Prison Free Funds

Dalit Baum, Director, Economic Activism at American Friends Service Committee

Dalit Baum is director of AFSC’s Economic Activism Program. She has worked with AFSC since 2013 in the San Francisco office. Dalit is the co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation and of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel. She is a feminist scholar and teacher who has taught about militarism and the global economy from a feminist perspective in Israeli and U.S. universities.

Dalit frequently lectures on feminism and democracy in Israel/Palestine, the economics of the Israeli occupation and the military industry, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and corporate responsibility. She has been active with various groups in the Israeli anti-occupation and democracy movement, including Black Laundry, Boycott from Within, Zochrot, Anarchists against the Wall, and Women in Black.

Chris Bentley, Founder of Decarceration Fund

Chris Bentley is the Managing Director of the Decarceration Fund. The Decarceration Fund is designed to invest in and support highly innovative enterprises that are working to eliminate the suffering caused by the US Criminal Justice System. The fund operates using a radically different model that is focused on returning power to those who have had it taken away from them.

Chris brings 13 years of impact investing experience, most recently under the direction of impact investing pioneer, Josh Mailman, at Serious Change Investments. Serious Change is an early stage impact venture firm targeting visionary for-profit companies that drive social change. Prior to that, Chris was a principal at Sustain VC. SustainVC is the manager of a series of early- stage impact investing venture capital funds that makes market-rate equity investments into early-stage companies.

Chris is a Co-Founder of GoodCompany Ventures, an accelerator for entrepreneurs with innovative solutions to large unmet social needs. Chris started his impact investment career with Murex Investments, a community development venture capital fund, creating employment opportunities in low- and moderate-income locations. Chris has a BS in Engineering

Michael Cosack, Principal, ImpactWise

Michael Cosack is a principal at ImpactWise and brings more than twenty years of business leadership experience, including the qualitative and quantitative analytical skills needed to implement programs and people in a meaningful, measurable and impactful way.

Michael has spent most of his professional career advising the trustees on the investment and fiduciary responsibilities regarding their institutional funds. As an entrepreneur, he has built several organizations, including one of the largest independent investment consulting firms in the Greater Philadelphia region.

His role at ImpactWise is to help institutional money managers, consultants and trustees explore, create and implement innovative impact investment strategies and solutions.

Michael holds an undergraduate degree in business from The College of New Jersey, achieved multiple certifications in both the business and nonprofit industries and is an active member of the CFA Society.

Julie Goodridge, Northstar founder and CEO

Julie Goodridge is a pioneer in the field of sociallyresponsible investing. She has been in the investment industry since 1983, including her role as an early member of the Social Investment Forum (now US SIF) in 1984. Julie launched NorthStar Asset Management in 1990, and today stands at the forefront of a more proactive approach to progressive wealth management. Through direct interaction with every client, Julie provides financial planning expertise, drives major investment decisions, and is the final word for all shareholder activism activities.

Julie was the lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking case Goodridge v. Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health which won equal marriage rights for same sex couples in Massachusetts, the first state in the U.S. to do so. In 2014, Julie was named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance by American Banker Magazine. She serves as a Trustee for the Hyams Foundation, a foundation focused on racial justice in Boston. Julie is also a former Chairwoman of the Board of the New World Foundation where she recently concluded a 17-year tenure and served in roles including Treasurer and Vice-Chair. Julie has an Ed.M. from Harvard.

Patience Marime Ball, Founder and CEO, Women of the World Endowment (WoWE)

Patience Marime-Ball has dedicated her career to finding new ways to use the levers of finance to create a more equal world. A seasoned banker, investor and philanthropist, she has worked alongside investment leaders across the globe to catalyze investment in undercapitalized communities in ways that recognize all people as essential drivers of our global economy.

In 2018 Patience founded WoWE to harness the power of the capital markets to drive lasting change for women and girls. WoWE invests via an institutional-quality endowment structure at the intersection of gender and some of today’s most pressing social and environmental issues, and seeks to deliver market rate financial returns while maximizing impact outcomes.

Patience serves as Board Vice Chair of the International Center for Research on Women; is an investor in Purple Arch Ventures; is an early-stage investor with Golden Seeds LLC and serves on several advisory boards including Emerging Sun LLC, a company she co-founded in 2005.

Patience has an MBA from Kellogg Business School and a Juris Doctor from the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University.

Renee Morgan, Social Justice Strategist, Robasciotti & Philipson Social Justice Investing

Renee brings a long history of political engagement, and a passion to create a just world, to her over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. However, like half of all Americans, Renee began her adult working life in restaurants; washing dishes, seating people, cooking, and waiting tables. While life would take her to other professions, these early jobs provided valuable skills and the foundational work ethic so evident in her career.

She moved into the field of Social Work and from 1995-2001, worked as a counselor in a domestic violence shelter for women, a teen halfway house, a women’s addiction recovery halfway house, and then a county detox center. In 2001, Renee shifted careers and entered the field of finance at Trilogy Financial. After three years, Renee moved on to start her own firm, Better World Investments, acting as President until 2020.

Renee recently joined R&P as the Social Justice Strategist to combine her passion and cumulative work experience to make social and economic change. Renee works with our social justice partners to establish our investment criteria and direct investment campaigns.

Over the years, Renee has been recognized as a leader within Socially Responsible Investing and has served on several boards and committees. She has been a longtime activist and volunteer in the community, working with groups such as OutBoulder, Boulder County Hospice, and various political campaigns. In more recent years, her volunteer work and community activism have focused primarily on racial justice, working with projects like Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ), Black Lives Matter 5280, Denver Justice Project, and the Racial Justice Investing Coalition.

Renee has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from San Jose State University and a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Leslie College.

Noam Perry, Economic Activism Associate at American Friends Service Committee

Noam Perry is the Associate in AFSC’s Economic Activism Program. Before joining AFSC in 2007, Noam was teaching in the Human Rights program at San José State University. Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Noam holds a B.A. in Physics and M.Sc. in Geography from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Law, Policy, and Society from Northeastern University in Boston.

Mari Schwartzer, Director of Shareholder Activism and Engagement, NorthStar Asset Management

Mari is NorthStar’s Director of Shareholder Activism and Engagement. With over a decade of experience in shareholder activism, Mari helps NorthStar create positive social change using our clients’ investments in publicly traded companies. Mari engages directly with company leadership on a wide range of issues that affect communities, employees, and the environment by targeting issues that fall into our firm’s five core focus areas: race & gender, economic inequality, human rights, environmental justice, and corporate governance. In recent years, engagement topics have included LGBTQ rights, board and senior management diversity, the human right to water, corporate political contributions, and prison labor. (Learn more about our shareholder activism here.) Mari was a lead researcher and co-author of NorthStar’s publication on prison labor, “Prison Labor in the United States: An Investor Perspective.” As she performs in-depth research on issues of interest to NorthStar and our clients, Mari also contributes to the investment team’s discussions of social and environmental issues in public equity market. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida, as well as a master’s degree from Simmons College.