Investor Leadership Network (ILN)

Name: Investor Leadership Network (ILN)Type: Membership organisation of asset owners and asset managersLocation: Canada, with a global focusFocus: Facilitating and accelerating collaboration by leading global investors on key issues related to sustainability and long-term growth.What is ILN’s role in gender and JEDI investing ecosystem? By convening a leading group of 14 global institutional investors who manage over US$9 trillion in investments, ILN’s members pool their best practices in gender lens and EDI investing. Because the Network is CEO and CIO led, they are able to accelerate changes to investment practices within their membership from the top down. Additionally, whenever ILN introduces investor guidance on EDI practices and frameworks, they signal to other investors in the industry that they are headed in a specific direction. What are the main challenges ILN members are reporting in implementing gender and JEDI practices?According to ILN’s internal research and community dialogue, the biggest challenge members face on EDI integration, as employers and as investors, are data and skills. Data is the biggest shared challenge – particularly on diversity beyond gender – given legal and cultural nuances across jurisdictions, the lack of standardization in reporting, and limited access to high quality data. In respect of skills, for instance, many ILN members are not always sure what ‘good’ portfolio engagement looks like and what they should be asking for to drive the right outcomes. Learn more about these challenges - as well as a variety of approaches being utilised across their network to effectively change culture, use data analysis to drive decision making, and align leadership incentive schemes - in ILN’s ‘state of the industry’ report on equity, diversity and inclusion, available here.How is ILN bridging these gaps?In early 2022, ILN will be releasing guidance on how investors can engage with their portfolio companies to promote more inclusive cultures and management of human capital. Along this process, they are engaging with a multitude of organizations within the ecosystem to seek alignment with standard setters. Box: Committed to tracking progress and making an impact on sectors with an underrepresentation of diverse talent, ILN’s Diversity in Investment initiative aims to open opportunities for diverse talent worldwide and to increase the inclusion of diverse leaders throughout the private sector. The initiative focuses its efforts on the four following pillars:

• Attracting and Retaining Talents: Evolve perceptions by demonstrating that women and other people belonging to underrepresented identities can be successful in the investment management industry, and in organizations across the broader private market.
• Influencing Decision Makers: Engage ILN leaders on the importance of a diverse talent pool and factor diversity throughout investment processes, both internally and with our portfolio companies.
• Rethinking the Workplace: Ensure that organizations are gender neutral and more inclusive in order to drive top talents’ fulfillment as well as innovation and business performance.
• Building Accountability: Report metrics to increase transparency on diversity, equity and inclusion, and effect change through measurable and observable commitments.

Pull Quote: “As investors, we have to go beyond getting new people in the door, and instead ask how we can support them enough to stay” -Amy Hepburn, CEO, Investor Leadership Network