Joseph Honescko: In Matthew six, Jesus tells us to lay up our treasures in heaven, not earth. So how is that going to work for investors? In today’s episode of Finny Kuruvilla from Eventide joins Richard and John to unpack this teaching from the sermon on the Mount and to give investors some practical ways they can implement this in their own lives. He and John both will also hit on a few market trends that they’re seeing, and they’ll talk about the ways they are continually evaluating what it means to lead a faith driven culture. All that and more in this episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Let’s get into it.

Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone! All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies of securities discussed, and this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.

Richard Cunningham: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. We are grateful to have you tuning in wherever this podcast might find you. My name is Richard Cunningham. I have the joy of serving on staff with faith driven investor. Joined today by one of our amazing mainstays in John Coleman and John Coleman. We are in for a treat today because it is not just you and I in the podcast studio.

John Coleman: Yeah, that’s right. We are very fortunate to have one of the brightest minds in the space and someone that I’ve come to admire a lot. Finny Kuruvilla from Eventide Asset Management, one of the founders, obviously lead portfolio manager over there. And, it’s always a thrill to have Finny on. Thanks for joining us, Finny.

Finny Kuruvilla: It’s great to be with you. Thanks, John. Thanks, Richard.

Richard Cunningham: Yeah. Finny I was looking back to your podcast archives, and this is your fifth official FDI podcast to be on. And, you know, if we were to go back and probably mined the data of all of the faith driven investor videos, conference, talks, podcast, I mean, you might be our most quoted individual. So it’s hard to think of many people who have done as much for the faith driven investing movement as you have. And I also just love, you know, John, I don’t know about you, but when they look at me, it’s Richard Cunningham, comma, you know, breathing adult. But for Finny Kuruvilla it is Finny Kuruvilla at medical doctor, PhD, co-chief investment officer, senior portfolio manager, managing director, founding member of Eventide. As you said, so just what a joy to have you on and thank you for all the contributions, Finny, that you make to the broader ecosystem.

Finny Kuruvilla: Well, hey, thanks, Richard. And one of the things that I want to say in response to that very, very flattering introduction is we have benefited so much from the collaborative spirit that especially a driven investor has brought to the field. I truly believe that that’s something that honors God in that we’re supposed to be supporting one another, encouraging one another. And I just want to thank all of you for setting a high bar and showing us leading the way and what that looks like. So kudos to you all.

Richard Cunningham: Appreciate that. Well, let’s have some fun today guys. Finny, you’re catching us in this kind of theme of we’re unpacking conference talks that we’re giving, you know, recording to say on March 20th. This podcast will drop on Monday, March 25th. But a couple months ago, at the end of January, you gave this remarkable talk titled Emptying the Storehouses at the Faith of an investor annual conference. And we get to bring you on to kind of pull out some of the threads of that talk. And so if maybe for those that weren’t with us at the conference or haven’t gotten to check out your video yet, which will be all over the internet soon, maybe kind of unpack it a little bit and we’ll camp out there for a while.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, sure. So this is a talk that is very much deep in my heart. In the talk, I didn’t actually get to give some of the backstory to it, but maybe I’ll do some of that now before recapping some of the talk. I was born and raised in Southern California, and my dad worked for an organization called World Vision, which a lot of, you know, it’s a humanitarian, humanitarian relief and development organization. It actually was my first job that I had when I was 16 years old, answering the telephones there. And one of the things that I did while I was working there was, you get to have your eyes opened to the plight of the global poor, and you get to see through videos. In my case, I wasn’t there out on the field. But through videos you get to see how millions of people live in different places all over the developing world. And it was such an illuminating experience to be able to see that. And then you step out of your world from World Vision, and then you’re now in Southern California, in LA and Pasadena, and you see the disparity there. While I was in college, I was very involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I still am, but while I was there, we did a Bible study through a passage where people go to John the Baptist and they say, hey, John, what does it mean to repent? And he gives a few points of what repentance looks like. But one of the points that he mentions is you who have two tunics should give to the one who has none. And I remember when I read that and study that, it just cut me to the heart because I thought, wow, am I really living like that? And I remember going, thinking about that passage in the light of what I was doing about vision and thinking again about the disparity, opening my closet, seeing that I wasn’t living consistent with that teaching from John the Baptist, who’s talking about the beginning of repentance. This is an advanced Christianity. Advance on God is the beginning of repentance. And so that ended up setting me on a trajectory of asking questions. Why don’t we talk about this as much as I think we should in the church today? And are we potentially sweeping under the rug some of the harder teachings that in some ways are? Be the most pressing for us who are living in one of the most prosperous, if not the most prosperous, economies of all time. So that was some of the background that formed me when I was in college. Specifically, the talk that I gave at this Empty the Storehouses FDI conference was on the sermon on the Mount and basically advocating that the sermon on the Mount is the place where we see the most direct teaching on how we’re supposed to be looking at money and the concept of treasures on Earth. One of the things that Jesus tells us is he says very plainly, very clearly, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. And he says, that’s where moth consumes or rust destroys, where thieves break in and steal. He says, instead we’re supposed to put our treasures in heaven. And then he explains the rationale by saying, where your treasure is, there your heart is also. He goes on to say, no one can serve two masters. Either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the other one and despise the other. Can’t serve God and mammon. So that was the main text that I focused on. And one of the things that we took away and unpacked out of that is we ought to be taking that as face value as we possibly can. So I mentioned a couple of direct applications. So number one is we want to be investing in a way that’s directed at a goal. So if we’re investing we shouldn’t be just accumulating these piles of money. I think that’s something that’s easy to fall into if one is a prosperous individual. And if one lives in a place like the United States, where people are just kind of hoarding money and it’s easy to stop it in this place, or that we are supposed to be goal directed with our investing. If somebody says, hey, I’m saving to buy a house or start a business, great, let’s have that mentality. Let’s not have the mentality of the person who’s building the second bar. The second application that I talked about was we don’t want to be investing and take advantage of other people. And it’s hopefully something that especially. With Faith Driven Investors. We’ve talked a lot about this theme over the years, and I know you all thought very deeply about this as well, which is that investing, it should be something where we’re blessing others through that, not merely extracting value from others. And one of the passages that I think is very illuminating here is from Deuteronomy, where God says, don’t bring the earnings of prostitution into the temple because it’s an abomination to him. So God wants money that comes in his treasury not from sinful activities, but from activities that are building up the community. And so putting into practice love your neighbor, even in our investing, is a first order activity. And then I also mentioned investing just isn’t about the negatives. It ought to be about the positives as well. And we can support with our investing both the redemptive good and the common good. The redemptive good is, of course, advancing the church, advancing the kingdom, furthering the gospel, evangelism, discipleship. Common good would be helping people to be clothed, to be fed, to be whole in terms of not suffering from disease. And so that at a high level was the goal of the talk and some of the key points there. And that’s something that I think we always need to be pressing into and always reminding ourselves of some of those basics.

John Coleman: Yeah. And that’s you know, what’s really interesting is this is a topic I’ve been thinking about a little bit lately as well, and I actually started thinking about it for a World Fishing conference. So we’ve gotten to know Edgar Sandoval a little bit and just love Edgar, love world fishing. I mean, the mission that they’re on is phenomenal. And their leadership right now, I think is extraordinary. And they asked me to come and give a talk on money, how believers should look at money. And I love that sermon on the Mount passage. You know, there are well over 2000 references to money in the Bible. Many of them are cautionary statements like the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And yet God also clearly gives certain people in the Bible money to steward for his purposes. And it’s actually one of the blessings or tools that he offers them in order to forward his purpose. Abraham would be one of the first big examples of that, for example, or David in the New Testament. The examples are a bit more scarce, but even someone like Nicodemus could use financial resources for God’s purposes. And so the question I think for believers is what are you doing with that? And are you paying as conscious a set of attention to money as one of the blessings that God can give you as your other talents? And I think one of the things that I find at least is consistently people neglect this investing area. You know, there are really only three things you can do with money. You can give it away, you can help others with it, you can spend it or you can invest it. There’s not I mean, savings is just investing without any return. So there’s not much else you can do with it. And Christians spend a ton of time thinking about how they give away their money, even if it’s not a lot of what they give away. We spend a decent amount of time thinking about how we spend it, but I think the average Christian doesn’t think as much about the way in which they invest it, even though for many people that’s actually a bigger pool of capital than they’re giving or spending, right, for a lot of people. And anyway, I just think it’s a fascinating distinction that many Christians have drawn where they just they seek return, maybe even just to build this pile without purpose, as you described it, with their investments. But at the same time, I think God has really called us to pay attention every dollar and to make it purposeful, both in terms of the use that you’d have for it. But also, if I’m deploying this capital, like there should be some intersection with the Great Commandments or the Great Commission in the way that I deploy that capital as you’re referencing, whether that’s just staying away from the bad things, prostitution, trafficking, gambling, you know, things that are addictive, but also leaning into creating a more flourishing world for others. And I think that’s where Eventide has been such a leader in that space. But I think it’s just fascinating that Christians have not reflected deeply on that historically, or maybe as deeply as we need to.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. You know, it’s fascinating what you mentioned there about some of those examples of individuals who did have financial resources. You pointed to Abraham, and he certainly be a good example of that. There is actually, in the New Testament, a fascinating passage. It’s in First Timothy chapter six, where Paul specifically addresses the wealthy that are in the church, and he tells them what they’re supposed to do. He says, don’t be haughty. And he says, don’t put your hopes in your money, but instead do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous and ready to share. So, you know, he’s contemplating the fact that there are already, at that time, plenty of people who have wealth. Another example would be John Mark, and we know that it was his home that the believers gathered in while they were in Jerusalem. And these individuals who had these larger homes tended to be those who would be the hosts, the patrons of the church. There was a very, very important function that the church required and needed in those early years. There were no church buildings or things like that for centuries to come. And so I think it’s something that is very good for us to remember. Which is that we’re not saying wealth is evil or bad or anything like that. This is not a call to condemn people or anything like that, but it’s a call to ask and hopefully challenge one another to say, are we truly doing good? Are we truly rich in good works with our wealth, and our wealth is on us now, has tremendous capacity to be a force for good or force for evil. And so I think even in the New Tetament, we see some of those admonitions and encouragements.

