Archive for News
Jefferson State Forest Products NewsPublished December 31, 2010 at 10:50 am No Comments
Jefferson State Forest Products, currently based in Hayfork, California, will be relocating to Grants Pass, Oregon by the end of the first quarter 2011. JSFP will be based in the same facility as its sister organization Roguewood Furniture, and both companies will remain separate entities. The decision to relocate JSFP was made in late 2010 by Upstream 21′s Board of Directors based on a careful consideration of the impact on all stakeholders. By relocating JSFP [...]
NewsPublished August 1, 2010 at 1:31 pm 1 Comment
Leslie Christian, our Board Chair, also serves on the Investment Advisory Committee of RSF Social Finance, and has contributed a series of fantastic essays about impact investing in the 21st Century. This fifth essay in the series details the three investment strategies – Ecological Carpetbagging, Global Good, and Transition to Community – and offers example investments that fit the strategies. Leslie’s description of “Transition to Community” investing also sums up Upstream 21 quite nicely: “Employees, community, the environment, customers, [...]
NewsPublished July 30, 2010 at 9:01 pm No Comments
Leslie Christian, our Board Chair, was interviewed by The Capital Institute, who highlighted her as one of the thought leaders in Finance and Investing today. The Capital Institute defines itself in the following way: “The Capital Institute is a non-partisan, 21st century innovation center, founded in 2009 by financiers, business people, and academics from multiple disciplines to effect change. Our mission is to drive systemic change of financial theory and practice necessary to harness the [...]
NewsPublished June 21, 2010 at 10:57 pm No Comments
A little-known fact about Upstream 21 is that we influenced the thinking behind the original “B Corporation.” The founders of B Labs, the team behind the B Corporation phenomenon, gleaned some of their corporate charter strategy from Upstream 21 and Leslie Christian, Chair of the Board. Here’s a link to the Inc article from back in 2007 when B Corps were just a cool idea and Leslie was quoted. We’re thrilled that we were able to contribute a little bit to [...]
NewsPublished June 15, 2010 at 10:21 pm No Comments
Leslie Christian, our Board Chair, also serves on the Investment Advisory Committee of RSF Social Finance, and has contributed a series of fantastic essays about impact investing in the 21st Century. This fourth essay of the series provides three investment strategies to respond to ecological limits and their associated risks to our economy: Ecological Carpetbagging Global Good Transition to Community Interestingly, most socially responsible investing vehicles (SRI) would fall into the second category, which is better than the [...]
NewsPublished May 15, 2010 at 10:16 pm No Comments
Leslie Christian, our Board Chair, also serves on the Investment Advisory Committee of RSF Social Finance, and has contributed a series of fantastic essays about impact investing in the 21st Century. This third essay challenges us to evaluate our own personal response to “the possibility that average annual growth in our global economy will cease,” and how we can use our response to “form the foundation for thinking about how to structure our new asset allocation framework.” So, [...]
NewsPublished April 30, 2010 at 10:04 pm No Comments
Leslie Christian, our Board Chair, also serves on the Investment Advisory Committee of RSF Social Finance, and has contributed a series of fantastic essays about impact investing in the 21st Century. This second essay talks about how ecological limits impact our thinking on truly long-term investing. In this provocative essay, she challenges the very idea of sustainable “growth.” “In the face of ecological limits, we must question whether we can reasonably expect our global economy to continue to [...]
NewsPublished April 24, 2010 at 6:43 pm No Comments
Our Board Chair Leslie Christian was singled out as one of “40 people who are refining green” in Grist’s special Earth Day series. Congratulations on this special recognition, Leslie! It’s quite a select group of people! Read her entry and the rest of the series.
NewsPublished April 24, 2010 at 6:20 pm No Comments
The Oregonian’s Brent Hunsberger has a blog called “It’s Only Money” in which he talked about the options for socially responsible investments here in Oregon. Upstream 21 was offered as an alternative investment vehicle, and our Board member Carsten Henningsen described us this way: “Upstream 21 is the alternative to an investment banker. We’re not going to infuse a couple million into a firm, double its revenues and flip it in a couple years.” Rather, [...]
NewsPublished April 15, 2010 at 9:45 pm No Comments
Leslie Christian, our Board Chair, also serves on the Investment Advisory Committee of RSF Social Finance, and has contributed a series of fantastic essays about impact investing in the 21st Century. This first essay critiques the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), upon which virtually all of investment finance is currently based. She points out the following problems: MPT assumes economic growth will grow indefinitely. Clearly we are already encountering ecological constraints across all natural systems. MPT [...]
