Values-Based Banking: Changing Finance to Finance Change ft. Lauren Dubé (Climate First Bank)

Listeners of The Resilience Report are clearly looking for a podcast in finance, because every time we have a guest on, the reaction is always so positive. And one angle we have yet to dive into but that impacts each and every one of us is that of banking.

But, with greenwashing really being a concern in this space, I wanted to find an organization that truly walks the walk. 

Which is where I came across one of the fastest growing banks in the US who also happens to deeply believe in banking life tomorrow depends on it: Climate First Bank. This digital community bank is on a mission to combat the climate crisis by making sustainable alternatives accessible to everyone.

Joining us on the show to share more is Lauren Dubé, who holds possibly one of the coolest titles: VP and Director of All Good Things at Climate First Bank. Lauren leads the bank’s ESG initiatives and is responsible for managing client and community relationships and seeking out beneficial partnerships. Dubé has spent the majority of her career in values-based banking. She was invited to join Climate First Bank’s inaugural team by founder and CEO Ken LaRoe, initially as vice president and executive project manager. Dubé previously spent five years at Beneficial State Bank, a B Corp, values-based bank in California. Before that, she worked at LaRoe’s first values-based bank, First GREEN Bank. In 2021, Dubé was named one of Green Builder’s Next Generation Influencers for working to bring sustainability to the forefront of public consciousness.

In this episode, the Laurens dive deep into the exciting world of community banks and their impact on sustainability especially compared to traditional banking. They discuss how Climate First Bank is leading the charge in supporting local businesses, nonprofits, and sustainability projects, and how their unique approach is changing the game with innovative solar lending technology. They also chat about the challenges and strategies in navigating ESG in today’s political climate, the significance of B Corp certification including some great tips to get started if you or your business are interested in getting certified, a really cool app that can help users put their money where their values are, and so much more.

So, whether you’re a finance enthusiast or a sustainability advocate, stay tuned as we explore how your money can work for both your wallet and the planet!

Transcript

Listeners of The Resilience Report are clearly looking for a podcast in finance, because every time we have a guest on, the reaction is always so positive. And one angle we have yet to dive into but that impacts each and every one of us is that of banking.

But, with greenwashing really being a concern in this space, I wanted to find an organization that truly walks the walk. 

Which is where I came across one of the fastest growing banks in the US who also happens to deeply believe in banking life tomorrow depends on it: Climate First Bank. This digital community bank is on a mission to combat the climate crisis by making sustainable alternatives accessible to everyone.

Joining us on the show to share more is Lauren Dubé, who holds possibly one of the coolest titles: VP and Director of All Good Things at Climate First Bank. Lauren leads the bank’s ESG initiatives and is responsible for managing client and community relationships and seeking out beneficial partnerships. Dubé has spent the majority of her career in values-based banking. She was invited to join Climate First Bank’s inaugural team by founder and CEO Ken LaRoe, initially as vice president and executive project manager. Dubé previously spent five years at Beneficial State Bank, a B Corp, values-based bank in California. Before that, she worked at LaRoe’s first values-based bank, First GREEN Bank. In 2021, Dubé was named one of Green Builder’s Next Generation Influencers for working to bring sustainability to the forefront of public consciousness.

In this episode, us Laurens dive deep into the exciting world of community banks and their impact on sustainability especially compared to traditional banking. We discuss how Climate First Bank is leading the charge in supporting local businesses, nonprofits, and sustainability projects, and how their unique approach is changing the game with innovative solar lending technology. We also chat about the challenges and strategies in navigating ESG in today’s political climate, the significance of B Corp certification including some great tips to get started if you or your business are interested in getting certified, a really cool app that can help users put their money where their values are, and so much more.

So, whether you’re a finance enthusiast or a sustainability advocate, stay tuned as we explore how your money can work for both your wallet and the planet. Let’s get started!

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[Host: Lauren Scott] Welcome back to The Resilience Report. We're going to have an excellent episode that crosses the border between two topics that we love on this show: sustainability and finance. But before we do so, I actually want to point out a connection I have with my next guest, which she's probably not aware of. You all know my name is Lauren Scott. Interesting fact: I'm based up in Quebec, Canada, and in Quebec, we actually don't take our husband's name when we get married. It's just the way it is in this province. But when I got married a few years ago, I married a man with the family name Dubé. So technically, my name anywhere outside of Quebec would be Lauren Dubé. And my in-laws, while they spent half their time in Quebec, actually spend the other half the time in Florida. So today we have Lawrence Dubé from Florida joining us on this show. I don't think we're related, but I'm really excited to have you on. 

