On this episode of I So Appreciate You!, co-hosts Nadege Souvenir and Melanie Hoffert discuss mission-based investing and the values of a diverse team in the investments industry with Chief Investment Officer for the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, Shannon O’Leary.

In her role, Shannon and her staff help steward the Foundation’s $1.7 billion in assets, ensuring that those dollars aren’t invested and/or supporting any issues or causes that may detour our grantmaking work. Shannon is one of few women spearheading an investment team in a predominantly white male-dominated industry.

As a result of this lack of diversity, Shannon has made it her mission to meet with managers in the industry and advocate for change.

“One of the most dangerous things in this industry that leads to problems and leads to additional risk is the lack of diversity on these teams leading to group think,” she says.

In addition to her work advocating for change in the investments space, Shannon also pens a bi-weekly newsletter to share her experiences working in a male-dominated industry and sharing advice for readers wanting to create change themselves.

Links

Our Investment Approach

Follow Shannon on LinkedIn

Say It Out Loud LinkedIn newsletter

Nadege Souvenir:

Welcome everyone to I So Appreciate You!, a raw, funny and uniquely insightful podcast about the issues and opportunities we all face as values-based leaders and humans. I'm Nadege.

Melanie Hoffert:

And I'm Melanie. We're colleagues at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. And we're friends. When we get together our conversations can go anywhere, especially when bringing a friend or two along for the ride.

Nadege Souvenir:

So we're inviting you to join us and some incredible guests as we explore the challenges and triumphs of people shaking up our community for the better.

Melanie Hoffert:

Hello everyone. Welcome to, I So Appreciate You!. We are so excited to be able to welcome one of our colleagues today, Shannon O'Leary. And Nadege, I know we grabbed Eric, our president and CEO, for just kind of an impromptu conversation, but this is the first time we're talking in depth with another colleague. Is that right?

Nadege Souvenir:

This is our first official colleague guest, yes.

Melanie Hoffert:

That's great. So Shannon is our Chief Investment Officer and we're going to hear a lot from her. But she launched a newsletter, Say It Out Loud, on LinkedIn, I believe it was last year, and she's gotten quite a following. I'm just kind of looking at the newsletter titles that she's put out, and she cracks me up. But one that stands out to me is "I'm a hot mess and so are you, and we're going to be okay," which is kind of fun.

Nadege Souvenir:

It is indeed. Do you have any other favorites I'm scrolling through them too.

Melanie Hoffert:

What do you see? What do you see there?

Nadege Souvenir:

Well... Oh my goodness. So this one's a little work related and life related. "The SVB failure and other recent parenting moments." I mean, how do those two connect?

Melanie Hoffert:

She would connect them.

Nadege Souvenir:

But she would connect them.

Melanie Hoffert:

Do you know what else is interesting to see how she would connect them? Fries, wine and emerging fund managers. See, Shannon can make emerging fund managers sound interesting with fries and wine.

Nadege Souvenir:

She really can.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, yes. So we're excited to talk to her, but how have you been? I know you've been on the road and on the go in the last week and a half or so.

Nadege Souvenir:

I have been. A couple of back-to-back work trips. By the way, for people who do that for their lives, who are both my heroes and ah, but...

Melanie Hoffert:

I used to do it. It's exhausting.

Nadege Souvenir:

Conference energy and loud rooms with not good sound insulation had me basically scream talking for three days. So I feel like I sound like an idiot.

Melanie Hoffert:

Or your voice is a little scratchy.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. See, the thing is, if it sounded like that, if I had a Viola Davis, Kathleen Turner sort of situation going on, there would be no complaints. All I can hear is a little bit of weird throaty nasally...

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, that's funny. But we never hear our own voices in the right light. So I am listening to you. I think you sound great, but I can appreciate that.

Nadege Souvenir:

Do you think Kathleen Turner thinks her voice is awesome?

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh.

Nadege Souvenir:

Have you ever wondered about that?