John Coleman: And I’ll let Richard push us forward. But I will say, you know, the one thing that occurs to me even in that passage that you’re referencing, or the two passages that you reference, is it’s not necessarily a bad thing or mindsets around wealth and the way in which we use it can be evil or can be a bad thing, but there’s never really a call to just store it up. And then at the end of your life, do something good with it. I think this is one of the traps we do fall into, like you said, is building this big pile saying, oh, what I’m good at is making it as big as possible. And then at the end of my life, I’m going to give it away over time. And I think rather everyone is called to start right this moment, thinking about the way wealth is used for the kingdom in the way it’s stewarded for God’s purposes, rather than just, you know, those of us who have proven some proficiency at kind of making wealth bigger, which is what investments is, you know, doing that for no purpose, right? Rather than deploying it according to those precepts right away.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think it’s Ron Ballou who has this quote where he says, do your giving while you’re living, so you’re knowing where it’s going. And I like that concept because we know there are so many examples of individuals who have a lot of wealth, and instead of deploying it while they’re alive, they put it in some foundation. And this is something that I was actually just reading about. The foundations take a life of their own and often end up doing activities contrary to the wishes of the person who left the wealth to that foundation in the beginning. It’s actually the rule, not the exception. Or often things go haywire, and straying from the purposes that the individual who acquired the wealth really intended there. So I think it’s a great reminder for us, and I truly believe that that is the paradigm that Jesus is setting here is like, now give now while you’re alive. So in that treasure ahead of you, I don’t let it be corrupted here on this earth. Send it ahead and store it up for a bright future in the life to come.

Richard Cunningham: Yeah, finance that. You use the word at the end of your conference talk. It’s the arbitrage opportunity, right? Our stores of treasure here on Earth are in decay. So trade it now for something that lasts forever and just the ultimate arbitrage opportunity. I love the way you put it. All right, guys, well, that’s fun to hear you riff on just for the sake of time. Let’s keep on moving down the line. And so we’ll go back to some of those practical applications at the end, talking about those opportunities to promote good and flourishing, the common good, the redemptive good. Finny you were kind of alluding to. But for now, we want to hit on Finny. Your last FDI podcast appearance was roughly seven months ago, August of 2023. You and John had this wonderful conversation on all that was taking place in the world of health care investing and M&A markets being drier. But yet the S&P was, you know, just charging on with the likes of Meta and Amazon and Google, among others, the AI frenzy. But just love to kind of hear you guys. You know, this is not a marks in the market podcast. But Vinnie, we’d be remiss not to have you at least weigh in kind of with what, Eventide. Seeing what you’re seeing and kind of maybe since your last FDI podcast appearance as we closed out 2023, have kind of made it into the first quarter here of 24 of just what’s going on from the Eventide vantage point. What are you guys seeing? I know health care has always been a massive focus of you all. So maybe camp out there a little bit as well.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, a high level. We’ve seen a lot even in the early months of 2024. Just a couple of themes and notable points here. You correctly noted that there was a lot of uncertainty in 2023, and the general consensus was that there would be a recession, but instead there was no recession and the S&P just motored higher. That was one of the stories of the year that it motored higher, despite the fact that there was high inflation in the fed kept raising interest rates. There’s still a lot of uncertainty with the economy and consensus right now is that there’ll be about a 40% chance of recession over the next 12 months. I put that with the giant asterisks because the economists were generally wrong last year. And there’s a reason why economics is called the dismal science. It’s often just very, very difficult to forecast the economy. And the joke is, of course, that economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions.

Richard Cunningham: That’s awesome, I love that.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. And right now what we’re seeing is an interesting phenomenon where inflation is certainly come down compared to last year. But the S&P continues to track higher. It’s almost at 5200 as we speak right now really defying most expectations. There’s still a lot of debate about why that’s happening and why the economy is as resilient as it’s been. We’ve been in the camp that you shouldn’t buy the rhetoric of there’s going to be recession, partly because it’s such a novel, such. We’ve been in in the last couple of years, with the economy being released from all the Covid restrictions, and there’s just not good models that anybody can point to, in our view, that have the kind of confidence that should make us pound the table in either direction. So that, thankfully has worked pretty well. And overall we’ve seen that. Generally speaking, the economy, if there aren’t shocks, tends to do pretty well. And the innovation and the skills of the free market and what we know about businesses, they do pretty well about navigating through hard times. And when everybody’s talking about a recession, usually it’s not going to happen because there’s a lot of belt tightening that’s already gone on. One of the great I think, questions that we’re going to understand over the next year is what has been the role of this productivity number. So there’s this very mysterious number. It’s actually easy to understand conceptually, but it’s hard to measure empirically. So productivity is how much does a given worker how much does their output increase year over year. So I use the analogy of a person who works at a donut store and they’re making donuts. And if they can make 100 donuts a day in 2023 and in 2024, and they can make 103 donuts a day, their productivity has grown by 3% year over year, and it seems like one of the reasons that the economy has been able to do well, despite the inflation, is that we’ve been more productive than people have anticipated than economists anticipated. There’s a whole lot of reasons why that might be true, but I think one of them is not so much. AI is starting to play a role, but it’s probably a bit early to attribute the productivity improvements to AI. But it’s that there was so much belt tightening and so much concern about a recession, and companies were getting lean and mean through all of the doom and gloom rhetoric there. In that type of setting, you can actually and you typically would expect even that productivity would do well because everybody is ready and there’s not a lot of excess. And so that type of phenomenon is probably what’s been at play and why the economy has done so well, and in general, why the more people talk about recession and the more people that are fearful out there, you actually in the back of your head should be thinking, okay, good. I’m glad that there’s that fear that’s out there. And the other famous adage is that the market likes to climb the wall of worry, and it descends the slope of hope. And there’s definitely been a robust wall of worry that the market has been climbing over the last couple of years.

John Coleman: Between that and the blue quota, I’m getting a new appreciation for Finney’s ability to rhyme and create memorable markets.

Finny Kuruvilla: You know.

John Coleman: Finney, I would just say I don’t know how you think about it in general. I’m so skeptical of people trying to time markets without a specific reason, a time. Right, like, you know, right now, for example, we’re super cautious about office real estate, but there’s this specific set of context around that that makes you nervous about that sector, that particular asset class where you can identify, I think, generalized concerns about recession, market timing, cash on hand. It’s so difficult to predict in my mind. And if you look historically, by and large, just continuing to allocate in the way that you would with the tranches of, you know, you want to diversify your asset classes, you want to be thoughtful about the way in which you position a portfolio. But if you do that and you just stay in markets, typically that’s the best solution over the long run, rather than seeking to time more aggressively without a specific conclusion. And that’s been my push to folks right now. I mean, this is not financial advice on this podcast, obviously, but, you know, it’s very easy to get whipsawed by all these predictions. Market timing is notoriously difficult. And just as often as you get out and avoid a downswing, you miss a major upswing. And I’m with you. There are just so many long term reasons to be confident that, at least in the United States and in a fair number of other economies, the long term trends are oriented towards greater productivity, whether that’s AI, robotics, which is more of a real time thing. I think even in the industrial space, things like that, all these technological innovations are oriented towards improving productivity and output, and there’s really been no major setback on those. So I continue to feel the way that you feel, which is don’t overthink the timing of markets, or at least that’s the way that I would put it. Stick to what you feel confident in in your allocations, and make bets on those specific things where you feel you have a good understanding of where things are headed.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. One of my mentors, who I’ve actually never met but I call my mentor because he made such a big impact on me through his books is Peter Lynch, and Peter Lynch has this great concept, which is that more money has been lost trying to time and dance around corrections than in the corrections themselves, that all of the artful positioning is not actually hostile and adverse to one’s net returns. I mean, there’s so many ways that one can show that we’ve got a lot of charts, and I have a whole lot, actually. We’ll talk about addresses this, but you’re absolutely right. And rather than timing the market, it’s time in the market that’s a better predictor of your long term returns. And you correctly noted that there are typically a handful of days. In a year that are going to be these massive upside drivers. But if you miss those days and I actually gave a talk on this, that this entire archive, if you miss those days, those handful of days in the year, I don’t have the exact number on top of my head, but your returns are a fraction of what it would be then if you are just simply staying in the market throughout it all. So yeah, it’s it’s a very important lesson to learn that most people haven’t learned really well. And I hope those timeless principles would be things that we would go back to again and again and remind ourselves that despite the fear, despite all of the rhetoric out there in general, it’s the more boring strategies that tend to outperform the more sophisticated ones.

Richard Cunningham: Yeah, I’ve heard it before. You got to be right a lot of times in terms of when to get out, when to get back in, the highs and lows and all of it. Might as well just be right once and stay in. What about on the health care side of things in terms of a very capital intensive, highly innovative field? You know, this is something you and John got into in your recent podcast. These fields tend to be hit pretty hard by the interest rate environment, as they need capital infusion as they’re oftentimes not profitable. Even tide has a big focus in that space on the health care side of things. What are you guys seeing there?

