A Letter of Introduction From The Portfolio Managers

At Brown Advisory, we are deeply committed to sustainable investing. Our firm managed more than $16 billion* in client assets under various sustainable investment mandates for individuals, families and institutions, as of Dec. 31, 2020. We firmly believe that there does not have to be a trade-off between strong performance and smart investments that help address society’s trickiest sustainability challenges. 

For a number of our sustainable investment strategies, we issue formal reports each year to keep clients informed about how those strategies are generating positive impact. Enclosed is our Impact Report for the Brown Advisory Large-Cap Sustainable Growth strategy.

The report includes a review of our ESG research and integration approach, and in particular how we use the concept of Sustainable Business Advantage (SBA) to identify compelling long-term investments. We also discuss the positive environmental and social outcomes being created by our portfolio companies, and report on our engagement and proxy voting activity during the year (both as an individual stakeholder and in concert with investor coalitions).

We are pleased to report continued progress and advancement of our sustainable investment initiatives at the firm. To support our growth, we added to our senior SI leadership team with Carey Taylor being named as the new head of the sustainable investing business at the firm. Other additions included Angela Wilson and Danny Trocchia as new ESG research analysts and Sarah Yang as a new sustainable investing business analyst. We published policy documents covering our institutional approach to sustainable investing and engagement, as well as a summary document that describes our firm’s formal proxy voting policy. We remain focused on developing helpful client-focused reporting, with recent developments including impact reporting tools for our fixed income strategies and for our private client portfolios.

We thank our ESG research team for its contribution to this report and our work in general. The team works tirelessly to ensure that our investment decisions are informed by solid ESG data and clear viewpoints about how that data may affect a company’s prospects. We thank our fundamental equity research colleagues, and all of our colleagues across the firm, for embracing sustainable investing principles so enthusiastically. 

Most importantly, we are deeply grateful to our clients, who trust us as stewards of their capital and serve as our partners as we learn, innovate and improve over time. We reached our strategy’s 10-year anniversary on Dec. 31, 2019, and the strategy’s client base and its public profile (through profiles in Barron’s, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and other leading financial publications) grew meaningfully throughout 2020. While the additional attention is not unwelcome, we want to assure you that 100% of our focus has been, is, and always will be on our responsibilities to our clients.

We hope you find this year’s report informative, and we welcome a continuing conversation with you about the work we are doing.

Sincerely,

 

Karina Funk, CFA
Portfolio Manager 
 

David Powell, CFA
Portfolio Manager
 

 

 

 

 

*Brown Advisory entities included are: Brown Advisory LLC, Brown Investment Advisory & Trust Company, Brown Advisory Ltd., and Brown Advisory Trust Company of Delaware, LLC.