Melanie Hoffert:

I'm going to Google this.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right.

Melanie Hoffert:

Or ask AI.

Nadege Souvenir:

People with awesome voices, do you think that they know? Because it's taken me three seasons of this podcast to tune myself out.

Melanie Hoffert:

So you can listen without... Yeah, no, I cringe. I have to figure out how to listen when we're in the editing phase, but it's kind of out of body.

Nadege Souvenir:

It's what we do, isn't it?

Melanie Hoffert:

It's what we do for our work.

Nadege Souvenir:

So should we just get Shannon in here and just dive right into this episode?

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, let's grab her.

Nadege Souvenir:

The Facing Race Awards is an initiative of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation that recognizes anti-racism activists in Minnesota who challenge absent and harmful narratives on race, build solutions that unite instead of divide, and push for justice and equity. Join us in celebrating this year's four incredible award recipients by watching the Facing Race Award show at facingrace.org.

Melanie Hoffert:

Hello everyone. We are so excited to be joined by our colleague and the Foundation's Chief Investment Officer, Shannon O'Leary. Shannon, welcome to our show.

Shannon O'Leary:

Thank you for having me, ladies.

Melanie Hoffert:

We're very excited.

Just to let everyone get to know you a little bit, we have a couple of interesting points. First of all, you have a newsletter, Say It Out Loud. I'm sure we're going to talk a little bit about it today. So that's one fun fact about Shannon. The other one that I did not know actually, is that you wrote your master's thesis on Botticelli. Is this true?

Shannon O'Leary:

I wish.

Nadege Souvenir:

Were you giving me grief when you told me about that?

Shannon O'Leary:

Oh, it's not a master's thesis.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh, what is it?

Shannon O'Leary:

I did a dissertation.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay, that's still not nothing.

Melanie Hoffert:

You see where this is going, this whole conversation.

Shannon O'Leary:

I don't want to be giving the impression that I have degrees that I don't own.

Melanie Hoffert:

Well, I was actually very intrigued by this because I know that you studied economics and physics. So how did this artist fit into your...

Shannon O'Leary:

You guys don't know this about me, but I secretly like art. And I used to sing professionally.

Melanie Hoffert:

Wait.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay, we have to start this whole podcast episode all over from the top. Sing pro... Okay, we'll get back to that.

Melanie Hoffert:

We're going to get back to this.

Nadege Souvenir:

We're going to get back to that.

If you've been listening to our podcast, which I'm just going to assume you have, so don't say anything to the contrary, you know that we start off with three quick questions before we dive into the meat of our conversation. So I'm going to kick us off. So first question, would you rather get tagged in an awkward photo or accidentally text the wrong person?

Shannon O'Leary:

That's a good one. I think I would rather get tagged in a photo.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay, fair enough. All right. Would you rather have a song stuck in your head or not be able to remember somebody's name?

Shannon O'Leary:

I always have a song suck in my head and I can never remember anyone's name. So this is a special question just designed for me.

Nadege Souvenir:

Also for me. It's a little bit of torture.

Shannon O'Leary:

If everyone was a number, I would remember the name, but instead we're using words.

Nadege Souvenir:

That is so fascinating. You could probably convert names to numbers.

Shannon O'Leary:

But then I'd be converting all the time.

Nadege Souvenir:

That is true. All right, so final one. Do you vacation to do lots of things or do you vacation to do nothing?

Shannon O'Leary:

I would love to vacation to do nothing, but I am married to somebody who vacations to do all the things.

Nadege Souvenir:

So you do all the things?

Shannon O'Leary:

So I do all the things.

Nadege Souvenir:

All right. Well, you got to win one of those vacation battles one of these days.

Shannon O'Leary:

Yes.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yeah, your vacations, when you report back, I'm exhausted. There's a lot of kids involved, a lot of activities. So yeah, that makes sense.

Shannon O'Leary:

That's just how we roll.