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, the space thankfully has come back a lot since we spoke last, and it’s been really good to see that we’re starting to come out of some of that very fearful capitulation that was happening, particularly in the October 2023 time period. So it’s been nice to see that. I still think we have a long way to go to come back to even be average. So we have this odd situation right now where the so-called Magnificent Seven, Meta, Amazon, Google, those types of companies are trading at very rich multiples and very lofty valuations. But we’re still in the situation that a lot of those smaller cap, more capital intensive industries like biotech are still considerably lower than they would normally be valued. And so that’s a first observation there. Second observation, I would say, is that on the innovation side, it continues to actually accelerate. And so even in the last couple of months, there have been a number of significant advances on the obesity front. So we’re closely watching this field. I think everybody knows now about [….] and all that. That’s just the very first gen medications. Those are injectable. We know that those medications have pretty serious liabilities, chief of which is that when you lose weight, you lose both fat and muscle. And it’s widely appreciated that you don’t want to be losing muscle mass in the same way as losing fat. But that’s what these medications do, is they’re dropping both together. There’s some very interesting innovations that are happening there where it’ll still take some time to work out a lot of the details, but. I’m confident that over time, we’re actually to get to medications that are going to be actually enhancing or at least stabilizing muscle mass, and it’ll be selective loss of fat. So that’s a pretty exciting development that is still in the clinical trial stage, but it’s something that we’re actively investing in. Another highlight here that I’d like to touch on just briefly, because I mentioned this last time, was we talked about this Car-T concept, which is to remind everyone that is. But Car-T is basically a way where you engineer your own immune cells to attack cancer cells. And I told the story of a little girl named Emily Whitehead, who was the first pediatric patient ever treated with one of these Car-T approaches where basically they do a blood draw, they take out your immune cells, they infect your immune cells with a virus in a dish, and that virus retrains your immune system to attack the cancer that’s inside of the body. You grow up those cells and then re infuse them back into the patient. And I told that story about her and she literally had her leukemia. She was going to die. She was on her way to go to hospice. And within 23 days her leukemia disappeared after receiving treatment. So that has now been extended. And this is like hot off the press just last month. So February of 2024, somebody said, hey, maybe we can use that technology to go and attack the cells that are creating autoimmune disease and in particular the disease called lupus. And they published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is the top journal in the medical world that they were able to induce these patients into remission for one year. No disease, no steroids. It’s pretty amazing that now we can train the immune system to attack the bad cells of the immune system that are causing these autoimmune conditions. So it’s not FDA approved yet. It’s it’s still in clinical trials. And so we’ll hope that this crosses the finish line. But how exciting is that? I mean, just amazing. And then just last week. So again very hot off the press just down the street [….] At Mass General Hospital right here in downtown Boston. They use that same technology for brain cancer. So brain cancer is one of the more deadly forms of cancer that’s very difficult to treat. And what we know now is that this same type of therapy, works not just for liquid tumors like leukemia, which is what Emily had, but now we’re seeing it work for solid tumors as well. So again, it’s early stage, not FDA approved, but incredibly exciting here. And so we are in and I think what is easily characterized as the golden age of taking immunology and harnessing our immune system to address very serious diseases like cancer and autoimmunity. So I am just thrilled to see this innovation that’s happening at a very brisk pace. And my full hope and confidence is that as this accelerates, we’re going to get more and more of these therapies that cross the finish line to FDA approval, and our health care is going to continue to get better and better. So very exciting days for us here in the biotech and health care world.

John Coleman: Man, I always leave these conversations like very encouraged. Finny not all of our investment topics are quite this encouraging, both in terms of, you know, it’s such a natural intersection with this idea of human flourishing. Right? And even, you know, even when I like, think about the New Testament in such a simplistic and stupid way, a lot of what Jesus did when he was working miracles was helping people with their physical ailments, right? As almost an analogy to what could be done for the soul. Right? But also to just care for people physically here on earth. And you get to work in a space where that’s the goal every single day for everyone who’s working in this market is to try and make human life better. Maybe that’s a nice way to transition into the way that you guys think about faith and values in the context of the portfolios that you’re building. Again, there is this natural intersection with human flourishing, particularly in health care, which you’re so focused on. But how does Eventide think about the incorporation of values? Think about the promotion of human flourishing investing that makes the world rejoice in the context of your portfolios. And how are you all thinking about innovating on that every day?

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, it’s a great question, John, and it’s something that all of us who work in asset management, in any kind of faith driven way, ought to be constantly challenging us to. We would all concede that we’re in the early days of figuring all this out, and we’re trying to develop frameworks that are better and better and stronger and stronger, that respond to all of the dynamism of the markets. And we all know that markets are living, breathing animals, and we better be responding as well and sharpening our tools and our ethics. There’s a lot to be said here. There’s both issues, specific areas that we’re investing a lot of time in. And then there’s frameworks and heuristics that we’re trying to refine in terms of how we look at management. So. On the issues specific side of things. There’s a lot of talk right now about IVF and stem cells, all that which is in the news. And how do we bring pro-life values into these questions here. So we’ve been doing interviews with different ethicists. This week, in fact, I interviewed a well-known ethicists on the issue of life and how to think about that. I would say a lot of people who would say that life begins at conception. Haven’t thought very deeply about the implications of that. For example, stem cells and IVF, things like that. So we want to be really good and sharp in that. It’s an area where I think we’re probably just underdeveloped in general. We collectively the church are underdeveloped in general there. So there’s issue specific sets, and we would like to hopefully put out some whitepapers and videos as we learn more about how to hopefully elevate the whole field and community with us as we learn together. And then there’s the framework and heuristic side of things. How do we take our own learnings and bring that to bear and how we assess, for example, management teams or how different companies are interacting with? Save the environment or broader society, even the environment. We have a fantastic panelist here who covers energy. And how do we think about, as Christians all the questions around pollution and carbon and all of that. And it’s of course a huge field here, but we need to have views on that. And it’s easy to be reactive and to say, well, you know, this group over there, they’re hyper concerned about carbon credits or what have you. And they’re maybe not like minded to us in terms of some of their values. And so they must be wrong. So we’re going to go to some other side. How do we come up with good values here on some of these and good heuristics around what does it look like to be responsible with respect to some of these environmental questions? And I think that we’ve done some fantastic work even in the last six months, I would say especially probably be a topic of a whole podcast to get into some of the innards of that. But we’ve been investing quite a bit of time and energy, and to being able to assess our company well in terms of how they are interacting with the environment there. So those would be two of the areas that we’re refining and improving on.

John Coleman: Yeah. One of the topics you touched on, and I know there a lot of folks prefer this avoid embrace engage framework. There are a bunch of different frameworks. I think they’re helpful. But you know, there are different ones that work. We’ve been thinking a lot more about this engagement topic, which you’re highlighting, which is, you know, we have the ability, particularly in public markets, I think, to speak into societal wide questions, both generally, as you mentioned, through thought leadership, but specifically through the shareholding that we have in companies. Right, which has been a focus for us on the public equity side. The price for that is, I think you have to be really excellent at what you do to build a voice on the engagement topics from an investment point of view, which is why I think Eventide almost has the permission to speak into these. It’s what we’re seeking to cultivate as well. But I think my observation is that in cling more to the avoid side of the spectrum, historically, Christians have often missed an opportunity for what I’ll call constructive engagement. We’ve been willing to beat up on topics aggressively, but we haven’t been willing to engage in the really thoughtful debates about these topics to articulate a cogent perspective. And, you know, this idea of stem cells and IVF, for example, is one where there are obviously a huge number of well-meaning people on different sides of this debate who are going through extremely difficult life circumstances. Right. This is not a light topic and apart from it maybe the Catholic Church, which has actually articulated some principles around this in a reasonably thoughtful way. I think many of those of us in other branches, as a church, I’m a Protestant, have not been as thoughtful about our intellectual positions. And so I think one of the things I’m encouraged about that you’re talking about Finny, and even your own personal thought leadership that I hope others will take up, is how do we lean into these big issues of the day in the areas in which we’re investing, and be thoughtful about articulating a cogent set of principles for human flourishing around those, as we are our investment thesis. And I think if the great investors in the Christian worlds could do that, our ability to influence culture in a positive way would be enhanced greatly.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. I will say a couple of things on this. And like you, I’m not a Catholic. I have a lot of respect for the Catholic Church, but I’m not personally one who would be considered as Roman Catholic. It’s something where one of the things that I have seen, that they have done well, and they could teach the rest of us some good lessons, and especially those of us who work on the investing side, is they have a way of thinking that I would call maybe more historically aware and more of a sense of building on that what’s come before us, you know, some of the times because of a false understanding of sola scriptura, it’s not actually legit it’s sola scripture to say the Bible is the only authority. True sola scripture says the Bible is the only infallible authority. But there are plenty of other authorities, hopefully the pastors and teachers in your home, your parents. We read books. We listen to people online. I mean, there’s varying levels of authority here. The correct understanding of soul scriptura, which I do subscribe to, is that the Bible is the only infallible authority. And I think sometimes because we’ve misunderstood sola scriptura, we believe that we kind of have to like, reinvent the wheel or just like read the Bible and come up with something, you know, spontaneously, as opposed to what’s actually a more faithful understanding of the Scripture, which the reformers and the radical reformers and everybody pointed to, which is that Scripture is the only infallible authority. But we are fools if we don’t try to learn from those who come before us. And I think that’s where the Catholic Church is, ahead of the Protestant community, in the sense that they’ve learned and they’ve built and they’ve developed frameworks and pressure tested them. And that’s something that I want to see more of in the Protestant world in general, is us give more thought to, hey, let’s learn from those who’ve gone before us and not be so chronologically arrogant that we believe that. We’ve got it all right. And everybody who’s gone before us hasn’t thought through those issues, because they have. There’s been very, very good work on these issues before us. And I think first, to make the investment of time to read and understand well what those who’ve gone before us have done and said is step number one, noting. Step number two is to somehow put together as best as we can and memorialize our understandings and whitepapers and podcasts and different discussions so that we can continue to move the ball forward in the process. And world is occasionally done that the Chicago statement would be an example of that. And biblical inerrancy is an example of where people will come together and put together these working group statements like, hey, this is what we think inerrancy means. And and even that will get revised and pressure tested. And that’s not violating sola Scriptura. That’s actually honoring the forefathers of the faith that have come before us. And so I think those will be some of the challenges that I would give to the investing community.

