Let me tell you about the similarities between salsa dancing and regenerative investing. The first time I danced salsa I felt relieved and surprised. I thought to myself, “So this is what my body has been trying to do during the previous two years of trying to force it into lindy hop…”
I grew up dancing cumbia and fell in love with partner dancing at my first lindy hop class. Yet, it wasn’t until I danced salsa that my hips and body felt free to move and relax while dancing with a partner.
In some ways I’ve had a similar experience as an investment manager. I began at a mainstream investment management firm where the way of thinking felt constrictive and forced, even though I learned many things and enjoyed the work.
The relief I felt joining Strategy Squad and Natural Investments (NI) still has me feeling grateful for the opportunity to bring my whole self to work, including my identity as a woman of color. Part of what’s made this possible is working with an all-woman-of-color team at Strategy Squad as well as NI’s own work fostering racial equity. To glimpse into the type of work NI is doing, the next two sections are an excerpt from Kirbie Crowe’s recap of the Racial Equity Team’s wins in 2024.
THE RE TEAM’S 2024 WINS
We consulted with Liberation Labs in a thoughtful expansion of the firm’s conflict resolution policy, which evolved into a set of Behavioral and Communication Guidelines. In our 40-plus-year history, Natural Investments has grown slowly and organically, with a lot of our culture following that of our founders—white men. As the racial and gender makeup of NI has expanded and changed, our culture has also transformed.
Our new Behavioral and Communication Guidelines balance healthy and generative conflict with the need for psychological safety, providing direction for collaborative opportunities— including the practices of offering feedback and acknowledging the impact of our words and actions. The guidelines also provide resources for ongoing learning and clarify how people are held accountable for their actions. With care and support, we are living into the inclusive culture we want to see in the financial services industry.
Liberation Labs also offered two firm-wide workshops: “Psychological Safety in Inclusive Spaces,” and “Practical Tools for Culturally Aware Feedback.” The workshops provided concrete ways for firm members to navigate our interactions with mindfulness and care. We examined how privilege, power dynamics, and identity affect how we communicate with one another—including our unconscious biases and awareness of how our identities and past experiences inform our perceptual filters in how we experience communication, particularly feedback.
The RE Team also revised the firm’s public statement on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI), creating a living document that clarifies what these values mean to us and how we advance them within our firm, with our clients, and in the financial services industry. At our annual retreat, firm members provided significant input to this revision, offering suggestions and wisdom with live in-person discussions. Included in the statement is a timeline that records our efforts over time to practice these values in our ownership and operations, our investments and philanthropy, and our fight against institutional racism in society.
PAVING THE WAY FOR THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY
As the first financial services firm to have converted its ownership to a Perpetual Purpose Trust, we have been sharing our story in the hopes that others follow suit to foster racial and gender equity. We conducted a webinar for the Racial Justice Investing Coalition and were guests on the Next Economy Now and Financial Advisor Success podcasts. These can all be viewed on the Media page of our website.
The process of changing our ownership structure took many twists and turns, reminding us that experimentation is part of creating anything new and that with a strong enough why, the how will always become visible—even when it takes time. And part of our why is to create a new path that leads people to regenerative investing.
FUSION CAN LEAD TO RESILIENCE
Like salsa dancing, regenerative investing is a fusion dance. Salsa began in the 1960s as an evolution of the Afro-Cuban partner dances, son, and rumba, coming to New York City, where they mingled with ballroom dancing. The cumbia I grew up dancing in Baja California, Mexico is a combination of Indigenous Mesoamerican dances, polka, and African rhythms. Wherever you look, Latin dancing is a beautiful coming together of play and joy, all while navigating stressful and violent racial lines.
In a similar way, regenerative impact investing is a melding of the old ways of extractive capitalism with a desire to bring everyone together to create something new. Salsa is not a means to an end; it’s an end in and of itself. Similarly, regenerative investing asks us to value the process of making an investment as highly as we value the outcome.
Salsa is listening beyond words to the music, to your dance partner, and to yourself. Regenerative investing takes an open look at the destructive implications de un capitalismo voraz, a voracious capitalism, as my dear friend and activist Yararis Chrichem calls what’s befallen her country of Panama through the impact of ruthless mining. With regenerative investing’s wider view beyond profit maximization, it moves money dictated by relationality, there’s an understanding that mistakes are an invitation to try again, and it responds in the moment—just like in partner dancing.
For me, dancing salsa is a total immersion in the moment and a trust in the rhythm of relationality. At NI, we center justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion because we recognize this is what our moment is asking for. The process of integrating these values into capitalist investing has led NI to pioneer in environmental equity and is now leading us into pioneering more avenues for racial equity.