Melanie Hoffert:

All right, well, we're going to jump in, Shannon. We have a lot to talk about. Very excited to dig into the, I think, really unique work that you do for the Foundation. But as you know, a lot of people don't really even understand what a community foundation is, and I would bet that people don't, on top of that, understand what a chief investment officer does. So before we get into the questions about the work you've been doing here, could you just give us a quick overview of your role?

Shannon O'Leary:

Yeah, absolutely. I think the easiest way to talk about what I do is to just think about a retirement account. So in your retirement account, you get to go into your portal and you make some selections of the kinds of investments that you want to have in that account. And they give you some recommendations. Maybe you take them, maybe you don't. My job is to do that at a much bigger scale.

So our asset base is about 1.7 billion. And so there's a little different than dealing with retirement assets, but functionally, my team helps to pick and choose the different kinds of investments, and mix them in a way that will help ensure that the Foundation can support its 5% spending policy and offset inflation over the very long term.

Nadege Souvenir:

You have been in the investment space your entire career?

Shannon O'Leary:

Correct.

Nadege Souvenir:

I mean, let's talk about that a little bit. We're going to talk about the work you're doing at the Foundation, but I think it is fully informed by your experiences in this field.

Shannon O'Leary:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

What does that look like and feel like as Shannon is growing from a baby investment professional to the rockstar that you are today?

Shannon O'Leary:

Yeah, it's a journey. It is a really non-diverse journey. There are very few women in chief investment officer roles right now. There are fewer now than there were 20 plus years ago when I started my career.

So the industry as a whole of investments, especially kind of the level, the big dollar management of money that we're doing here at the Foundation is really, really non-diverse. So it's probably, I'd say investment professionals, 80% are white and male. And once you get to the sort of highest decision making level, you're seeing that statistic be even more significant.

Melanie Hoffert:

So Shannon, this gets to the meat of why we want to talk to you today because as we've been talking to all of these innovators in different sectors, one would imagine that in your role you're just behind the door and you're moving money. But really you have been able to advocate for equity in the role that you're doing for the Foundation. Could you talk a little bit more about how you do that as the chief investment officer?

Shannon O'Leary:

Yeah, I think that can be sort of the trope is that the money people, we just put our fancy suits on and then we use a lot of lingo and a lot of acronyms, and then everyone falls asleep and is no longer paying attention to what is coming out of our mouths. That is sort of a trick. And it's a trick to make you feel like we're these fancy people and you shouldn't question anything we do. And that's just categorically false.

So when I got here at the Foundation, it was really clear to me that in connecting with the board members and connecting with my executive leadership team peers, there was so much integration of the Foundation's mission and vision and work in all of the work that the board and our team leaders were doing, except for investments.

Investments were sort of divorced off in this little corner over here. And it wasn't just that there wasn't any integration really with the mission other than producing returns, it was also that I felt like there was not enough of working knowledge of what was in the portfolio at really any other level than inside of the investment team. I mean, Nadege, you were there. Would you agree?

Nadege Souvenir:

I mean, that would probably be the case. I mean, it's probably the case at a lot of foundations.

Shannon O'Leary:

I think it is. And so what I'm-

Nadege Souvenir:

I shouldn't admit that for the field, but there you go.

Shannon O'Leary:

It's true. And so I spend a lot of time talking to folks in our industry about this, which is you have to get a way in to bring people to investments and to bring investments to people.

We have almost like I'd say a front of the house and back of the house. So the front of the house is the grant making, and the board really understands that, and I think it's very easy to understand at the staff, at the Foundation level, and at the leadership level. And then there's kind of the back of the house, here's the engine that is this huge portfolio that generates those grants, and yet no one really talks about it. And I think in Minnesota too, there's a little bit of talking about money is kind of dirty.