Richard Cunningham: Man, this is awesome. Do you guys riff on it? Kind of reminds me in ways where, hey, I’m the individual investor right now listening to you guys riff on this and it’s like, I wish I had access to John Coleman or Finny Kuruvilla on my shoulders. I’m thinking about the investment decisions I’m making, and I think eventide put out this post about engaging with Pinkston to interview Christians out there. And it’s just I think the push to everyone is, hey, you can engage with your advisor on these topics, and I think your survey results said 63% of Christians have never discussed values based investing with their financial advisor, even though 88% want to align their investments with their values. And so I think, you know, before we close here and FInny talk about what you’re kind of learning in Scripture, I think it’s just a great push to the every day and faith driven investor or the advisor out there to say, hey, these aren’t conversations that you have to reserve. Just to John and Finny on the Faith Driven Investor podcast, these are things you can lean into and your next kind of financial advisor update meeting.

Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. The other part of that survey was that 62% of Christians are willing to make a switch to another adviser who offer investments that resonate with their values. And so it’s hopefully a wake up call that this is a time where people want their investments to be in line with their values. And you might even lose business as they go to another firm or individual who can speak to their heart values. Their most investors are more interested in those higher level conversations than they are hearing about beta and alpha and sharp values and things like that. Like that’s not necessarily where people’s hearts out. Of course, everybody wants competency. People want to know that their finances are being deployed and invested in a responsible way. But I think where the faith driven community, including the financial advisory community, ought to step up is to say, like, let’s differentiate ourselves from the robo advisors and everybody else by being able to engage at a heart level with some of these issues that are very, very important to clients.

Richard Cunningham: Yeah, that’s so good. Good words. Well, Finny, take us home. What’s the Lord been teaching you in Scripture lately? Maybe for you. All of team Kuruvilla and your wonderful family would love to hear that.

Finny Kuruvilla: I love this question, and I really appreciate that you all end the podcast with this question. Yeah, I’ll give you a short distillation of one of the themes of the last as a year of my life, but I went to a seminar. It was an all day seminar a few months ago that was put on by a group that specializes in going into hard situations where there’s been some kind of a breakdown, a church split, or a business that’s falling apart as a Christian group. And they go in and they do about 30 of these engagements a year, and they go in and try to mediate reconciliation, healing and unity to where there’s brokenness. And I’m in my late 40s right now, and I have sadly been watching a lot of my college friends go through divorces and a lot of hard experiences there. It’s sad to watch, and these are people who are in the church and know well the teachings of Scripture here. One of the things that I’ve learned is that. True conflict resolution and true unification of the church and families is a skill. It’s not something that comes naturally to any of us. It’s something that we need to be trained and prepared. And again, I wish I could talk about this for a lot longer here, but just very, very briefly. We are supposed to be the ministers of reconciliation. That’s our job description, if you will, that Paul uses in second Corinthians is that Jesus even says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. How do you know that we’re children of God? The children look like the father, right? They look like the parents. They had the same skin color, hair, all that. Our resemblance to the father is that we’re supposed to be agents of peace. Because the father brings peace to the world. That’s supposed to be one known for. Unfortunately, it’s not usually the case. That’s what people think of reflexively. When they think of the Christians. They often think of divisions and splits and fightings and all that. And I am more and more convinced that because it’s a when not an if we’re all going to be having conflict in our organizations or families, etc., this ought to be a skill that is part of Christianity one on one, and we ought to be pressing so far into this that you can’t be a person who’s been sitting in a church for more than a year or two without having gone through some kind of formal, rigorous training on this. I know that sounds like a bold claim, but I really believe it. And that as I’ve gone through this training and read a book on it and really had my eyes open to the fact that here I am, in my late 40s, being raised in the church, that I hadn’t gone through this. And as I’ve gone through this, I thought, wow, I could have had a more successful 20s, 30s and early 40s had I had these skills in my tool bag. And there are very much learnable skills that require growth and challenge. But I think this is one of the great needs of our world today, is to have the Christian community rise up to the challenge of being peacemakers and ministers of reconciliation, and treating it like a discipline, just like we would treat any other discipline. You don’t learn naturally medicine, you get mentored and trained, and that you have to go through classes and exams and all that. It’s the same thing with this. Maybe not as daunting as having to go through medical school, but it’s a skill that we need to embrace there. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that and how we and the church ought to be much, much stronger on that and encourage that early on.

John Coleman: And I love that concept, and I know you’re talking about that at the individual level, but I even think at the social level, if you think about the instances over the last, you know, 30, 40 years where Christians were deeply respected for the work that they did, it was often in reconciliation, whether that’s Bishop to in South Africa, whether it’s the US civil rights movement where Reverend King and Andrew Young and others leaned into their faith and as a tool for reconciliation across differences. And it can be, you know, just such an inspiring thing for Christians to navigate.

Finny Kuruvilla: It really can. John. And let me just say one final comment on this. Jesus right after that says, you’re going to be the city on the hill, salt of the earth. They will see your good works and glorify the father in heaven. It’s through that kind of activity that the world is mesmerized with the power of Jesus, right? We live in a very broken, divided, hostile world. There’s poor dialog. It’s just it’s a mess. This is winsome. This is attractive. This is something that we can actually gain a social capital that we currently don’t have. So yeah. Amen to what you just said.

John Coleman: Finny Kuruvilla Eventide Asset Management. Awesome work you guys continue to do. Finny you’ve just been such a almost a founder in this space beyond even tide in such a pioneer here. I’m always humbled by your ability to reference scripture, usually in the original languages, which I know I definitely can’t do, I’m sure Richard can do, and it’s just such a blessing to our audience to have you on. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you, Richard, for hosting.

Finny Kuruvilla: Thank you John.

Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. When Jeremy Lin rose to Linsanity fame back in February of 2012, his name became associated with the fastest growing athlete brand in the world. But the buzzing fanfare of his success came with a cost. Jeremy experienced the immense pressure of having to measure up to Linsanity heroics. In this episode, Jeremy shares with the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Asia team how he has navigated these challenges and why he has since focused his energy on faith driven investing. We’ll also hear from Robert Kim, the managing director of JLIN LLC. Let’s dive in. Hey, everyone. All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Hosted guests may maintain positions in the companies of securities discussed. And this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome to a special edition of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is what I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. For lots of reasons. We’ve got Jeremy Lin in the house. We have Robert Kim, great friend of mine, a great encouragement to the Faith Driven Investor movement for a long time. And I have Wen with me, Wen and I have never done a Faith Driven Investor podcast together. But for those of you within the Faith Driven Investor community, Wen is awesome. Wen is in Singapore. Wen is a regional coordinator for Faith Driven Entrepreneur, an investor in Asia out of Singapore and my co-host on Faith Driven Entrepreneur Asia Wen. Good morning. Good evening.

Wen Li Lim: We do this all the time. Good evening. Good morning. We are on the other side of the world from each other.

Henry Kaestner: And most of the time is on different days. And we also have Robert Kim before I introduce Jeremy. Robert and I have known each other since almost the week I moved to California seven and a half years ago. And he struck me as a person who he is, is somebody who completely gets this movement, a wealth advisor, somebody who has really thought through the theology and studied this about what is God doing as we look to start investment assets? And, you know, C.S. Lewis talks about friendship being when you meet somebody and you say, gosh, I thought I was the only person who fill in the blanks. Well, Robert is that type of person who really gets in, leans into driven investing, and he’s got a special friendship and relationship with Jeremy and introduced us to Jeremy three or four years ago. But Robert, before we meet Jeremy. Good morning.

Robert Kim: Morning. How you doing? Or good evening for.

Henry Kaestner: That’s right. It’s in Korea, too?

Henry Kaestner: Yes, and you’re in Korea. So you just moved back to Korea, right?

Robert Kim: Yeah, three months ago.

Henry Kaestner: So for those of you can see this on video which is not most of you. You can see that Robert has wasted no time in decorating his apartment. He’s just getting right into the mission field is making it happen. We need to, Wen we need to send him something like some sort of like a movie poster or something. Right

Wen Li Lim: Ok, to anyone who’s in a zoom with Henry. He’ll look at every single thing in your background and he will comment on it, just like Robert’s background that has nothing. So, listen, Henry’s actually poking fun at Robert’s blank.

Robert Kim: Next time you come over to bring something, I’ll put it on my wall.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. And we need to bring something for Jeremy, too, because Jeremy is on Zoom right now, and Jeremy’s maybe feeling a little self-conscious as well. Jeremy, good morning.

Jeremy Lin: Good morning. Good evening. I am definitely extremely self-conscious at this point, but I feel a little bit better because I’m you know, I’m in a hotel and this is just the hotel room. I guess I can just put this Faith Driven Entrepreneur book right behind me and have it kind of be the beautiful you wallpaper.

Henry Kaestner: There’s never been a better wallpaper. Major, major props, so Jeremy welcome to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Prior to this episode, of course, we had a really, really great conversation with you and Patricia, Faith Driven Entrepreneurship and your identity as a basketball player, your identity as a human and your identity as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, really one of the favorite episodes that I’ve ever done. You just got on the concept of identity, motive, joy, gratitude, Sabbath, rest, and that was awesome. I want to encourage our listeners to go back and listen to that. That was really special as we talked about Jeremy’s career and journey through Faith driven entrepreneurship and this conversation. As you may have gathered, we’re going to be talking about investing and what does it look like to steward the investment capital that God has given us all. And then you in particular, as you’ve done this in partnership with Robert, as he’s sought to provide sound counsel to you as you think about again stewarding that investment capital, on whether participates in the work that God is doing. So thank you for joining.