[Guest: Lauren Dubé] I don't know, my family is from Quebec, so it's not out of the realm of possibility!

Well, welcome to the show. You might be related to my husband!

Yeah, we should take that offline.

Exactly, exactly. Well, as I promised, we're going to get back into finance, and I love always starting off a little bit higher up and more at a macro level because, while we do have a lot of folks who are from the finance world, we also have listeners from all different backgrounds. So this might seem like a very basic question, but when we talk about banks, there are more of the classic institutional banks and then there's also this world of community banks. Could you help us understand the nuance between the two?

Yeah, well, I think especially if your listeners are finance professionals, but for those that aren't, I think sometimes just backing up and really exploring what the banking system looks like at a really simple level which is like: us ,as individuals, have idle cash. That idle cash you most likely have sitting in a bank unless it's in your mattress. But for the dollars that are sitting with banks, they're using those for their lending practices. And not that my dollars go to specific loans that I want to see, but rather I'm funding a bank's overall lending practices. So, if I disagree with how that bank is lending their money or it doesn't align with my values, I'm still invested in it. I'm still funding it. So, I think when we talk about traditional banks versus community banks, it's what are our deposit dollars really doing? I mean, there's obviously a purpose for traditional big banks, but I think, at least for me and my value set, community banks, I'm here in Orlando. I have small businesses in town that I love to support. And when I bank at a community bank, I know that the dollars that I'm earning locally are also being invested back in my community locally since community banks primarily have a lending practice that funds their local communities as opposed to the financial economy at large.

That's super helpful. Thank you, and apologies again to our finance listeners who may already know this, but to catch everybody up. I guess I wear a dual hat in my professional role outside of being a podcast host, where part of what I do is sustainability, but the other part is marketing. And the marketing hat in me loves the tagline of Climate First Bank, which is "Bank like tomorrow depends on it." Maybe to start things off, you touched on that lightly, but can we start by looking at how maybe traditional banks have fallen short when it comes to this future-looking environmental-looking impact way of banking?

Yeah, I think at least most of your podcast listeners would agree that climate change is real. We see it in a lot of our day-to-day, especially me here in Florida, who gets hit with really impactful hurricanes. I used to live in California where there were weeks where I couldn't go outside without proper masking protection due to breathing in smoke. So it's always been a really real part of my life, dealing with these effects of climate change. I literally don't take my dog for walks in the middle of the day because of the extreme heat here in Florida. So we know that climate change is an issue from a scientific point of view, but what we're finding is that, for a lot of times, those traditional larger banks are still heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry. Obviously, there's still a heavy reliance on fossil fuels and therefore a need to lend to them, but what we're seeing is that those lending activities continue to increase; they're not backing down. So for us at Climate First Bank, it was - going back to the whole, you know, me as a consumer with a set of values - what bank am I supporting with their lending practices? Then for us, Climate First Bank becomes that option for folks that do believe in climate change and want to see more investments go into projects like renewable energy, solar panels, green infrastructure, and want a place to align those deposit dollars with their values. So when we say "bank like tomorrow depends on it," it quite literally does because we're trying to create a movement in which more investments are going towards projects that are needed most.

You're definitely disrupting a very traditional industry. Maybe we can speak to the genesis of Climate First Bank coming to be. It is a very different model, and we could maybe speak to that a little bit more about what makes it so different than what most of our listeners are used to when we're talking about banking.