And so what I like to do is say, okay, what if we're thinking about this in kind of a more holistic way? So if we're trying to solve problems with our grant dollars that are going out the door, we should make sure that in the back of the house in this portfolio, we're not investing millions of dollars into say, something that's actively causing those conditions or problems that we're trying to solve with our grant dollars.

And I think that's a little bit of an aha moment. And I think when I said that to the executive leadership team a couple of years ago, it was really like, oh, well that makes perfect sense. We certainly shouldn't be canceling out our grant making work.

Nadege Souvenir:

Well, I mean what you're bringing is simply radical. And I say that because it's simple in how you've just described it. But I think it's accurate to say it's radical for how we have thought about protecting the corpus and investing those dollars for years and years in philanthropy. Wouldn't you agree?

Shannon O'Leary:

Yeah, I totally agree. But if you actually look at the money, we can do a lot with the money inside this portfolio that helps us to sort of further our mission and our vision. It can potentially enhance the way we do our grant making, and it can help inform the work of the entire Foundation.

Melanie Hoffert:

And you're going beyond the Foundation in your work. You're really changing, I think, trying to shake up the investment industry, especially as it relates to making it more diverse and inclusive. Can you talk specifically about the ways that you're doing that work?

Shannon O'Leary:

And I alluded to the lack of diversity. So there's a long way to go here, and I think that it's really important to just sort of lead with... I come at everything with humor. I take the work very seriously, but I do not take myself seriously at all. And I think that that comes off. And I'm also very interested and curious. And I think the combination of humor and curiosity can solve a lot of problems or at least allow for conversations to happen in a way that they maybe couldn't happen under other circumstances.

So I'll spend time meeting directly with managers in the industry and asking harder questions around why their investment decision-making teams are so non-diverse. And you care about this stuff in a lot of different ways, but functionally, these managers who are trying to put up the best returns should care an enormous amount about having diversity on their teams.

One of the biggest things we do in asset management is manage risk, where we want to have high returns, but we need the risk level to be managed. One of the most dangerous things in this industry that leads to problems and causes additional risk is the lack of diversity on these teams leading to groupthink. So at a minimum, you want different voices at that table to prevent groupthink, to help manage your own risk.

And then what we are also finding is that more diverse decision-making teams, they have better returns. And as the industry is kind of waking up to this data, which candidly didn't exist until the last five years because there are so few diverse led teams in this industry, but the data is very clear that you're going to actually generate better returns if you have differences of opinion and differences of background on those teams.

Nadege Souvenir:

So you are really finding a lot of ways to get this message out. As you said, you're meeting individually with managers. But we did talk about your newsletter, Say It Out Loud, which is another vehicle for you to talk about things in the field. Can you tell us a little bit about the impetus for that newsletter?

Shannon O'Leary:

I can't remember which one of you too is at fault for this, but it's definitely one of the two of you.

Nadege Souvenir:

I'm not on the marketing team if that's helpful for your memory.

Shannon O'Leary:

Okay. So this happened because I feel like it was... Nadege, I think you came to one of our team meetings and afterwards...

Nadege Souvenir:

I said you should have a TikTok.

Shannon O'Leary:

Yeah. You asked the team, you're like, "Is it always like this? Is she always like this?" And I think I was on my high horse about something. It's definitely grandstanding and something had ticked me off and I really had a lot of things to say. But yeah, you told me to be on TikTok and I was not ready to engage with that concept.

Nadege Souvenir:

Neither am I. I'm not on TikTok, but it seemed like it was the right energy.

Shannon O'Leary:

And then I think maybe Mel was like, "You could try a newsletter."

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. This newsletter, people have to subscribe.

Nadege Souvenir:

They do.

Melanie Hoffert:

I mean, Shannon is... I don't know where it... I mean, I do know it comes from. It comes from you. But you're hilarious, you're a great writer. And I want to mention, I wrote down here that in this newsletter you're calling out your peers in the industry for sexism, racism, lack of critical thinking because of the groupthink that you just mentioned.