Jeremy Lin: I’m excited. Thanks for having me and this is really cool to be on. I’m excited for this one as well.

Henry Kaestner: Cool. Okay. So as we start out, give us some backstory. So you’re launched in the spotlight in 2011 in a big, big way, an incredible documentary called Linsanity. And maybe I’ll just a personal anecdote on this. I guess three or four years ago when we met, the kids were just off of school. That morning, we watched the documentary Linsanity. And my boys were probably, I don’t know, ten, 12, 14 at the time. And then I got a chance to say, hey, guess who I’m having lunch with, like the guy who is just in this documentary. And then we met and had this great lunch. And then you’re just incredibly gracious with your time and and spent time that evening with a group of faith driven entrepreneurs sharing about identity. But it was all about this identity as you are thrust into the limelight as a really young person in 2011. And what follows from that is these big, big time million dollar contracts. God gave you a lot of success on that with different teams in the years that followed that. But when did you start viewing investing the money that you’re earning? When did you start viewing investing as a tool for impact?

Jeremy Lin: Yeah, I mean, this was definitely a journey as well. And I think, you know, for a little bit of backstory, Robert Kim, before coming on, you know, he’s here a part of JLIN LLC now and we’re able to start this capital initiative. But before that he was with Caprock and he was my financial advisor for Robert. How long?

Robert Kim: Eight years. Yeah.

Jeremy Lin: And I just remember, you know, he saw the way that I was kind of going about my finances. And he would always kind of mention, like, you know, like investing is a really powerful way to, like, build God’s kingdom where you can really think about it. And for me, I was always so focused on philanthropy and I always knew, like from a young age, like, oh, philanthropic work foundation, where this is like where my heart is, is what I’m going to do. And Robert kept giving me different anecdotes, challenging my paradigm, saying, like, look, the nonprofit sector is great and it can help. There’s also a ceiling and there’s the nonprofit and the for profit sectors don’t merge together. You know, there are certain limitations to how much you can help somebody. And he gave this great anecdote about somebody who might be, you know, an NGO or a nonprofit, would be working with the child, getting him to a great place. They make it to college and want to attend and there’s no loans available or the for profit space has nothing available for him to be able to get to that next level of higher education to continue down this path, among other anecdotes. And that’s when I realized, wow, I really think that God has uniquely positioned our company and our brand to be able to touch and potentially connect and bridge both sides. And so that’s when we started really looking more deeply into investing as a huge vehicle to be able to build God’s kingdom. And honestly, like I didn’t even know that existed. You know, for me it was like it was so far out of the realm of what I could understand. And Robert continually over time, was able to, you know, develop that conviction within my heart. And now we get the chance to work together.

Henry Kaestner: […] so Robert. So let’s back up a little bit, because you came to this realization a long time ago. You and I remember talking about it, and now, as soon as I moved out here seven, half years ago. How did you come to that understanding that investments can participate in God’s kingdom with such conviction that you’re able to take this really high profile client and then boldly go in and suggest the same to him.

Robert Kim: Yeah. Really good question. I think for me, it wasn’t an understanding that it started really. It was more of a conviction that in my mind. So backing up a little bit in my twenties. I was working in New York City management consulting firm, working with some of the large tech companies in New York City. And at the same time, I was doing these short term global missions, right? I would go to Mongolia, I would go to different parts of Central America, Europe. And I just really kind of became friends with these people because I would go back, you know, every year. And these are like amazing people, super talented, super resilient, yet like they just didn’t have the access to the resources that I was enjoying. And I remember thinking I was living on Wall Street. I’m like, why isn’t the capital markets looking at this community? And I think that’s when I started praying, God, I want to invest your resources into communities like that. And I didn’t have enough means to do that on my own. But I think God was faithful. He just listened to that and he gave me an opportunity to learn how to invest, he gives opportunity to meet amazing people like Jeremy. And so I think it was more of like just a desire really and understanding sort of came after. And I think like I met Jeremy and as you can tell, you know, Jeremy, as authentic as it gets and I sense a deep desire to really meaningfully impact the communities through his platform. And I felt like God really knitted us together. I had a sense of that and that kind of sense developed over several years. And I started talking to him about, Hey, what about this area? You can do a lot here. It’s new, but you can do a lot here. And and I think naturally our friendships sort of got formed and it was more comfortable to share also. And as the ecosystem also matured, there were more investible projects they could actually place capital into as well.

Wen Li Lim: Right. And part of the mission of JLIN LLC is to impact culture and redefine love. And at Faith Driven Investor, we talk a lot about the idea that all investing is actually impact investing. And we believe that our capital has the power to shape cultures, communities, cities and even nations and Christians especially can use the capital to work for good. What do you hope JLIN has on the rest of the world through the impact investing that you do?

Jeremy Lin: I mean, I think wow, I didn’t think I was going to do this, but I’m like almost plugging the other the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast because Patricia had, you know, she was just on me like, you know, JLIN LLC needs this big long term goal. And she made me sit through like hours of meetings and asked me and picked the card everything I said and was like, I need more specifics. I need more like I need more. And I had to think for a year, literally like 12 months. And that’s when we kind of came up with this concept of redefining love. And we’re like, Man, if we could redefine love for the next generation, I think that’s what I would. That’s what I would want to go for. And it was just so divine because me and Patricia had talked about for so long. Like, we would love to work with Robert, but we don’t want to poach. And so we never mentioned to Robert like I mean, for four years. For four years we never mentioned anything. And then all of a sudden, Robert came to us and was like, Hey, what do you think about this and this? And me and Patrica we’re like, Oh, my goodness, like, what a divine.

Jeremy Lin: Like. I mean, the whole how we even got here was just really amazing. And so I think, you know, that’s when we started on this concept of can we redefine love and impact investing or investing in general is just one of those ways that we think we can do that. Can we start to view our investments, our wealth, our network, everything that within that realm? Can we view that as an opportunity to, you know, redefine love, give the next generation more opportunities to be there for ourselves and to be able to do it in ways that are really like dignifying and humanizing for each individual person, not just the people that are being affected by the company or the product or whatever that is. But also the the founders, the employees, the fund managers, like everybody across the board. Can we approach it from a way where we’re humanizing and really loving deeply on those people, as well as obviously bringing this new level of radical love through how we use our wealth or how we even view our wealth. I think, you know, Robert can go more into this because this is something that he is working a lot on right now and thinking a lot more on, but that is kind of the birth of it all.

Henry Kaestner: That’s amazing. So you and Patricia work on this loftier, bigger purpose about why are we doing all of this and what does success look like? And over the course of 12 months of going back and forth and her challenging you, you come up with something pretty ethereal. I mean, it’s pretty big, like redefining love. And I’d love to hear what that means in terms of like how you invest differently. So, Robert. You’re constructing a portfolio for a friend and a client that’s saying, I want my finances to be involved in the redefinition of love. What does that mean? What do you do with that?

Robert Kim: Yeah, that exact reaction that you have right now was and so is my reaction till today. You know, we talk a lot about this topic, but when I first heard Jeremy and Patricia kind of talk about redefining love and can we talk about what does that mean in the world of investing? Honestly, as somebody who has been deep into impact investing for a while, I was very shocked. I was like, I don’t know. I don’t even know what that means. And so I moved on from Caprock and joined JLIN LLC at the beginning of 2022. And so over the last nine months or so, I’ve been really thinking intentionally about what does that mean? Right? And I think we’re not quite there yet in terms of clearly defining what that means. But we know the following. We think that one is really around this notion that impact happens in the context of a relationship. I think the impact that we want to see really happens at dinner meals, in a coffee chats, right. And when we think about the founders that just face immense level of pressure, when we think about first time high impact potential fund manager, they’re starting out. They’re putting their life on the line. Right. And they go through incredible journey of highs and lows. What does it mean to really redefine love in that context as we invest in them? I think it’s spending time with them, I think is really creating an atmosphere for founders to be themselves without the sort of pressure to put up sort of this persona that, well, for the next fundraising, we’ve got to look like this. Right? And so we’ve been thinking really deeply about post investments. How do we create an environment or an atmosphere where founders can come freely and just really experience the love that we experienced personally? And same thing for the first time, general partners or fund managers as well. And so we’re working on that right now. And so that’s kind of first piece. The second piece I won’t really go into too much is really investing to improve access for the marginalized communities throughout Asia in the US. And so when I think about GDP per capita in Southeast Asia and a lot of it coming out of service sectors, the innovation happening on the technology side I think can really multiply that in the coming decade. And I think the impact that can happen in the context of that growth is going to be pretty special. So we’re pretty excited about that. So I would say like the relationship with the people we invest, how do we thoughtfully forge relationships and then improving access through the technology and business models that we invest in?

Henry Kaestner: So you guys have worked together for a while first, as you know, a client relationship with Caprock and then of course, now with JLIN. But you have made some investments together, of course, in the past. Can you speak to some that you’ve done that you think are good exemplars of the type of stewardship that you want to do that you’ve done?

