Michael Kramer Redefines the Green Movement
By Karen Valentine
If you noticed Michael Kramer marching in the 2009 Kailua-Kona Christmas Parade as the Green FlashTM along with other Green Power HeroesTM, you’d never guess he makes his living as an investment advisor.
The truth is, he’s not your ordinary investment advisor. He is actually a crusader for a more perfect society.
Sometimes, in fact, it seems like Michael, a managing partner in Natural Investments, LLC, is Don Quixote tilting at windmills, advising his clients to put their money into natural, socially conscious investments.
A concept not so popular with financiers (whose primary focus is return on investment), Michael has dedicated his career to convincing his clients to put money into initiatives and companies that are aligned with what he calls “a triple bottom line”—those that count social and environmental performance along with financial performance.
Michael, a former student activist, has lived these principles all his life. As a child growing up on the outskirts of Los Angeles, he says his life’s passion began with a displaced family of owls when he was eight years old.
“It was fairly rural where I lived on the edge of the city, and I felt very connected to nature there. There was a family of owls living in a couple of huge trees. I listened to them every day,” Michael remembers.
He continues, “I came home from school one day and the trees had been cut down. I was just distraught. My mother noticed how upset I was and she pulled out a cassette recorder and said, ‘Why don’t you say how you feel?’ I gave my first speech. It was like a little campaign speech around the importance of saving the trees.”
Activism was a school-sanctioned activity at the private school he attended during the early ‘80s.
“Long before it was popular, the students and teachers there were instilled with community citizenship, and we participated in an anti-nuke demo,” says Michael.
Later, as a freshman at Tufts University where he completed his undergraduate studies, Michael joined a group of students in an anti-apartheid protest against the university’s involvement with certain companies doing business in South Africa.
After earning his graduate degree in education from Harvard, Michael moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and began teaching the science of permaculture.
Permaculture, the design and application of practices that create a sustainable ecological system, encompasses agricultural and natural resources, as well as cultural and societal systems—all of which result in a society that lives in harmony with nature.
In Santa Fe, Michael also founded a nonprofit called Youth Ecology Corps. It was the first grant he ever wrote, right out of graduate school.
“I got lucky,” says Michael, “when Kellogg Foundation agreed to fund the project.”
After working in the education and nonprofit arenas, Michael realized there was a missing piece of the solution.
“To really have more leverage on creating systemic change, you had to get involved with capital. Policy alone doesn’t create all of it. It matters, but the financial system has an awful lot of influence,” he explains.
It became apparent to him that people could directly change corporate behavior.
“Companies don’t like it when shareholders make noise. Left to their own devices, they’re not exactly responsible. There’s a lot of short-term profit taking. Our whole point is you have to think long-term.”
Michael’s first investment in 1990 at age 23 went right into the firm he currently works for.
“I was one of their first clients, investing the first $1,000 I ever saved. It was 10 years later that they asked me to join their firm, and I changed my profession.”
Since coming to Hawai‘i in 1999, Michael has become very active in applying his principles toward inspiring both local and statewide initiatives.
He founded the Kuleana Green Business Program of the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce; created the Hawai‘i Alliance for a Local Economy, the local chapter of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies; and serves on the board of the Sustainability Association of Hawai‘i, the voice of green business in Hawai‘i.
Michael also helped pass legislation to establish a new corporate structure in Hawai‘i, the Sustainable Business Corporation. At present, he’s working with a sustainable business incubator project in Honolulu.
Today, he continues teaching through professional advocacy, community initiatives and talks such as his recent appearances at TEDx talks in Hilo in 2012 and October 2014 in Kamuela.
There’s a real opportunity right now, Michael feels, to apply the concepts of resilience here on Hawai‘i island. As lava creeps toward the town of Pāhoa with the very real prospect of bisecting the district of Puna, thus leaving lower Puna to exist in isolation from the rest of the island, Michael sees the opportunity for community members.