Yeah, it might be helpful for me to tell just a little bit of a story on how Climate First Bank was founded. Our founder and CEO, Ken LaRoe, actually started a bank a while ago called First Green Bank that was here in Florida. First Green Bank had a very similar mission, but it was sold, and that mission didn't stay a part of our community. He was actually reading a book called "Project Drawdown" that details a lot of the projects and initiatives that actually draw down carbon from our atmosphere and was like, "What if we paired climate solutions to these initiatives?" There was a disconnect between knowing what some of those solutions are and where the financing for them is coming from. That was a big reason why Climate First Bank was started. Ken had it in his heart to create this model for change in the finance industry that didn't get a chance to stick around. He saw that we know what to do; it's just about putting the capital behind it. When we talk about what makes Climate First Bank different, it's really that. It's how we shift capital in the direction of projects that are important to our future and how we transition to renewable energies or have more EV charging infrastructure or greener buildings. For us, it's all about how we invest in projects in those spaces as well as educate those that are coming along for the ride on things they can do in their own businesses or day-to-day lives to be more sustainable.

In terms of your customer base, I'm sure there are individuals like you and I who bank with Climate First Bank, but it also has a focus on supporting NGOs as well as businesses in the sustainability space. Can you speak to those profiles? I think most of us are used to how we bank as individuals, but what does that look like for those two groups?

I think when we talk about our community, if you were to describe where you live or suggest places that you like to visit or take friends when they come into town, it's almost always small businesses: your favorite restaurants, your favorite shops. Small businesses really are what make up our communities. Of course, the individuals in our communities as well as the nonprofits that support a variety of different needs specific to those communities. For us, supporting nonprofits and small businesses was about how we literally provide capital and support to the largest makeup of our communities. I keep saying the word "community" a ton. But yeah, for us, it was about making our products more transparent and fair. We're not price-gouging; we're trying to make sure that when we bring on a nonprofit or a small business, they literally have all of the banking tools they need to be successful. So we don't have minimum balance requirements or monthly service fees. We have lenders and an underwriting team that really tries to help nonprofits and small businesses with potential lending needs or financial coaching on how to get them to that next level. We have a Small Business Administration (SBA) department that specializes in helping small businesses access capital. When we talk about being a community bank, it would seem silly if we weren't providing a ton of resources and most of our focus into those two areas.

I love that accessibility angle. I think it's so important to tie it back to your favorite word, "community," to make it available to those different groups. That absolutely makes sense. One other concern that often bubbles up, especially in light of what we saw with a lot of different smaller banks over the past couple of years, is that of insurance. Climate First Bank is actually, if I'm not mistaken, the first FDIC-insured community bank. For our listeners who are less familiar with what that means, could you help us run through the meaning of that and why it's so important?

We're seeing a lot in the space right now where you have different banking models like neobanks or fintech banks. For us, being a standalone FDIC-insured bank was something worth acknowledging. A lot of those neobanks are plugged into another FDIC-insured bank, which is then just a small chunk of what that larger bank is doing. For us to say that, as a full-scale FDIC-insured bank doing this work, is kind of helping set the stage for this model of how we want to see banking shift. For it to be done at a level like we're doing it. FDIC insurance is obviously extremely important. We have to keep our deposit dollars safe. Not only do we do that by being FDIC-insured, but it's also really important for us to have the regulation and accountability that comes with that. We don't just get to operate in a fintech space; we're operating with other national banks that are FDIC-insured and setting an example for them as well.

I'm sure that has played a part in it, but Climate First Bank is actually one of the fastest-growing banks in the country, which is an amazing accomplishment. What do you credit that to? Is it that community angle, the trust in the bank itself? It seems like a really remarkable path.

I would say it's really all about our mission. That's really set us apart in this space. There are new banks, and there have been community banks that have opened here in the state of Florida, but our mission really set us apart not only to consumers and those folks trying to find a new bank, but it also helped us acquire some really incredible talent. I work with an absolutely amazing team who I think works exceptionally hard because we're working towards something bigger than just making profit for a bank. We're working on a larger mission and how we bring value to our stakeholders and not just our shareholders. Stakeholders obviously mean our community, employees, customers, supply chains, and of course, planet Earth, which we all depend on. That mission, if you were to take any segment of what we're doing and how it's growing, is really at the core and heart of why we've been so successful just in three years.

I love that shift you're talking about from purely shareholders to the full value chain of stakeholders. That's an important nuance. Part of that growth you've seen is definitely linked with your mission, as you were saying. So you are based in Florida, the Sunshine State. It obviously makes a lot of sense that your bank is directly linked with a lot of solar projects specifically and offers a couple of different options that I don't think are necessarily very traditional through a bank. Could you speak to how the organization has been supporting the transition towards renewables within the state?