Robert Kim: Yeah, definitely. The most recent one is a company called Ascent Funding. They’re based in the US and they’re in a education financing industry. So typically in the US and then also in Southeast Asia, if you want to get a student loan, really it depends on your parents credit score, how wealthy your parents are. And I think what that does is it immediately excludes people; one without parents or people with parents without too much means or wealth, because as soon as you don’t have a credit score, you know, you just started to build credit. And so this company called ascent funding created a, in our mind, relatively new way to underwrite a loan based on the student’s academic ability. And so they spent a lot of time understanding, you know, their academic ability and therefore that student’s ability to find a job post-graduation. And they really take a look at that sort of factor. And if they have a high sort of academic potential, regardless of your background, you know, regardless of whether you come from a, you know, high income or low income, you can get a loan. And that is really special because we care a lot about access, as we talked about. And that company is tremendously improving access to education through new financing structure. So I would say that’s the most recent one that we really love and that sort of exemplifies the type of companies we are looking to invest into.

Wen Li Lim: I’m going to ask Jeremy, earlier you were just talking about like philanthropy and then really then moving along and doing impact investing. Is there a particular project or even issue that is really close to your heart that you started out to kind of doing philanthropic work and just through, you know, talking to Robert and learning more that you’ve kind of moved into looking at impact investing in that specific area.

Jeremy Lin: That’s the unique part about this is I am extremely excited about my foundation and the stuff that we’re doing, the Jeremy Lin foundation we center around really empowering, overlooked API. And then at the same time, you know, when we think about investments and different things like that, we’re looking at different companies that will also provide, you know, and the thing that Robert will talk a lot about is access and mental health. I think those are two of the primary drivers that we’re looking at. And when we think about the pandemic, when we think about, you know, what I’m learning from everything on the foundation side and all the work that we’re doing, so much of it centers around mental health and what the kids have been going through. And, you know, even when I’m doing my UNICEF stuff, like it’s all about mental health. And when we talk to Congress, congressman and congresswoman and public officials, they talk about bullying and mental health. And these are things that we are trying to also provide. Can we provide more access to mental health resources? Can we invest in companies? Can we even approach the mental health of founders in a way that is able to help them get there? And I think that’s something that’s really unique, is, you know, when I think about a great coach, she helps me, all my great coaches in my life. That helped me become better basketball players, but they haven’t redefined love. Right? Like the coaches that have really redefined love for me are the ones who became mentors and lifelong friends because they cared more than just the results and what I was able to bring, right? Like it wasn’t just the profit or the numbers or it was being willing to walk through life with me and being able to meet me in my highs, in my lows, and to be able to care about me outside of my performance on the court. And, you know, these are the things that we want to bring to the people that we invest in because we won’t be the ones coming up with the product. But if we can meet them where they’re at and then even just to challenge them a little bit or to give them almost like a different perspective or to give ideas, maybe the product changes. And maybe because of that small tweak, it affects an entire territory of children, whether it’s mental health or access to education. But I know I’m a little bit all over the place right now, but it’s kind of just a snapshot into what we’re trying to do. And we talk about like what is Redefining Love look like. It definitely requires more radical love, being willing to grind it out and go through the rougher parts of the process that maybe other people wouldn’t be willing to go through and then caring more beyond just what the final result and the statistic shows.

Henry Kaestner: So either of you can answer this for listeners on this. Can you illustrate where you are and the spectrum between and maybe you have investments all across the spectrum, but between philanthropy through to social impact, which might have a patient or concessionary return all the way to market return. Do you look at the portfolio holistically that way, guided by this principle of love, guided by issues like community, which I know is big in mental health, which you just mentioned, but can you talk about and maybe even represent investments that might represent philanthropy, impact investing, which connotes that there’s going to be some sort of a financial return as well as a social return, and then also where you might make an investment that might be consistent with your ethos and what your call to that might be. More on the market return side.

Robert Kim: I can take a crack at it first and then Jeremy can obviously add on to that, I think. So across that spectrum, my good friend calls it One Pocket Investing. Right. So most investors have for profit pocket and then invest in pocket. So from a sort of a Jeremy Lin family office perspective, right. There’s a Jeremy Lin foundation that does the grantmaking right around underserved API communities with a theme of cross-racial solidarity. So we definitely have a focus there. Jeremy also does quite a bit of philanthropic activity or has some philanthropic activities over in Asia as well. And so we have that. We also have market rate sort of traditional investments and market rate impact investments they are right in the middle of sort of what you laid out Henry of like the lower return impact investments such as like program related investments, things like that. We have not done a ton of that there in sort of that middle category. So most of our impact investments have actually achieved market rate, whether that was a venture strategy or a real estate strategy or a private credit strategies. And so that’s kind of been sort of how we’ve been positioning the overall.

Henry Kaestner: Can you do those? Can you do a real estate strategy? Can you do a private credit strategy in a way that is different than the way the world might invest in it? That’s driven by your faith and just drawn to that a little bit.

Robert Kim: Yeah. So I think example always helps. So in real estate we invest in a bunch of properties and it was affordable housing. So because it goes back to access, you know, access to housing near the workplaces have a tremendous impact on the quality of life for the family and the kids. So we care a lot about affordable housing. So we invest in properties that are affordable to low to moderate income households, but driven out of our faith. And we’re not you know, I’m sure there’s more to be done. We are always learning honestly. But one of the things we sough out to do is can we serve the tenants a little bit more meaningfully? Right. I totally get that. They can live there at a lower rent free. What else they need? Right. Can we provide certain services at the properties? Around medical care, around budgeting? So what the property owner and the property management team did is they invited local churches and local nonprofits to deliver those services. So it was like, hey, free blood exam from 2 to 4 p.m.. Or you can learn how to manage financials, learn how to do budgeting, come and learn at this sort of hallway. Right? And for the kids before the school week, they would have like donation right coming from churches and other places. And you know that these churches. Right. And local churches like the big why of the reason they’re doing this is to share the gospel. And so they don’t explicitly say that to the property management teams, but that’s the motive. And we try to scan, you know, the local churches and local nonprofits and I think like driven out of our continue to seek out sort of like redefining what love means. I think there’s no limit there. But one expression of it is always asking what else they need? What else can we do? And I think that’s an example. And in terms of the financial return achieved what it was supposed to from when we were initially reviewing the opportunity.

Henry Kaestner: So this is market rate, so guided by your principles of loving on communities. This is actually an investment vehicle where you’re actually able to get a market rate return.

Robert Kim: Correct. Correct. And when I say market rate, market rate for these types of properties and I won’t go into like the difference between sort of a market rate properties versus affordable housing, but within the category of the properties definitely achieved what we expected.

Wen Li Lim: Jeremy, would you like to add to that?

Robert Kim: No, I mean, I think that’s a great example. I mean, there was, you know, even earlier well, I’m not going to add too much on to it, but there’s another company that we invested in a while back that also turned just plots of land into affordable housing, but then also targeted or tried to be more intentional about who we were renting out to whether it was, you know, widows or single parents or different, you know. And so these are all different ways that, you know, I think maybe you could just view things a little bit differently beyond just what has been the status quo. So those are just small examples of what we try to, you know, target, I guess.

Wen Li Lim: Well, I’m super excited that Robert’s out here in Asia, and I mean even before Robert moved over was to started chatting about the impact investment seen here and the kind of projects and the people that are on the ground working. So really glad to I mean, Jeremy, you’re in Asia as well, so just really glad to have you guys doing the work over here and really looking forward to see what it looks like to see. I know Robert’s coming to Singapore and we’re meaning a bunch of people together as well, just exchanging stories and learning from each other. So really exciting days ahead. But usually part of the episode we do this like Rapid Fire Round. So I ask a question something light, you got 30 seconds to answer, so I’m going to go to Robert first. Let’s start with you, what’s the favorite place you ever vacationed at?

Robert Kim: I think there’s a small island south of Korea called Jeju.

Wen Li Lim: Oh, I’ve been there.

Robert Kim: Oh, okay. So, yeah, it’s like the Hawaii of Korea. And every summer growing up in Korea, during my childhood, we went there. And so I think that stays with me pretty deep. And I would say that’s the spot for me.

Wen Li Lim: Well, I went there because it’s Winter Sonata, that Korean drama that came up like 15, 20 years ago.

Robert Kim: Right? Right. Right.

Wen Li Lim: Now, this is I know this is Henry’s favorite topic, dessert. So you’re both of Northern Californian. Where is the best place that you go to for dessert? And then I know Henry Henry’s going to chime in as well. Jeremy

Jeremy Lin: Well, I. If I want a nice desert, I usually go to Sundance Steakhouse in Palo Alto. Then I get the mud pie, which is a coffee ice cream pie with an Oreo crust. And I get no whipped cream, extra fudge. And they got the candied pecans on there. Oh, it’s a coffee Oreo chocolate blend of goodness.

Wen Li Lim: It’s like every ingredient you could think of Henry gone.

Henry Kaestner: Well, I tell you, we’re overindexed for listeners from Silicon Valley, so I fully expect that that advertising plug is going to result in Jeremy never having to pay for another mud pie ever again. I’m trying to figure out if I can kind of get in on that deal. For me, it’s got to be Dolce Spazio unless gosh it’s just incredible, incredible gelato. But the way that Jeremy described it, at first I thought I was going to say no whipped cream because he’s like watching his, you know, you know, he’s a professional athlete. But then he said, well, then extra hot fudge. And I’m like, Well, I guess that’s probably not the motive, but that sounds really good.

Wen Li Lim: Robert, what’s your favorite dessert up there?

Robert Kim: I don’t think I can be very top. Henry or Jeremy is honestly like I’m pretty simple when it comes to dessert. I just like anything chocolate. It’s a little bit more anything like dark chocolate, anything above 70%. I love as any dessert place that has that in there.

Wen Li Lim: I kind of feel anything above 80% taste like cardboard. So I’m with you there. Okay, my last question. So we’ve got an athlete here with us and so let’s go into that direction. If you could be excellent at one spot that you currently are not good at, what would it be and why? Neither one.

