know, is the glass half full or half empty? And I think spiritually, it's like a half full. It's going towards a sense of completeness. And I think in these troubled times, to remember that there's something about, as Martin Luther King says, about the arc of justice bending in a certain direction. I feel he too was in touch with his spirit power. And I feel being able to be more present with yourself and handle your monkey chat mind is a good way for us all to move forward together and to see the other person as a reflection of you, which is really oftentimes hard to do, but those can be the best learnings as well. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Wayne, for sharing today and all that you've done and catalyzed in the world and for being an incredible friend and leader. So thank you. Thank you, Jenna. Thank you for the opportunity to share. Very good.