We actually have a company called One Ethos. Climate First Bank and One Ethos are under the same holding company. They developed technology for Climate First Bank to provide an application process or a whole loan process that helps us do solar lending at scale. We leveraged technology to be able to, instead of just getting applications from people as they come in the door, have a technology platform that we can share with all the solar installers here in the state of Florida. As of the end of last year, we had supported 1,870 households in the transition to solar energy. We have that advantage of leveraging technology to do this at scale, but we also created a product that I think is pretty revolutionary. I mean, I think solar has had a bad reputation at times, a lot in part because it's not always been a transparent product. You have some financial products that maybe advertise a really low interest rate, but there's a financing fee or what they call a dealer fee that gets tacked on, so you're paying 20-30% more for solar than you really should be just to get that bottom line rate. For us, it was important to automatically, right out of the gate, say we're not going to charge those financing fees or those dealer fees, so that way the price of the system is the price of the system. We're very upfront with what our rate is. We amortize that over, oh gosh, is it 25 or 30 years now for residential solar lending? The goal is that as utility rates are increasing, you can essentially replace that utility bill with a stable solar loan payment. So if I'm paying $200 for electricity here in 2024, which might increase to $250 in the years to come, if I lock in a solar loan rate at $175 a month, I have that ability to save money in the future and have that stability. Not to mention, if you have all the battery backups and stuff, not losing power during a hurricane is a nice advantage too. It's the product, our technology partner, and it really helped us do this at scale in a way that is transparent, fair, and provides an advantage to our customers that we're serving.

I'd love to double-click just into that. Admittedly, I'm based in an area where we have 100% hydro, so I'm very much less familiar with how that would work from a solar project standpoint. When you're talking about solar loans, is that the loan that, let's say, as an individual or a business, I would take to finance the actual installation? Or is it a loan that goes towards feeding that energy back into the grid? What does that look like? I'm just less familiar with that format.

Here in Florida, we do have net metering, meaning if I had solar on my roof, I produce what I use. But if I produce extra, I can actually sell that back to the grid. When it's cloudy, like today, if I'm not producing enough electricity to meet my needs because the sun's not shining as bright as it usually does, I can purchase electricity from the grid. Sometimes I use it when I need it, and when I don't need it, I can sell it. At the end of the day, that hopefully balances out to a place where I'm not paying the utility companies extra. Here in Florida, we have an energy mix of nuclear, coal, and solar, so I couldn't tell you exactly the percentage, but we're definitely not 100% anything renewable.

I'd love to pick your brain, being based in Florida. The topic of ESG can certainly be polarizing and absolutely politicized, especially in a year like 2024. How have you navigated that in your specific role and also as part of Climate First Bank, just navigating what can be a sensitive topic in an industry that's maybe not as used to talking about this kind of topic?

We've certainly had a hard time with it. Our name speaks for itself and draws a lot of attention, sometimes very wanted attention and sometimes maybe not so wanted attention. I think I talk a lot personally about the term "belonging" and how, at the end of the day, we all just want to belong. For me, and I think for us as an organization, it's really been about finding common ground with people who might not agree with our mission or how we view climate change. There's always something that links us, especially when it comes to the environment. Since we're in Florida, we obviously have a huge tourism industry here that relies on beautiful beaches and clean waterways. We have individuals here who like to hunt and are really passionate about land conservation. When we find those things that unite us and give us that sense of belonging, like we are in this together, that's really what helps us navigate this landscape. When we find that common ground and create the conversation around that, and how their values maybe at the end of the day do match with our own, we start having really productive conversations. 

For us as a bank, it has helped us find a really diverse group of customers and shareholders too. We're definitely not a bank completely led or owned by Democrats. We have a really lovely mix of individuals, and I think it's all because we've tried to find what we're all most passionate about. At the end of the day, if you take the terms "climate change" out of it sometimes, we all do really care about the environment that we thrive on. That's how we've navigated it. We've tried to get more into talking about some of the research and potential negative impacts of some of the anti-ESG bills that have come through the state. We're trying to use our voice more there. It's hard when you're a state-regulated bank to have a strong stance against the state itself, but we have incredible partners here as well as other values-aligned businesses that we're trying to create a united voice as to why we think some of these bills are more damaging to our local economies and small businesses. I always go back to that term "belonging," just finding common ground with each other.

