Moral Leadership in Troubling Times
By Jean Pogge, ICCR Chicago Reception

At ICCR's reception on April 20 in Chicago's Northern Trust Oak Street office, Jean Pogge, Senior Vice President of Mission Based Deposits at ShoreBank, talked about ICCR's example of moral leadership in today's troubled world. Click here to see the donors who generously supported out event.

"Thank you for your kind introduction, Will. It is truly an honor to be asked to speak tonight and share some of my thoughts about ICCR, an organization I have long respected.

I think we would all agree that we live in troubling times. Times that call for leadership of the highest quality. I am going to talk tonight about a sterling example of that level of leadership.

The issues we face today personally, at work, and in the world are complex, confusing and overwhelming. We are flooded with information but don't always feel we have good knowledge.

The rules are changing. 9/11 showed us our vulnerability as a country and the continuing war in Iraq is showing us the value of collaboration over force.

Ethical behavior and personal integrity no longer appear to be the gold standard of a good business. We have grown used to corporate scandals that not only give us reason to doubt financial statements but make us rethink our measures of success and how they impact quality of corporate leadership.

Health care is becoming a luxury that many middle income Americans can no longer afford. I am sure many of you, like me, have friends who can't find health insurance or in order to afford what is available to them are making hard choices about what kind of coverage they will have.

The divide between rich and poor grows daily. Not only between the wealth of the United States and the poverty of developing nations but also between the rich and the poor in our own country. Between 1998 and 2001 assets for the top 10% of Americans grew 70% while the bottom 12% lived on a family income of $16,660 or less.

These moral dilemmas cry out for our response but we are in danger of our response becoming irrelevant if we do not face up to the fact that we as a species are spoiling our own nest. I believe global warming is a very real threat and if we do not act to change it - all life as we know it on earth can be destroyed.

This is one of the times when high quality leadership can change the world.

So what does leadership mean? What is a leader? Roget's Thesaurus gives several synonyms for leader: guide, bellwether, director, steward. But I am a practical Midwesterner and I need an example to really get it. For 33 years, ICCR has been such an example. They are a leader that guides our thinking on tough moral issues; they are a bellwether for problems in our society that need fixing; they have directed our actions towards solutions that work. But, perhaps most importantly, ICCR has been a steward of integrity and justice and thus has changed the world.

The Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility was founded in 1971 by clergy from several Protestant denominations who were concerned about the disconnect between where their retirement funds were invested and their faith and justice work to end the war in Viet Nam and apartheid in South Africa. The founding members did not know it then but their leadership not only started an organization but founded a movement for shareholder action that today is alive and growing in strength.

ICCR members filed their first social policy shareholder resolution in 1971. That resolution called on General Motors to withdraw from South Africa. ICCR's bellwether shareholder resolution was their first volley in a long battle to end apartheid. ICCR helped launch a campaign for divestment from South Africa that echoed in the board rooms of corporations and universities, the hallowed halls of Congress and in the living rooms of millions of Americans. Many of us who were not members of ICCR during that campaign believe that apartheid ended only because of the persistent, strategic and high quality leadership of ICCR.

Today ICCR is a coalition of nearly 300 faith-based institutional investors representing over $100 billion in invested capital.

ICCR has offered its guidance to a host of mutual funds and other institutional investors that now see shareholder advocacy as one of the main tenants of socially responsible investment. ICCR stands in the center of this movement, steward still of integrity and justice.

So where is ICCR leading us now? They have identified about eight issues their members feel are important. I will mention only three.

First and foremost, ICCR is standing up for human rights. They are asking companies to look at their responsibility in countries where human rights are not respected, like Burma. They are calling for corporations to pay closer attention to the reputation risk, the cost of lawsuits and the threat of interruption of operations when companies do not ensure that their workers and the workers of their contractors are treated with respect and the dignity of a living wage. This makes good business sense and it makes good human sense.

Second, ICCR is advocating for integrity, justice and inclusiveness in corporate governance. ICCR focuses on two aspects of corporate governance - executive compensation and board diversity. They approach executive compensation from the perspective of pay equity and pay disparity. The continuing disclosure of the excesses and greed in the highest levels of corporate leadership has given real momentum to this issue. Investors that have never before joined in shareholder advocacy are sponsoring and voting for resolutions that require companies to bring discipline and rationale on the issue of executive compensation. The second corporate governance issue ICCR is tackling is transparency in the policies and processes for the selection of boards of directors with a particular interest in gender and ethnic diversification of boards. The world of the future will have a diverse workforce and a diverse buying public. Running a good business can not and should not be only in the hands of white men.

Finally, I want to highlight ICCR's focus on climate change. ICCR members filed their first shareholder resolution seeking disclosure of carbon emissions in 1991. They have continued to work in coalition with CERES and others to stop global warming by sponsoring shareholder resolutions at companies across the country. What they ask from corporations is stewardship of the earth by: 1) establishing a meaningful and sustainable greenhouse gas reduction goal; 2) Implementing comprehensive and verifiable public reporting of greenhouse gases; 3) Adopting a public policy position in support of mandatory limits on greenhouse gasses. These requests meet the reasonableness test of a growing number of people. In 2003, eight climate change resolutions received more than 20% of the shareholder vote despite management opposition.

In 1973, Catholic religious orders first began to join ICCR. And one order, the Sisters of Mercy asked one of its members, Sister Pat Wolf to participate in ICCR meetings. Sister Pat says she joined reluctantly because she did not feel like an expert in corporate responsibility. I am here today to tell you she is an expert in corporate responsibility. Sister Pat has taken the helm of ICCR, breathed new energy into an already energetic organization and set a course of leadership for the future that is inspiring to us all. My wish tonight for all of you is that you can become engaged in the work of ICCR and through all of us working together the call for leadership in these troubled times will be answered."

Ms. Pogge was introduced by Will Thomas, Chair of ICCR's governing board, who said, "Pogge is responsible for a national sales effort to raise deposits for the three banks owned by ShoreBank. Socially responsible individuals, nonprofits and businesses from across the country establish bank accounts with ShoreBank to support their innovative community development and community lending." ShoreBank is the first and leading community development and environmental bank corporation in the U.S.

Other speakers at the reception included Sr. Patricia Wolf, RSM, ICCR's Executive Director, and Laurie Michalowski, Co-Chair, with Will Thomas, of the Chicago Planning Committee. Honorary Host Committee members were Sr. Linda Hayes, OP, Director, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sacred Heart Convent, Springfield Dominicans, Springfield, Illinois, Rev. Michael Hoolahan, Treasurer, Congregation of the Passion, American Provinces, Chicago, and David Zellner, Chief Investment Officer, United Methodist Church General Board of Pension and Health Benefits, Evanston, Illinois.

The reception was an occasion to welcome old friends, renew connections, and introduce ICCR to a broader audience of socially responsible investors and friends. ICCR is grateful to Northern Trust for hosting the event in their beautiful Oak Street offices, and grateful to the donors who supported this event financially.