Jeremy Lin: I would say, MMA, because then I would feel really like I can protect people around me and myself in the majority of situations. It’s also like it’s pretty wild. I mean, you never know when you’re going to need some type of survival skills.

Wen Li Lim: Very practical. Robert

Robert Kim: I don’t know what the name is, but you know, like people like jump off a cliff with a little like sort of wings that they have and they kind of like videotape, like the mountains and the cliffs and whatever that is. I want to be really good at that.

Wen Li Lim: Is that handgliding.

Robert Kim: They’ll be like, really cool.

Henry Kaestner: No, no, no.

Robert Kim: It’s like, it’s not like it’s a suit they wear.

Wen Li Lim: Yeah, it’s like a squirrel jumping out.

Henry Kaestner: Squirrelsuit, that’s what it is.

Robert Kim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That one.

Henry Kaestner: Robert, I would not have picked that for you. That’s amazing. I just got a glimpse into your personality that I didn’t know. That’s unbelievable.

Wen Li Lim: Well, over to you, Henry.

Henry Kaestner: To me, this first lightning round I’ve ever been involved, I don’t think anybody cares what I think. But I’ll throw in I throw in basketball from basketball because I had three boys, all of whom can beat me, on one and one handily. And I’d like to kind of throw down on them. I mean, I just I have had the fantasy that God would give me just for 5 seconds, the ability to dunk, and I’d go in with a 360 dunk. And then I just looked at the boys like, Yeah, what do you got now? And I’d only need to do it once, and it would only need to be in front of my three boys. We need to be in front of anybody else. And it’s okay if the film wasn’t on, but it would be awesome if it was. And then then that be done. Then that would be my […] moment God could take me up to heaven.

Wen Li Lim: It’s my job. Okay. Well, thanks, everyone. I love this part, but. Yeah, over to you, Henry, to close this out.

Henry Kaestner: Well, this has been awesome. And Jeremy has been really gracious with his time because we spent time on Faith Driven Entrepreneur, which, again, I hope that you all get a chance to listen to that because he talks so much, so eloquently about his identity as a Christ follower. But we finish out every one of our episodes across faith driven entrepreneur and all the different reasons we’ve got Africa now, Asia, and Global Podcast, and then of course FDI with endeavoring to understand what God is speaking to our guest about through His Word. And it doesn’t need to be this morning necessarily. It can be within the last week or last month, but a time in which you feel that God is just saying, here’s a message I have for you through the Bible. So, Jeremy, we’ll start with you.

Jeremy Lin: I shared one on the other podcast, but a different one is Exodus 14:14, where the Lord will fight for you and you have only to be still. And I think about when Moses and the Israelites were surrounded on three sides by water and Pharaoh’s army on the other side. And there’s a cloud separating them. And they’re. Going to basically like, okay, we’re trapped that we’re going to die. And this concept that God tells Moses, like, I will fight for you only to be still. And I never knew this. I never knew this until recently. But the Red Sea, when it parted, it did not happen right away. Like in some of the movies, it was An East Wind that took all night. And I think that’s, you know, very relevant to investing to entrepreneurship. But that sometimes when God moves, he doesn’t move right away. It takes him some time. He’ll use you know, it was an east wind that it took all night. And I’m imagining what those like seven, 8 hours would feel like for, you know, being trapped and thinking that this army is going to just come and slaughter me. Right. And knowing that God will sometimes take longer than you expect. But if we’re faithful, if we stayed true and connected to him, he will move and he will fight. And we have only to be still sometimes. And I think that was something that’s really encouraging to me.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a very, very good word. I’ve never read the passage that way. That’s really encouraging.

Henry Kaestner: Robert.

Robert Kim: For me, it’s Romans 8:38, very famous passage, neither death nor life, neither angels and demons. And it goes on, you know, neither hide nor death or anything else and all creation will be able to separate us from the love of Christ. I think that’s a really, really powerful message for me. Like as God reminds me, like, man I love you and nothing else matters. And he reminds me of that on multiple fronts, multiple parts of my life every day and truly blessed. And I almost feel like tying it to kind of what we’re doing here at JLIN. And it’s like, I love you so abundantly. Go share that. Go share that with people you co-invest with, go share that with people you invest in. You know, go share just the love in ways that you can. And it’s a privilege to do this with Patricia to do this with Jeremy. It’s a real privilege. And, you know, another sign of God’s love. It’s like, man, like God put amazing people around me that are just truly, truly special. Right. And so, you know, when Henry and Luke you know, all the other people in the Bay Area also just like amazing people working toward a collective mission, it’s it’s a great reminder that God blessed me abundantly. So this message means it means a lot.

Henry Kaestner: It does, Robert. He does. And you, Jeremy and you Wen, Patricia team awesome being with you, Jeremy. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your leadership, your humility, your candor, and your partnership in the gospel.

Jeremy Lin: I appreciate thank you guys so much for having me. We’ll talk soon.

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Cathie Wood: Our job in terms of seeking the kingdom, I think, is in that 12 trillion because again, saving lives, making lives better, increasing incomes and really creating a virtuous cycle as opposed to and turning back the vicious cycle that we’ve seen. I’ll say benchmark style investing caused some of that. You know, the myopia and the misallocation mask, the most massive misallocation of capital in history. This is allocating capital to its highest and best use, which will create miracles. That’s bringing heaven to Earth.

Henry Kaestner: Cathy, thank you very much for joining us today.

Cathie Wood: Well, I’m happy to be here, Henry. Very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Henry Kaestner: Before we get into the investing side of your story, can you share how your faith has guided you throughout your life?

Cathie Wood: You know, I think I was born with the gift of faith, and I do understand what a gift that is. And as I was evolving my faith over the years, first the childlike faith, but then getting into career and so forth. I really began to understand more about the Holy Spirit and the guidance and counsel. And my father would say counselor of the night that the Holy Spirit is and will probably get into this later. But at one moment in my life, I got a big push from the Holy Spirit to start arc. So really important to me

Henry Kaestner: today, you’re known for innovative investing. Has it always been your reputation? And what were some of the early ideas you’re picking up on that other people are mostly ignoring?

Cathie Wood: Yes, the focus on innovation really came from my startup Jennison Associates at Jennison. I was in economics, but I really wanted to get into equity research, and Segal is the chief investment officer there then and still now. So in the 80s and now, he said fine, but you’re going to have to find your own universe because our analysts are lifers and they’re probably not going to give you any of their stocks. And so it was serendipitous because at that time we had something called database publishing evolve, and the technology analyst didn’t want it because it had publishing in the name and the publishing analyst didn’t want it. So here I’m thinking Reuters and tolerate because it had technology in the name, and I said, I’ll take it. I love this idea. And of course, that was the precursor to the internet. Same with wireless. No one wanted Vodafone. First of all, it was a foreign stock at the time. And you know, these big bricks, they were never going to amount to anything. And of course, we know what happened in the wireless industry. And so I used to say that I picked up on stocks that fell through the cracks. But what really this was the earliest manifestation of was the convergence between and among technologies, which is moving into overdrive right now and creating amazing investment opportunities.

Henry Kaestner: What did you learn in your professional life up until the point you founded Arc and realized that you need to go out on your own? And where did the name come from?

Cathie Wood: OK. Yes. I started in the business at Capital Group on the West Coast Capital Group had a 10 to 20 to 50 year time horizon, which I just loved. So in 1977, they were looking at Hong Kong, 1997 the changeover. And I was saying, this is the business I want to be in. And it was fantastic for the first 20 years, up until the tech and telecom bust and then the tech and telecom bust and 08 09 the meltdown, the calamity. What happened during that period was our business became very risk averse and quantitative moved in and began to worship at the altar called benchmarks. I would consider this benchmark to be an idol, which basically took over the industry. Well, what is a benchmark? It’s backwards looking. The companies and stocks in benchmarks are there because of past success. And if we’re moving into a world where five technologically enabled platforms are going to converge and transform the world entirely, that kind of investing is anathema to productive investing. And yet I couldn’t get anyone really to embrace this idea in a big way and became more and more of an odd duck within my own firm to the point where they thought the strategy I managed was too volatile and they wanted to risk control it with benchmarks. So I knew the writing was on the wall that if I really wanted to do this, I had to go out and blazed the trail not only in investing but in research, changing research, transforming research so that analysts don’t follow industries or sectors. They follow technologies. They are specialists in technologies and they are generalists when it comes to industries and we give away our research. Why? Because we want to engage with and become a part of the communities we’re researching. So it was really a shaking up of our industry. You know, this idea of why don’t you just transform your own industry with the technologies that have transformed other industries? And the name arc came from. Ark of the Covenant. I did a lot of soul searching, literally starting in 2006, probably 2000 for personal reasons, but for professional reasons in 2006. And part of the soul searching was just going to the Bible and saying, OK, God, tell me what you want me to do. And how many times did I open the Bible up to the Ark of the Covenant, which for as many times as I open to the page and it wasn’t the same page each time. It’s probably miraculous, and I said, I have to name my firm Ark for Ark of the Covenant and think about it, Ark of the Covenant. So the Israelites took the Ark into battle ahead of them. The presence of God was going to protect them during their battles, and that’s what I was going to do a fully active, transparent equity ETF. When the ETF world, which was taking share from the mutual fund world, was all passive, and so shaking things up a little bit in that realm as well to the point where most people thought it would not work. You know, I thought I didn’t know what I was doing. And even those and Eric Bell, Tunis basically said as much. But in seeing our success, he had to do a double take and has been very fair in terms of our progression through the ETF world.

Henry Kaestner: I may come back at the end and ask you a little bit more about the indexing and benchmarking you and I had talked about that maybe six months or 12 months ago, and I’m fascinated by that. I don’t think that people understand how that needs to be redeemed and restored, and you have an angle on it. Maybe at the end we can come back in that chair for the first three years. You’re funding out on your own. What did that season of life look like and how is your faith tested and what motivated you to keep going?