There is so much common ground, and I completely agree with you. Sometimes we're so used to just reading headlines that it gets a little bit more challenging, but when you have the long-form discussion with your stakeholders, I think that's absolutely achievable. When we're looking at companies that are more values-based like your own, one of the real stamps of approval that a lot of us trust is that of the B Corp certification. That is an angle you've taken on with Climate First Bank. For our listeners who are less familiar with B Corp, could you maybe speak to what that organization is, especially to you, and why it was important for Climate First Bank to get that certification?

You've definitely hit my favorite subject area now. The last bank I worked for was also a certified B Corporation, so I've been part of this B Corp community for a while now. For those that don't know what a certified B Corporation is, it really started out as a movement. There's a nonprofit called B Lab that controls the certification body. The whole goal was to shift capitalism for good, to shift business for good. The certifications came out as a way of helping a business, one, just as a tool in and of itself. As a small business that wanted to really explore what it means to use your business for good, it's a great resource. It's free to use. Then, to go through the certification process, it really digs into a business's practices across how they treat their workers, their involvement in the community, their impacts on the planet, how fair and transparent their products and services are, and what their supply chain looks like. It really digs into every aspect of your business. At times, it highlights the really great things that you're doing and also sheds light on where you may be falling short. Once you go through that assessment, it's about 250 questions. You have to get a score of at least 80, which may seem like, "Oh, that's not too bad," but every question is worth like 0.1 point or 0.5 points. So 80 is actually really challenging to achieve. They say if a typical business goes through the B Corp certification process, they average around 50. So to get to that 30-point jump, you really have to be doing some incredible things with your business model. It's heavily audited. We got assigned a B Lab representative who went through our complete assessment, asked for proof for what we selected "yes" to or what we had for certain answers, and made sure we were being honest with how we were presenting ourselves in that assessment. We originally had said we were going to get 111 points, and by the time we were done with that auditing process, it had fallen down to 98.6, which sounds like a significant drop, but it really speaks to how rigorous that assessment is and how trusted it is as a label. If you haven't looked up what a certified B Corporation is, I'd encourage you to Google it and find what that logo looks like. Once you see that logo, you'll probably start noticing it in other places, like on your Ben and Jerry's ice cream or your Patagonia wear. I look for it now when I go to the grocery store and see if I can find B Corp brands to purchase from. 

My favorite thing overall, and I promise I'll stop talking about B Corps unless you want me to keep going, is the community. That's what really makes it special. You get this certification and acknowledgment that you're not greenwashing with your business, but the community that forms with B Corps supporting other B Corps, the best practice sharing, and the connection as humans working towards a bigger cause together. It's a really special movement.

I actually would love for you to speak about it a little bit more because, as you're speaking, we have a lot of listeners who are maybe more in the small to medium-sized organizations and are thinking about B Corp. I know it's a lift, especially with the number of questions and each question being a small percentage. It sounds like it's worth it, but how would you guide an organization or entrepreneur who's thinking of approaching B Corp for the first time?

I would first say it's okay to join the community even if you're not officially B Corp certified yet. If you are "B curious," as we say, there are a lot of local B Corp communities. Here in Florida, we have Florida For Good, which is a business group of values-aligned businesses across the state, B Corp or not. There are different B Local groups in different regions of the states as well as Canada. I would encourage you to tap into that resource and network. I think you'll find people very excited to meet you and share resources and tools and ideas. When we were first starting the bank, I was reaching out to some of my resources like, "Hey, what did you write in your HR policy about benefits?" Just seeing how eager people are to share what they're working on with you is great. A great first step is always connecting with your local community. If you don't have one, you can always reach out to me. There are also a ton of B Corp consultants out there that can guide you through that work, especially if you don't feel like you have the resources internally to tackle a project like that. Some incredible B Corp consultants would gladly help you through that certification process.

I would echo that outside consultants can sometimes be that little bit of aid when you're trying to get some of these off the ground. I love that term "B curious." Another organization you're partnered with is the Global Alliance for Banking on Values. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit because that's one I'm definitely less familiar with, but I'm very encouraged to hear that there's a values-based push within the banking space.

The Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) is another really special network. GABV for short, so it's not a mouthful every time, is a global network of banks that want to see the financial system change for good. My favorite part of the GABV is that you have banks like ours here in the States, larger European banks, banks in Africa, microlending institutions, banks in Asia. All those financial systems are very different, but there are a lot of best practices to be shared. It brings together this global group of financial changemakers to share best practices and unite as a community on how we can collectively use our voice. There's also a North American chapter that we're a part of. It's not something you can just sign on to, kind of like the B Corp certification process. There is a scorecard you go through. You have to demonstrate that your bank is primarily lending to the real economy versus the financial economy, so tangible goods and services. We're actually going through that process now. We've been an associate member for a little while, and we're going through the process of becoming a full member, where we dig into the aspects of our lending portfolio to demonstrate the percentages that go towards real economy activity. They also focus on the triple bottom line, so not just prioritizing profits but equally balancing that with people and the planet as well. It's a really special network. It's nice to have the B Corp community where you're talking about businesses that create physical products and services, consultants, and banks. Then there's another community just for the financial system where we can really enact change in this area that so desperately needs it.

I love that too because if we're going to make this work, we're going to have to work beyond just organizational thinking. We're always so competitive, but it's going to take that cross-collaboration for sure. You definitely light up when you talk about partnerships. Are you working on any specific projects that you're really excited about and can share?

We just launched our 2023 impact report. It's my favorite but also least favorite project I work on every year. It just takes so much time and energy, but it's so much fun to work through. I have some incredible teammates that we come together and collaborate on every year. Just launching that was exciting. We have some projects, like webinars, to talk about how other small businesses or even banks can report out in the same way.

But, as it relates to impact reports, and I hope I don't get in trouble for sharing this because I don't think it's top secret, but we've been working on (with our technology partner, OneEthos) an impact report through your online banking experience. Essentially, what it would look like is you have a personal account at Climate First Bank, and you're out there swiping your debit card or have this much money in your checking account. We're hoping to have an app within your online banking app that'll show the impacts of your deposit dollars. While they're sitting here with Climate First Bank, what kind of projects are those deposits being lent against? Going back to agreeing with the bank's lending practices, we want to be really transparent about what we're lending to. We've been diving into stuff beyond just solar and renewable energy projects, talking about how much affordable housing we do, how much investment we do in the healthy food space, or how many women or Black-owned businesses we're supporting. It'll give you a snapshot of what the bank's overall lending portfolio looks like. We've also been diving into calculating the actual carbon footprint of that lending portfolio. What does it look like for your deposits versus the overall carbon footprint of our portfolios? The other cool part about it would be that as you swipe your card at places, it'll tell you if that purchase aligns with your values. If you said, "I really enjoy supporting small businesses or women-owned businesses," it would tell you, "Hey, this purchase didn't align with your values, but here are some suggestions of other places you could have shopped." Or, "Hey, thumbs up, it did align with your values. You shopped at a B Corp." We've kind of had it in the testing phase for a little while, and we're excited to see how that helps continue the education of the impacts we have as consumers and businesses, not just with Climate First Bank but making that connection of voting with your wallet. There's a lot of power in your pocket, as some folks say, so make sure you're using it for good. This app is supposed to help people on that educational journey.

That's so cool. On a selfish level, I'm asking because I would love to have this. For my understanding, then, Climate First Bank is primarily and only based in Florida, is that correct?

No, we have clients in 49 states and Puerto Rico. The only state we don't have a customer in is Alaska, so if anyone's listening from Alaska, I'll send you a gift basket if you want to open an account so we can say we have customers in all 50 states. We has had our 3 year anniversary, and we've started really growing our nationwide presence. It's kind of funny to talk about going nationwide while also being a community bank. One of the pages of our impact report talks about our communities being local, but our community is also people who share our values and want to support the mission of the bank. We're expanding that idea of community as we go nationwide.

That's really exciting. I'm guessing it's very complicated across the border, but at least you're across the US, so that's fantastic. You're obviously so passionate about sustainability. Was this something from day one in your career you knew you wanted to be woven into what you were doing, or was it more of a gradual progression?