But the thing that I love about your work, Shannon, is you're not just out there screaming at people. You're also giving them tools to figure out how to do it better. And you've done that through your work here. What I understand is you lead our partners. If they're willing to work on becoming more diverse and to change the way that they're working, you're helping partner with them and give them the tools. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Shannon O'Leary:

Sure. Again, we're not going to get anywhere by yelling at people or shaming them. It does not work.

Melanie Hoffert:

You want to change. You're trying to get us to a place of operating differently.

Shannon O'Leary:

And I think that what external parties find is that the newsletter is very accessible. I mean, yeah, we are calling out racism, we're calling out sexism. I don't think readers perceive that. I think they take it in and they think about it in a different way. And it helps them identify it when it happens in their daily life or when they are perpetrating that kind of behavior. It's not something then that they're ashamed of. It's creating awareness.

And again, it goes back to kind of the humor and not taking myself very seriously, but being... We go meet with individuals and it's usually me and nine dudes around a conference table. Am I going to get anywhere by yelling at anyone in that room? No.

Nadege Souvenir:

Probably not.

Shannon O'Leary:

And so what I try to do is just create a friendly safe environment. And I know that there's been a lot of politicization of diversity efforts going on right now from a media standpoint. It's what's in the news. I have never actually had so many inbound requests from outside parties in the industry on, "Hey, we heard you worked with firm A, B, C to help them change their promotion process internally for analysts to become managing directors eventually, such that it allowed them to diversify the staff. Can you tell us how you did that?"

So despite this kind of weird political conversation that's going on, there's so much interest and willingness. And again, it's because these folks are not dummies, most of them over index to sort of straight A students. And you can kind of see there, them realizing the value of having those diverse voices at the table and ignoring the political conversation, being like, "Hey, I want to do this. Can you help me figure this out?"

Nadege Souvenir:

So I'm thinking about how you're showing up in the work that you're doing, and I wonder if this is just a confluence of things happening at the right time, your values being at the Foundation and that alignment. Because it seems like being anchored here is a little bit of a lever for you to have that conversation, that might've been different if you weren't at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.

Shannon O'Leary:

I think that's a hundred percent accurate. I mean, seriously, I've been pretending to be a white guy for my entire career and it was totally wild to come here. And I was like, why isn't everyone pretending to be a white guy? I don't understand this.

Nadege Souvenir:

That could be a whole other podcast conversation. The former lawyer in me understands exactly what you're talking about.

Melanie Hoffert:

And a newsletter for you, Shannon, topic right there.

Shannon O'Leary:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh my goodness. I feel like if we last too much longer, we could open 17 more topics, give you 300 more newsletter ideas, but unfortunately we don't get to talk all day long.

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, but the good thing about you as a guest, Shannon, is we do, just not on microphone.

Nadege Souvenir:

That is true.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Sorry, y'all. Sorry.

Shannon O'Leary:

Right place, right time. I mean, I go stand on a stage and kind of make a little fun of some dude who runs some pension fund and owns all kinds of baloney that's actually harming the pensioners that are receiving those dollars. And I think it makes people think about it a little bit of a different way. And I'm like, I don't care. I'm at the community foundation. Are you really going to cancel me?

Nadege Souvenir:

I want to make sure to ask one more question. Because even though I could hear the joy in that last response, when you think about the work that you do and everything that you're moving forward, what brings you joy in doing this work?

Shannon O'Leary:

For the first time in my life, I am in a space, at a place where I can line up all of the things that I'm trained and skilled at doing professionally and turn it from... And really a huge part of why I came here is I was really pretty good at making very wealthy people much wealthier. And those same skills apply to the Foundation now hopefully, help ensure that the dollars that my team stewards then, can benefit from that growth and those skills in terms of being even more able to robustly serve the community.

Melanie Hoffert:

That's great. That's a good ending. I have one observation. We've gotten through this interview and I don't think we have to bleep one word. Shannon didn't swear.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh my goodness. What does that even mean?