Cathie Wood: Well, it was really almost four years because I invested in ARK during my gardening leave as well. And I really thought if I built it, they would come because I had a very wide network, lots of clients. But what I didn’t understand was that the ETF world and the traditional world that I had come from did not communicate, didn’t understand one another. So I had fallen into the trap that many entrepreneurs fall into, not understanding the market completely. And so we sat for three years, so 2014 15 through the middle of 16 and really the end of 16, which is when we struck a distribution deal. But during those years, we were basically stuck at $40 million, 30, 40 million dollars and losing a lot of money. Now did I think we were going to fail? I never thought we were going to fail. I know many others did because our needle was not moving at all. And so there’s something called the death watch for ETFs, and I think we were on that death watch list, but I never thought we were going to fail. I knew we needed a distribution partner, but I will tell you during many days when things weren’t going so well, you know, when we thought there would be good news and it didn’t come or we were rejected entirely, I would just go into the bathroom and just kneel down and pray and say, OK, not in my hands. You are in control. And I know we’re going to make it. I know we’re going to make it. And so my faith actually was strengthened during that time. And I’m so grateful for that period because of how much it did strengthened my faith.

Henry Kaestner: What was the investment philosophy you originally founded the company on and how does that play out today?

Cathie Wood: Yes. The original philosophy, which is still our today, was if you go back to the 80s and 90s, you will see a period where new technologies were surfacing. The seeds were being planted for what we are enjoying today. Now what happened in the interim is this fear of innovation became apparent during the tech and telecom bust, and there’s still a fear of innovation. So much so that, as I mentioned before, many investors started to become very benchmark sensitive, even if they were so-called active investors. They started leaning close to their benchmarks. And, you know, when I say worshiping them and I do call it an idol, they would feel good or bad about themselves at the end of each day because of how their portfolios performed relative to the benchmark. And it became obsessive compulsive. And of course, if your style is benchmark sensitive, then by definition you are looking backwards. You’re not looking at the new names that are evolving, the new companies that are evolving, the new creation that is evolving, and that’s what we dedicated ourselves to doing. We are not looking at any benchmark. We are focused on the future, on the new creation on these five platforms involving 14 different technologies that are all growing exponentially. And in fact, they’re all in what you would recognize as various places on SW curves and news as curves because of the convergence, as I mentioned earlier. They are intersecting, so one curve is feeding, another is feeding another. And I do not believe that most investors understand today how explosive the opportunities are going to be and how destructive they are going to be to the traditional world order or the benchmarks.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so, so many places to go there, but I stick to the script again. And you mentioned the five platform, so talk to us about the five platforms of innovation that you and your team have identified. What are they and why should Faith Driven Investor just pay attention to them?

Cathie Wood: Well, I’ll start with the why faith based investors should pay attention to them. This is the new creation we have been put here on Earth to procreate and create right not to mimic what might have happened historically. In fact, to change, transform and make the world a better place, these five platforms are going to do that. DNA sequencing is going to transform health care, bringing science into decision making. For the first time, because now we can identify among the six billion letters in our genome. I call them pieces of code where there are mutations or programing errors. And for the first time, it was impossible before. And we’re going to be carrying disease. We’re already seeing that happen. And then robotics, many people worry about robots as taking away jobs. Yes, there will be displacement. The history of technology, however, is technology takes over the mundane tasks and adds to the productivity gains of countries around the world and therefore adds to wage gains because the jobs that are being created are much higher value add. So that’s robotics, especially adaptive robotics, collaborative robotics, then energy storage. Here is where those who are really concerned about the environment are going to see some wonderful developments. We already are so electric vehicles, battery technology is ready. We’re going to transform the world from the internal combustion engine to battery technology. And it’s going to scale magnificently because of how quickly the costs are falling. And that’s the key. With each of these platforms, costs are falling fast enough that we’re beginning to see the uptake at an accelerated rate. Artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence. Again, it’s like I described DNA sequencing. We are going to be able to get at information to make better decisions more quickly. Artificial intelligence training costs are dropping at a 68 percent rate per year. Think about that when the cost of something drops out rapidly, more and more researchers and businesspeople harness it to make their businesses better and their lives better, more productive. So AI is going to infiltrate every industry, every company, and we’re in a bit of a land grab for the pole positions. And then finally, blockchain technology bitcoin represents the first global monetary system, a rules based monetary system that my mentor, Art Laffer, thinks is wonderful. He’s been looking for this all his life as a necklace. And so that’s part of it. Then there’s DeFi, which is built on top of a Therian. DeFi decentralized finance is going to take away a lot of the middlemen roles in financial services and take away the friction, increasing yields, lowering lending rates. We’re already seeing that. So those are the five and there are 14 different technologies involved in them. But I want to get back to this idea of convergence again. Three of the five major platforms are converging and creating autonomous taxi networks. So that would be robotics. Autonomous vehicles are robots, energy storage. They will be electric. It’s going to be the much less expensive route to go and artificial intelligence. They’re going to be powered by a AI and they’re going to save lives there. Thirty five to forty thousand lives lost in automobile crashes every year in the United States. That is going to collapse. There are nearly one and a half million lives lost to fatalities in auto accidents globally. So again, changing the world, making it a better place.

Henry Kaestner: What are the areas where you’d like to see Faith Driven Investor get more involved? How would you like to see in the answer to that may very well be and being involved in what God is doing in redeeming restrain all things. How would you like to see our audience step up and use their influence for good?

Cathie Wood: Well, I think if they’re in the financial world, perhaps leading the charge at their own companies into directing and allocating resources towards the new creation, again making the world a better place solve. Problems in aviation took off during the coronavirus crisis because innovation solves problems, in fact, we have an impact fund in Japan, hopefully coming to the US at some point, which it takes the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the U.N.. They were developed around well about six years ago, and we’ve mapped our 14 technologies against those sustainable development goals. The first one is eliminating poverty just to give you a sense, and that matrix is beautiful and is filling in day by day with new technologies that are going to solve problems. The second way, I think, is to encourage education leaders to bring innovation into the classroom. I founded the Innovation Foundation. It’s primarily for education right now. We just got our IRIS designation and we are developing a pre-K through 12 curriculum of education through the lens of innovation, starting with Montessori method in the early years. And just to give you an example of that battery technology and high school, the students will be learning about the chemistry of batteries, physics, the design, the applications and so forth. And how are we going to start this knowledge base in those kindergartners? What are we going to talk about? How could we get them to understand this concept of energy storage? Well, what do they understand? They understand sunshine. So in their earliest days, they’re going to be learning indirectly about energy storage, but beautifully. And I do believe that educating individuals about innovation to inspire them is going to level the playing field and the opportunities we just did. Two pilots at Jericho Partnership in Danbury economically disadvantaged areas, one on drones for high school, one on 3D printing for fourth and fifth graders. And at the end of that six part seminar, we were able to say to each group, OK, now you know more about drones and 3D printing than 99 percent of the people in the United States. Does this inspire you? If so, follow our analysts on Twitter. Read everything you can about this. Educate yourself and you’ll be far ahead of the game.

Henry Kaestner: OK, that is super cool. So I want to ask that one other question that unites all of our different interviews that we do, which is, is there something that you’re hearing from Guy through his word right now? And maybe it’s this morning. Maybe it’s last week. Maybe it’s over the course of last month or so where you just like he’s he’s speaking to me.

Cathie Wood: Well, I guess I can come at that from many directions because I feel, thank God that he is speaking to me all the time and that I must pick up on these cues and run with them. And I think a big one for me has been, you know, having gone through this journey for seven years. And then all of a sudden, the Bible, as I’m opening it, I’m seeing more about giving back, you know, sharing and evangelizing in some way. So I think that means two things to me. I’ve been criticized by many in the financial community for bringing my faith into this discussion. And yet I feel that’s one of the things that God is asking me to do. And especially this idea of new creation. Now, do I at Ark Invest, you know, go in and talk in the way I’m speaking to you now? No, I am deeply involved in our research and investing, which is all about the new creation and others in the firm. They may have the same faith I do, or maybe not, but we know we’re doing something meaningful together. We know it and it speaks for itself. And then the second is, OK, take that research and move it into our educational system. So that’s what I’m doing.

Henry Kaestner: So tell me just a little bit. If you have time and Lisa can interrupt at any point. But I’m fascinated by this concept, of course, of the new creation and reading the books they’re talking about. You know, as we pray God’s kingdom come about on Earth as it is in heaven. And he writes, speaks about this. Spend a little bit more time talking about how you see that playing out on Earth as it is in heaven and what are the things that Christ’s followers really need to be paying attention to? I suppose that a lot of that are the five platforms, but it’s maybe speaking to the fact that this is how you see God at work and the sooner we tap into it, we’ll be able to unleash that power.

Cathie Wood: Well, I think we’re talking about miracles here now when we think about the power of God and causing miracles on Earth. I do believe we’re going to be curing disease. We’re going to be saving lives not just because of the genomic revolution, but because of autonomous taxi networks and autonomous technologies, generally drones, trucks, ships and so forth. And we will be increasing productivity so that by our calculations, because of this innovation explosion, GDP in the United States alone in 2035 will be 12 trillion dollars higher. So instead of 28 trillion, $4 trillion, our job in terms of seeking the kingdom, I think, is in that 12 trillion because again, saving lives, making lives better, increasing incomes and really creating a virtuous cycle as opposed to and turning back the vicious cycle that we’ve seen. I’ll say benchmark style investing caused some of that. You know, the myopia and the misallocation mask the most massive in allocation of capital in history. This is allocating capital to its highest and best use, which will create miracles that’s bringing heaven to Earth.