To give you the short version of my story and how I got into value-aligned banking, one of my very first jobs out of college was at Chase Bank. It was a great place to receive healthcare as a part-time employee, but I really just didn't like the financial banking system. I thought, "This is not a career path for me," but it was what I needed to get myself through college. One of my co-workers had recently left for Ken's second bank, First Green Bank, which I mentioned, and he said, "I think you should apply for a job here. I think you'd like it. It's different." I was like, "No, I don't want to work in the banking industry anymore." He said, "No, this is different. We're trying to use the bank for good and support environmental projects and small businesses." I didn't have anything else lined up, so I applied and started working there. During my time there, I got recruited to move to California with my partner. I didn't think I was going to stay in the banking industry, but I got the opportunity to work for a bank out there called Beneficial State Bank, which is another GABV B Corp bank. My time there really inspired me to stay in this value-aligned banking space. There's such power in banking, and being able to wield that for good feels good. I learned a lot there and worked there for five years before Ken recruited me to help start Climate First Bank. I've been in value-aligned banking for 10 years now. At the beginning of that 10 years, if you told me I'd still be working for a bank, I probably would have laughed at you. But now I really can't see myself working in any other space. It's been fun. I started off as a teller, then got the opportunity to work in commercial sales where I was selling the mission of the bank, and now working at Climate First and really getting the opportunity to steer our mission and how we do good. My title recently got changed to "Director of All Good Things," which was fun. It's been a fun journey, and I'm happy to be continuing this work in my home state. It was never really the intention, but I'm glad I ended up where I am now.

Sometimes when we're working in this space, it can be so exciting. But I know it can sometimes feel a little heavy or like you're pushing a boulder up a hill every day. How do you keep yourself energized so that you can recommit to the work on a regular basis?

That's a great question, especially in the year of an election. I find a lot of times it can be as simple as just going outside and really appreciating what you're working so hard to protect, even if it's just stepping in my backyard. Today I had a hummingbird in my backyard, which was really exciting. Sometimes it's as simple as reconnecting with what we're really working on at the end of the day. It's easy to get lost in emails and projects, but that reconnection really helps. And then going back to my two favorite words of this podcast, "community" and "belonging," when I get a chance to reconnect with those communities where I feel like I show up authentically, that for me is like an immediate reset button. Being part of the B Corp community, attending networking events with other sustainability professionals where I get to show up as Lauren, the sustainability enthusiast, and not Lauren, the banker, is always really good for the soul and gets you to be like, "Okay, I can keep going."

Those are all amazing tips for reconnecting to our why. If our listeners would love to hear more about Climate First Bank, maybe they're in one of those states, or maybe we have that token Alaska-based person who wants to join, where would you recommend they check out?

On our website, we have some incredible fireside chats. If you want to listen to some of the conversations we've had with other incredible leaders, including Dr. Jane Goodall, we have some amazing conversations we've shared with our team and community. Our website is full of information. I hope you check out our new impact report. As always, you can find me on LinkedIn, and if you ever want to talk about anything related to banking, sustainability, or B Corps, I'm your girl.

Thank you so much. This has been so informative for those of us who are less in the finance and banking space, but I think even for those of us who are in it, it's a refresher to learn more about how you're disrupting the industry. I think it's absolutely phenomenal. I'm really excited to hear more about this app that gets launched and introduced to the market. 

Finally, we like to end every episode with the same question, which we would love your perspective on: What do you think it will take for businesses and leaders to be resilient going forward?

That's a great question, and I see the tie-in to why you ask it every episode. It really depends on how you define resiliency. I think it's one thing to say, "What do I need to pick myself up and keep going?" or "What do I need to do to navigate this changing landscape?" or "What do I need to do to be resilient against changing weather patterns?" For businesses and leaders, I think it's really about finding out what's your why and reconnecting with that every chance you feel like you need it. Anytime I'm struggling with keeping going in this work or even us as a business, like how do we make this next big decision, every time we connect to that why, it grounds us in a way that we can keep going forward. Especially when that why is rooted in something bigger than just making a profit, I think that's the key. It can't just be about profitability anymore. It's important because businesses that are doing good need to stay in business, but when your why is bigger than just making money, I think that's the key.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Lauren. This has been fantastic.

Likewise, thank you so much for hosting me. I can't wait to figure out if we're related or not.

Same here!