“I know people who would like the chance to show leadership and turn the crisis into an opportunity to show just how sustainable they can become. It’s so interesting, because as a species, we really do respond best when our backs are against the wall. People are amazing how they band together.”
Michael, along with two other managing partners in Natural Investments, LLC, Hal Bill and Christopher Peck, have a new book coming out that addresses challenges such as this, focusing on how to thrive in turbulent times: The Resilient Investor: A Plan for Your Life, Not Just Your Money.
Resilience may be the new buzzword, says Michael, even stronger than the word sustainability, which has taken a front seat in our minds.
“Times have changed a lot in the 30 years since the word sustainability became popular. With the volatility of everything right now, and the fear that people have around the volatility—not just economic volatility, but geopolitical, ecological, the whole climate change volatility—resilience seems to be the skill-set we’re going to need to cultivate as a species to adapt to ever-changing circumstances.”
Michael also works within his trade association, US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investing as a lobbyist in Washington and an investor advocate with corporations to become more socially conscious.
This category of sustainable investments, which includes mutual funds, represents 12 percent of all the professionally managed money in the market, or nearly $4 trillion, Michael says.
“Research now shows you’re not sacrificing return by incorporating values with your investment. It’s not charitable—there’s real return,” he assures.
Here in Hawai‘i, too, he feels there is the potential to match projects with investors.
“I have a lot of investors who would like to invest locally, and so the question becomes, how do we identify those projects that have potential?”
There are a couple of investment funds starting to emerge statewide, he says.
The Kaka‘ako incubator project, HUB Honolulu, is one of 50 Impact HUBs worldwide, combining a community of socially conscious entrepreneurs in one setting, where they are trained to become investment-ready while maintaining conscientious business practices. They are startups, sharing overhead, infrastructure, and ideas.
Another option is the creation of funding opportunities.
“I feel there is a puka (hole) in the financial system. If you’re a startup and you tap out friends, family, and all your collateral with the banks, there’s no place to go.”
So Michael and his colleagues have formulated a business plan for the new Hawai‘i Community Loan Fund, a pool of debt capital with a hui (organization) of Hawai‘i people interested in socially conscious investment. To qualify, you have to be a triple-bottom-line type of business with a mission for social purpose or environmental standards.
“For years I’d been running the Kuleana Green Business Conferences through the Chamber here and I was really quite lonely. Now it’s caught on, and I feel there’s real momentum in this state.”
Michael writes extensively on natural investing and sustainability issues in state and national publications, including columns in Green Magazine Hawai‘i and GreenBiz.com.
Another campaign in which Michael has participated is the “Think Local Buy Local” initiative with sustainability consultant Andrea Dean.
“When we started the campaign, we did a market analysis and found that price is not as important to shoppers as having a relationship, and people are willing to pay a slight premium to have that relationship. We’re seeing a resurgence of this type of thinking in people who want to own a portion of local businesses close to home.”
Take the food business here on the Hawai‘i Island. Unfortunately, most of what’s produced here is being exported, which is a risky practice on an island as remote as ours.
“We’re vulnerable, and I don’t think people are taking this seriously. It would be a rude awakening to have serious disruptions and not have done anything to prepare.”
The solution will take community members working in harmony to create self-sufficiency.
“We all have to be paddling the canoe in the same direction if we’re going to be able to do this.” ❖
Contact Michael Kramer
Contact writer Karen Valentine
Karen Valentine
Karen, along with Barbara Garcia, envisioned and created Ke Ola Magazine in 2008. She acted as co-publisher and editor until 2012. She has lived in Hawai‘i since 1999 and has family on Hawai‘i Island. She was co-publisher of Hawai‘i Island Journal until 2005, when she moved to Honolulu for two years. She has worked as an advertising copywriter, publisher of several magazines in Michigan, book editor and writer for such magazines as Hawai‘i Business, Enterprise magazine, Southwest Michigan Living, and Better Homes & Gardens. Karen has a college degree in journalism and art, and is a practitioner of Hawaiian cultural arts, including hula. She enjoys sailing her yacht throughout the Hawaiian Islands.