Melanie Hoffert:

I don't know.

Shannon O'Leary:

I don't know. I put my professional pants on today.

Melanie Hoffert:

For us.

Shannon O'Leary:

Just for you.

Melanie Hoffert:

Thank you for taking time, Shannon, to join our podcast. It's really been awesome.

Shannon O'Leary:

It was not nearly as terrifying as I thought it was going to be.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh no. We try to keep it pretty painless.

Shannon O'Leary:

Okay. Well, maybe I'll come back.

Melanie Hoffert:

Love it.

Nadege Souvenir:

Excellent.

Melanie Hoffert:

Well, that was fun.

Nadege Souvenir:

It was.

Melanie Hoffert:

Shannon.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay, here's the thing. I don't think that our listeners are going to fully appreciate this, but you think you know your colleagues and then they low-key drop a bomb like "I used to sing."

Melanie Hoffert:

Like professional singer. Didn't she say that?

Nadege Souvenir:

She did. Now I realize that we're talking about it, we didn't circle back. So I sort of feel like we got to come back to that at some point. We got to do a bonus episode or some after hours kind of thing.

Melanie Hoffert:

After hours with Shannon.

Nadege Souvenir:

Unfiltered. I don't even know.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. The, I Say happy hour.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh my goodness. I love that because I so appreciate happy hour. That was cheesy, I know.

Melanie Hoffert:

That was perfect marketing right there. You know what, Nadege, we could also cover something that a listener brought to my attention. So apparently, well, not apparently, I do remember, we had closed our last season with you talking about going on a trip to do nothing. And we never came back to talk about how that actually went for you.

Nadege Souvenir:

We didn't.

Melanie Hoffert:

So I think we need to have... I love this happy hour idea where we're going to kind of revisit some of these fun little nuggets that we may have not fully fleshed out.

Nadege Souvenir:

I mean, I suppose if there are other listeners who are like, what about, let us know because let's get some content for this situation. I feel like I'm voluntolding somebody to do some work right now, but here's what's happening.

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, that's great. Well, I'm curious your thoughts on the nugget that Shannon delivered to us and to our listeners. And for me, and something that I've just witnessed being her colleague is that, again, I guess I'm challenging my own preconceptions about what someone in her role would do. And she's really pushed the envelope in terms of making room for other people and calling out, like I mentioned earlier, racism, sexism. And so I'm also wondering about in my role and in my job, am I doing enough, and what are the opportunities that I can do to push the envelope, think about being more inclusive, et cetera. So that's my takeaway from Shannon. Curious about yours.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah, I think that's kind of the perfect takeaway. I know that I have talked to my teams. I lead operational functions and we had a theme one year. Operations are a tool for equity. Because the reality is, and I think as Shannon is pointing out, all of those inequities are so embedded in systems. And she's not even talking about systems. She's talking about flat out money that makes the world go round, and how important it is that it's not just talking about equity when you're thinking about the community. It's talking about and thinking about and embedding it, infusing it everywhere.

Melanie Hoffert:

How we do our work. Yeah. Yeah. There's always an opportunity to improve.

Nadege Souvenir:

Well, Mel and I always had the chance to hear more from Shannon and learn about what she's doing, but you know what? So do all of our listeners. If you want to keep following along with Shannon, check out her newsletter, Say It Out Loud, on LinkedIn.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yep. Just sign up and you'll get Shannon in your inbox every two weeks and it's a really good read.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to I So Appreciate You!. You can find us on Facebook at I So Appreciate You podcast, and on Twitter and Instagram at So Appreciate You.

Melanie Hoffert:

We'd also appreciate you taking a moment to write us a review. And if you like our show, be sure to follow I So Appreciate You on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to us right now.

Nadege Souvenir:

Have a question or topic suggestion? Email us at podcast@spmcf.org. Thank you for listening to I So Appreciate You!.