Terry Mollner

Terry Mollner is one of the pioneers of socially responsible business and investing. In the late 1970s, he brought together fifteen leaders from the social, environmental, and labor communities. Meeting monthly for eighteen months, he guided them in writing one of the first comprehensive set of social screens for business and investing. In 1982, Wayne Silby, a member of that group and President of the Calvert Group that managed some of the first money market funds, invited Terry to join him and his partner, John Guffey, to create the Calvert Funds, the first family of socially responsible equity and bond mutual funds. Today, the Calvert Group is the largest family of such funds with $12 billion under management. Terry took the lead to create the Calvert Foundation that today has $550 million under management. It issues Community Investment Notes where the investor chooses an interest rate between zero and two percent. It loans the capital to programs around the world that then loan it locally to reduce poverty via microloan programs, social enterprises, cooperatives, and low income housing projects. When Ben & Jerry’s needed to be bought by a multinational to solve its growing distribution demands, Terry took the lead to save it from being bought by one multinational and worked with the board to have it bought by another more socially responsible multinational where the board remained in existence and self-perpetuating with him on it. The board maintained ownership of “the social mission and brand integrity.” It is the only socially responsible company to have made such an arrangement when being bought. He is also a founder and chair of StakeHolders Capital, a socially responsible asset management firm in Amherst, MA, New York City, and Los Angeles. It is the founder of “the common good investment movement” where the focus is on the highest priority of companies, calling on them to publicly declare that their highest priority is the common good and second priority is anything else. He has two children, one grandchild, and is the founder of three intentional communities of friends experimenting with re-villaging our lives in a modern context. He is the author of many articles, especially on the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of northern Spain – cooperatives that give priority to the common good. His recent book, The Love Skill: We Are Each Mastering the 7 Layers of Human Maturity, argues that the next major maturation of the human species will be the result of “a common good movement” where it will be recognized that, whether or not we are aware of it, by nature we all always give priority to what we believe is the common good. His primary base is the Trusteeship Institute that he founded in 1973 and where he continues as its chair and Executive Director. Its mission is to build the common good movement.