Spotlight: Sarah Tomolonius – Co-Founder – Sustainability Investment Leadership Council (SILC)

What inspired you to build a career in the financial / private equity sector and what is your current position?

I had no designs on starting a career in the financial sector. Though I always tested better in math than other subjects in school, from childhood, I wanted to be a pediatrician. After experiencing the devastation of the AIDS crisis in the early 1990’s, I started an AIDS Awareness group in my junior high school and then stayed in adjacent health and disease-related non-profits through high school and college.

After college (during which I switched from pre-med to English, which is a longer story than we have time for here), I joined the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) but knew I wanted to go back to school. I matriculated to the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, after a short stint in the corporate and public affairs group of a global PR firm, expecting to develop a broad financial and operational skillset to take back, post-graduation, to one of the many nascent or struggling non-profits I had worked with in the past.

It so happened that during the first year of the graduate degree program, the financial crisis of 2008 occurred. Things I was learning about in lectures and texts were being undone, and I watched heretofore impenetrable financial institutions crumble. It was an incredibly interesting time to be learning.

I decided to focus my master’s degree on international finance and policy, and, during the rest of the two-year program, I was lucky enough to secure internships with Birinyi Associates, an equity research and money management firm helmed by Laszlo Birinyi and Citi Private Equity. The timing of the latter was auspicious, because I began the internship on October 2008 and ended up very quickly working full-time while finishing the second year of the degree program (not recommended, save for the incredible opportunities to be immersed in the investor relations, investment and administrative functions of a private equity group).

When I graduated in May 2009, there were few, if any, opportunities in the financial sector. Due to getting my foot in the door through the internship and the need at Citi Private Equity (which had gone into the Holdings subsidiary which were the “bad” (or non-core) bank assets set to be divested), I was able to continue with Citi through to our group being acquired by StepStone Group in the fall of 2010.

In December 2010, I joined Arlon Group, an investment arm of Continental Grain Company, to help them build out communication, reporting and analytic asset management best practices. I was at Arlon for nearly 8 years, and I built the investor relations function and later managed the co-investment process.

I left Arlon in 2018 after a restructuring and have been focused on my work as a public company board member for Quest Resource Holding Corporation, a national provider of custom-built, corporate sustainability solutions that streamline operations, reduce waste, increase profitability and help companies gain and retain customers, and on the Sustainability Investment Leadership Council (SILC), which I co-founded in 2015 to work with corporations, accounting firms, law firms, and investment firms to integrate sustainability as part of a firm’s overall growth strategy. At SILC, we work to spark innovation by discussing ideas that align with economic opportunities and environmental, social and other stewardship to firms’ shareholders and stakeholders.

What does a typical workday look like? Do you have a daily routine or ritual that you swear by / that helps you stay focused?

Even when I had a more structured day at Citi and Arlon, I don’t think there was any “typical” day, except that I like to get to work early, which was inspired from working at Birinyi Associates. I thought then that getting to work by 7 or 7:30am was “rolling in”, because we were trading and our arrival time was predicated on the opening of the financial markets. The productivity of the early morning and the preference to start the day early has stuck with me.

Prior to an ankle injury, I liked to start the day by running, but now I meditate and make sure I do sufficient walking during the day. I also do some sort of writing, whether about markets, financial education, sustainability or about less business-oriented topics such as family.

When I worked a more typical day-job, much of the business of the day was conducted on the phone or – of course – via email, with frequent in-person meetings in Midtown and occasional trips out of town for meetings. That has not changed.

Sustainability is one of the core tenants of FountainHead RI’s mission. Could you tell us about the Sustainability Investment Leadership Council (SILC) which you helped co-found in 2015? What is SILC’s origin story and mission?

SILC’s mission is to work with the investment community to understand, measure and integrate sustainability best practices as part of an overall growth strategy.

