The Future of Sustainable Investing

By Stephanie Cohn Rupp

This is an excerpt of an article originally published by SustainableViews.

Despite headlines to the contrary, we believe market forces and consumer interest continue to shine a bright light on the future of sustainable investing. And as the incoming Board Chair of US SIF: The Sustainable Investment Forum, I couldn’t be more excited about what is ahead. I’ve kept my ear to the ground as our industry grapples with challenges and opportunities that may arise in a second Trump administration and see significant opportunity.

The US SIF Foundation recorded $6.5 trillion (12% of the total U.S. market size) as specifically identified or marketed as sustainable or ESG investment in its 2024 Trends Report.¹ We believe sustainable investing has passed a tipping point and here to stay—not a niche likely to fold in on itself. Furthermore, history provides an encouraging perspective. During Trump’s first term, sustainable investments not only survived but thrived.² We believe the market will continue to respond to real-world economics beyond Washington politics. For investors focused on long-term value creation, we believe sustainable investments remain compelling despite, and perhaps because of, the changing political landscape.

Read Stephanie’ Cohn Rupp’s full commentary on SustainableViews.com.

Key Takeaways

• Regardless of the political reality in Washington, sustainable investors recognize the opportunities of investing in the climate transition³ and we believe investors can play a critical role in empowering the clean energy transition by investing in climate smart tech and applying just transition principles in the investment decision-making process.
• More family and community foundations are documenting investment policies that align with their missions, in service to their organizations’ goals and to better engage their donors and members.⁴
• Investing in companies and funds with diverse staff, investment committees, boards and more is a measurable success metric that we believe leads to better long-term results. Evidence suggests inclusive teams benefit from diverse perspectives in terms of better decision-making and better processes for identifying risks and opportunities. Studies have shown that companies with diverse leadership and boards perform better over time.⁵
• The momentum behind sustainable investing is real and we believe a growing number of individual investors and foundations will continue to join the movement.

Read the full article at SustainableViews [Paywall]: Sustainable investing will still shine during second Trump administration 

About the Author

Stephanie Cohn Rupp is the former Chief Executive Officer at Veris Wealth Partners. She was named Board Chair of US SIF in January of 2025.