Stephanie Meade This post is part of a series of interviews and guest posts with people who are forging new paths for sustainability in San Francisco. Read other recent conversations about a program to transform low-income communities through gardening, artists who find beauty at the dump, challenges and solutions related to the California drought, and San Francisco's Climate Action Strategy.
Founded in 2006, New Resource Bank aims to change banking by focusing on bringing resources to sustainable businesses and ultimately creating more sustainable communities. From making loans to mission-oriented organizations to serving as a founding member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, New Resource Bank is a unique San Francisco institution that is making a big impact.
Recently, New Resource Bank became BC3’s newest member. We sat down with New Resource’s Director of Marketing and Sustainability, Stephanie Meade, to learn more about her role and the Bank’s mission.
Founded in 2006, New Resource Bank aims to change banking by focusing on bringing resources to sustainable businesses and ultimately creating more sustainable communities. From making loans to mission-oriented organizations to serving as a founding member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, New Resource Bank is a unique San Francisco institution that is making a big impact.
Recently, New Resource Bank became BC3’s newest member. We sat down with New Resource’s Director of Marketing and Sustainability, Stephanie Meade, to learn more about her role and the Bank’s mission.
BC3: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What's your background and how did you become interested in sustainability?
My early sustainability background started while working in international development. I have a Masters in International Affairs, with a focus on Economic Development. For the first six or seven years of my career I worked in International Relations, primarily on water and wastewater projects in developing countries. That obviously involved thinking about environmental sustainability. That’s where my interest began.
After that, I moved over to working in traditional finance after I had my first child and wanted something more stable, as I was traveling ninety percent of the time to developing countries. After about four years, though, I felt traditional finance didn’t match my values. That’s when I became interested in impact investing and using finance to advance sustainability and social change.
I worked on the investment side of impact investing for a while and then I moved to the banking side with New Resource Bank.
BC3: What's unique about New Resource Bank? What drew you to the organization?
I would say that everything is unique about New Resource. There are very few banks in the country with our commitment to promoting sustainable living in our communities. That’s not a normal mission for a bank. Banks are usually thought of as being these profit-hungry structures. Our entire mission is built around the triple bottom line of people, planet and prosperity, which is incredibly unique.
And then my position itself is very exciting to me because it combines both marketing and sustainability. It allows me to draw on all of my strengths and interests.
BC3: You work with some interesting clients. Are there any whose stories you particularly appreciate or would like to share?
We have amazing clients here. One client I love is Alter Eco Foods. They’re producers of organic chocolates, quinoa, and also sugar. They think about sustainability in every single aspect of their supply chain. They think about sustainability so much that they even consider their packaging to be just another ingredient and have pioneered compostable packaging around their chocolate bar. It breaks down in your backyard in three weeks if you were to plant it. They have also formed a partnership with a group of other food producers to work on compostable packaging.
Amazon Watch is another one of our awesome clients who work tirelessly to sustain the Amazon ecosystem, people and cultures. They build capacity among indigenous groups in the Amazon basin and advance the long-term protection of their land. They are masters of awareness raising around issues such as the devastation oil drilling has caused in the Amazon.
We have so many great clients--this is just a tiny taste. We are fortunate to work with a wide range of innovators and leaders across the organic food, clean energy, green building, green business and nonprofit sectors.
BC3: As Director of Sustainability for New Resource Bank’s, where do you want to see the bank’s internal sustainability go in the next year?
We already have a very advanced culture of sustainability at the Bank with everything from our LEED Gold offices, high waste diversion rate (90%) and carbon offset purchases to our employees undertaking personal sustainability challenges. I would love for all of our team to continue thinking critically about their own personal footprint in their daily lives. We support that by bringing in speakers for a regular lunch ‘n learn program to deepen our own knowledge of different issues in sustainability. I’d like to see us take some sort of group challenge around our carbon/water footprint (e.g., track your personal footprint for a week!) and set some goals for ourselves to go even deeper in measuring and reducing our impact. This mirrors what we are doing externally of developing a set of impact metrics to measure the true impact of our loans.
Why are you excited to collaborate with BC3?
BC3 is exciting to us because you are a network of leaders in the city who are committed to advancing sustainability. It’s exciting to be part of a cross-sectoral network of government agencies, small businesses, and large businesses as it’s only by working together that we can really make change.
My early sustainability background started while working in international development. I have a Masters in International Affairs, with a focus on Economic Development. For the first six or seven years of my career I worked in International Relations, primarily on water and wastewater projects in developing countries. That obviously involved thinking about environmental sustainability. That’s where my interest began.
After that, I moved over to working in traditional finance after I had my first child and wanted something more stable, as I was traveling ninety percent of the time to developing countries. After about four years, though, I felt traditional finance didn’t match my values. That’s when I became interested in impact investing and using finance to advance sustainability and social change.
I worked on the investment side of impact investing for a while and then I moved to the banking side with New Resource Bank.
BC3: What's unique about New Resource Bank? What drew you to the organization?
I would say that everything is unique about New Resource. There are very few banks in the country with our commitment to promoting sustainable living in our communities. That’s not a normal mission for a bank. Banks are usually thought of as being these profit-hungry structures. Our entire mission is built around the triple bottom line of people, planet and prosperity, which is incredibly unique.
And then my position itself is very exciting to me because it combines both marketing and sustainability. It allows me to draw on all of my strengths and interests.
BC3: You work with some interesting clients. Are there any whose stories you particularly appreciate or would like to share?
We have amazing clients here. One client I love is Alter Eco Foods. They’re producers of organic chocolates, quinoa, and also sugar. They think about sustainability in every single aspect of their supply chain. They think about sustainability so much that they even consider their packaging to be just another ingredient and have pioneered compostable packaging around their chocolate bar. It breaks down in your backyard in three weeks if you were to plant it. They have also formed a partnership with a group of other food producers to work on compostable packaging.
Amazon Watch is another one of our awesome clients who work tirelessly to sustain the Amazon ecosystem, people and cultures. They build capacity among indigenous groups in the Amazon basin and advance the long-term protection of their land. They are masters of awareness raising around issues such as the devastation oil drilling has caused in the Amazon.
We have so many great clients--this is just a tiny taste. We are fortunate to work with a wide range of innovators and leaders across the organic food, clean energy, green building, green business and nonprofit sectors.
BC3: As Director of Sustainability for New Resource Bank’s, where do you want to see the bank’s internal sustainability go in the next year?
We already have a very advanced culture of sustainability at the Bank with everything from our LEED Gold offices, high waste diversion rate (90%) and carbon offset purchases to our employees undertaking personal sustainability challenges. I would love for all of our team to continue thinking critically about their own personal footprint in their daily lives. We support that by bringing in speakers for a regular lunch ‘n learn program to deepen our own knowledge of different issues in sustainability. I’d like to see us take some sort of group challenge around our carbon/water footprint (e.g., track your personal footprint for a week!) and set some goals for ourselves to go even deeper in measuring and reducing our impact. This mirrors what we are doing externally of developing a set of impact metrics to measure the true impact of our loans.
Why are you excited to collaborate with BC3?
BC3 is exciting to us because you are a network of leaders in the city who are committed to advancing sustainability. It’s exciting to be part of a cross-sectoral network of government agencies, small businesses, and large businesses as it’s only by working together that we can really make change.