Starting almost a decade ago, my co-founder, Stanley Goldstein, and I organized events to help the alternative investment community understand why they should care about and pay attention to sustainability – and what that word meant. We held these discussions for the members and guests of The New York Alternative Investment Roundtable (aka The New York Hedge Fund Roundtable), a non-profit industry organization focused on best practices, transparency and ethics. We found, though, that while we had great speakers from groups like Bloomberg, Echoing Green, Generation Investment Management, GLG, Cornerstone Capital, Yale, UPenn and others, we simply didn’t have enough time to get into the broad array of topics under the sustainability umbrella in an evening panel session two times per year. We wanted to help our audience add tools to their toolbelt – those skills, questions, examples and processes that they could take back to their firms, clients, investment managers, etc., to better understand and manage risk and to create more sustainable, long-lived companies with commensurate long-term value creation.

Having never-before assembled a conference, we decided to stage a day-long event. In hindsight, we were probably a little Pollyannaish about pulling together what I know now is a pretty impressive feat of coordination, but we were incredibly fortunate from the start. From literally an email detailing our idea, our founding sponsor, Con Edison, provided us the seed capital to materialize the idea in full. Because of Con Edison and the support of the New York State Society of CPAs and other corporate, legal, accounting, academic and industry-organization sponsors, we produced what I think is, content-wise, a truly phenomenal event.

For that first conference, we enlisted such sustainability luminaries as: Mervyn King, the “Godfather of Sustainability Reporting” and South African judge responsible for the corporate governance infrastructure that allowed reinvestment into his country post-apartheid; Bob Eccles, the leading global expert on integrated reporting; Barry Melancon, the President and CEO of both the American Institute of CPAs, the world’s largest member association representing the accounting profession, and the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, the most influential body of professional accountants in the world with 667,000 members and students, and the Chair of the Board of the International Integrated Reporting Council; and whole host of other terrific speakers.

Through the unbelievable support of a group of dedicated volunteers, we have repeated the annual event with a continued focus on great content, an august panel of practitioners and the participation of a diverse and engaged audience.

Tell us a little more about SILC’s annual conference. Is there a date set for the 2020 conference?

We are thrilled to be presenting our fifth annual SILC conference on May 14^th of this year, hosted by Grant Thornton at its 757 Third Avenue office in Midtown, New York City. As in previous years, the conference will be a full day event, starting around 8 am, with the official program ending at 6 pm. As in years past, we expect to issue at least 8.0 CPE and CLE credits (each) for the accountants and lawyers in the audience, respectively.

Since sustainability is such a huge topic with so many other topics of discussion under it, we have a meta-theme for each annual program. This year, we are focused on risk. Each of our panels – whether the topic is supply chain, impact investing and climate change risk, purposeful investing, diversity, inclusion and equity, cybersecurity and protection, integrated reporting, or how you preserve and grow wealth and prepare the next generation to be good stewards of the wealth and the world they will receive – will speak directly and indirectly to the problems and opportunities in risk and how to understand, assess and measure it.

I welcome all in the investment community and who have an interest in sustainability to register for the conference: www.silcny.com [silcny.com]. We have a very broad-based audience of accountants, lawyers, investment managers, corporate executives, sustainability leaders, students and others, as we feel understanding sustainability and building more sustainable businesses that work towards environmental, social and governance goals requires an audience that is both professionally and demographically diverse.

How can the FountainHead RI community get more involved with SILC?

In so many ways! The SILC Club puts on monthly educational events covering in detail particular topics of the sustainability discussion. We’re always looking for people to help develop the programs throughout the year, to bring in interesting speakers and to network with like-minded professionals. We welcome all to bring their skills – whether as great marketers, organizers, networkers, programmers, or just as eager participants in the sustainability discussion – to our organization. You can contact us through our website to learn more and become involved: www.silcny.com/contact [silcny.com]

We are a volunteer organization and are only made better by the participation of people who care about sustainability and want to lead the charge to building better businesses, and ultimately, a better world.

