GMI Ratings’ ESG research head Gladman leaves to join start-up firm

Governance research firm GMI Ratings says its Managing Director of ESG Research, Kimberly Gladman, is leaving to join a new sustainable start-up company called Just Capital.

The new venture is associated with Deepak Chopra, the alternative medicine advocate and author, GMI says, adding: “Just Capital’s mission represents new territory in the world of financing new businesses.”

Gladman, who just last month was re-named best individual corporate governance analyst in the Thomson Reuters Extel/SRI-Connect Independent Research in Responsible Investment survey, joined GMI’s predecessor, the Corporate Library, in 2008. Before that she was at SRI fund manager Domini Social Investments.

“Although it will be difficult, GMI is committed to filling the role of ESG Research Head,” GMI said in an internal memo.

Gladman sits on the Committee on Socially Responsible Investing of the Unitarian Universalist Association, theResearch Advisory Committee of US-SIF, and the Steering Committee of the Principles for Responsible Investment Academic Network.

Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. He articulated his ideas for reforming capitalism in a series of articles last year.
Possibilities included a “grass roots movement” to undo the Citizens United ruling on corporate political spending and take a “burrow from within” stance on Wall Street.

“There are young bankers and financiers who genuinely reject unfettered greed, and we should do all we can to unite them into a movement with teeth,” he said, adding that his non-profit Chopra Foundation has initiated the Just Capital 100 Indices to favor capitalism with social justice in mind.

“The ordinary citizen still smells the stink of Wall Street’s misdeeds, the lack of accountability, and the shameless profiteering that has ensued since 2008,” he concluded.