What advice would you give to both young and seasoned professionals alike working to balance both careers and volunteerism?

• Make sure that whatever you do outside of work, there is a synergistic tie back to what you do in your day-job and vice versa. Volunteering with an animal-welfare non-profit might seem far away from a food and agricultural private equity group, but I found the skills I developed as the Treasurer and then President of the non-profit board, in defining an organization’s mission and vision, setting annual priorities and managing a budget were in many cases directly applicable to what I was working towards at Arlon.

If you find that it’s hard for you to name what skills, tools or expertise translate between your career and your volunteerism, you should think hard about how and where you’re spending your time or spend more time on seeing how you can make the seemingly dissimilar realms of your day-job work and your volunteering work come together. For example, your community building efforts at the organization you volunteer at can be translated into team building efforts at your work and with your clients.

That said, take care of yourself, and beware of compassion fatigue, which is a real thing we see in many organizations.

The following are a bit more general than just balancing careers/volunteerism but are good general advice:

• Cultivate your passion. Despite how it may seem for some others who say they have never wanted to do anything different than what they are doing right now (be that engineering, art, science, medicine, photography or something else), sometimes your passions are latent. If there is something you like to do but don’t consider yourself to be unusually skilled, continue to work on it. You can also find a good organization that you can help. Passions can and will be brought to the surface over time and with your continued effort.

While you don’t want to pull yourself in too many directions, don’t be afraid of having multiple disparate passions. They make sense because they’re housed in you, and your career and lifetime story are made more interesting for engaging in multiple different ventures. Growing up, I had a family friend who always said he lived his life in “25-year increments.” He managed to satisfy 3 lifetimes of curiosities, professional aspirations and travel in one lifetime.

• Push yourself to do things that make you afraid (but that obviously are not illegal or mortally wounding). If you don’t feel comfortable public speaking (something like 75% of people share that fear), go to a Toastmasters meeting or start small by volunteering to lead a group discussion at a work event.

I spontaneously developed claustrophobia which manifested as a fear of flying (afraid of the enclosed space of the cabin, not of falling from the sky) when I was in graduate school. I wanted to travel at the time and had no desire to let my anxiety rule my life, so I decided to address the fear of flying by taking private pilot lessons in a two-seater plane. It may be dramatic exposure therapy, but it provided me some incredible views of the Long Island Sound during the summer and Connecticut hills during the fall. During that same time of the flight lessons, I traveled to Asia and Europe and packed good books and a slate of looked-forward-to movies for the plane. I’ve been fine ever since.

• You are going to make an impact on this world. On a daily and moment-by-moment basis, you have the ability to change how you respond to and affect yourself and others. Indeed, as a fellow human in this world, you have a responsibility to do so to be a good citizen. The funny side-effect is that thinking consciously about your actions and adjusting your thoughts and behaviors accordingly has profoundly good implications for your life. If I may borrow from my colleague, Michael Kraten, “Sustainability is all about thinking long-term about the consequences of one’s actions…it’s a reasonable goal on a personal level too.” I also think of what Erika Karp of Cornerstone Capital says, which is that all investments have impact, but whether they have positive or negative impact is the real question at hand. Without sounding too trite, you, yourself, are an investment in this world, and it’s important that you consider the positive and negative impact you have in it and will leave with it.

Do you have a favorite quote or mantra that inspires you?

Something I’ve kept in my mind since I first heard it and penciled it on a post-it note that I tacked to my computer at NRDC is from Virgil, in which Death says, “Live…I am coming.” It reinforces the fact that life is short, and you should surround yourself with people who are thoughtful, considerate and compassionate and be the same to those around you. You should also engage in as many different experiences as you can.

– Twitter handle is @SILCNYC

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– LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/10488782/admin/ [linkedin.com]

– Blogger: https://silcmedia.blogspot.com/ [silcmedia.blogspot.com]