NATURAL INVESTMENTS - Key Persons
Andy R. Loving is widely recognized among financial advisors as one of the nation's leading experts in community investing.
He has won multiple awards for the many ways he helps clients put capital into financial institutions that serve poor people, both domestically and around the world. Andy has been a lifelong social activist, working on behalf of poor people and communities and organizing middle-class U.S. Americans to work for justice through their finances. It has been observed that "Andy looks at money and imagines ways to create justice."
Andy has been a financial advisor since 1993, specializing in socially responsive and community investing.
With his wife and business partner, Susan Taylor, Andy runs the financial planning firm Just Money Advisors in Louisville, KY. A Certified Financial Planner®, Andy does retirement planning, tax planning, college planning, and general financial planning, along with investment management. Andy joined Natural Investments in January 2011.
Andy sees the choice of where people bank as one avenue of community investing that is open to anyone with enough money to hold a bank account. He founded Better Banking Options (betterbankingoptions.com) to give anyone in the U.S. access to information on local better banks and credit unions-those that focus on wealth-building home mortgages and small business loans, especially in low- and moderate-income communities. In addition, he enables clients to target their deposits toward banks and credit unions owned and managed by Black people, as a way of circulating capital in communities traditionally excluded from access to capital.
An Illinois native, Andy earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and master's degree in counseling from Southern Illinois University. In 1981, he was ordained as a minister in Atlanta, GA, and devoted himself to ministry with the poor. He was cofounder of SEEDS, an award-winning magazine on hunger and economic justice, as well as minister to the homeless at an Atlanta church. Community investing is an extension of this foundational work for economic justice.
He currently serves on the board of directors of Faith and Money Network, based in Washington, DC, and has previously served on the board of Bread for the World and as an advisor to the board of Oikocredit USA. In Louisville, Andy is an active member of Jeff Street Baptist Community at Liberty and serves on the advisory board of LHome, a Louisville Community Development Financial Institution.
Job Titles:
- Financial Coach With a Louisville
Carrie serves as a volunteer financial coach with a Louisville non-profit which focuses on educating women and their familes to create positive change in their lives.
Job Titles:
- Financial Advisor, CFP®, RLP®
My mission is to expand access to comprehensive financial planning. We could all benefit from having someone on our team that can translate the nuances of finances and who shares our values. I am proud to join Strategy Squad and uphold their mission to support the next generation of women and conscious investors as they take confident steps toward financial independence. As a Registered Life Planner™, I help clients cultivate clarity on what they want to create in their lives. I then use my training and skills as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® to help outline next steps to make their dreams a reality.
As someone who both loves working with people and numbers, it took a few turns to find my calling as a financial planner. I've worked in mental health where I further developed my empathy and communication skills, population projections where I delved into the systems that can make or break us, and business analysis where I grew disillusioned with the profit above all else mentality. Through volunteering I met a financial planner who showed me that a career helping others with numbers does exist, and that it desperately needed more women of color. That was back in 2016 and I still thank my lucky stars that crossed our paths.
Outside of work I regularly volunteer with my Quaker meeting and provide pro bono advising, especially in Spanish. I'm an avid dancer and love to travel.
Greg Pitts is one of Natural Investments' Financial Advisors in New York and the Northeast. After graduating from Kalamazoo College in 1980, he settled in Austin, Texas. In 2001, Greg headed back to the north's four seasons to live in upstate New York as part of EcoVillage at Ithaca, a co-housing community centered around sustainable living. In 2018, he relocated to the New York City metro area.
After college, Greg entered the corporate world as a techie. With a degree in Physics and an aptitude for engineering, he took a position as a process engineer in high technology manufacturing. This quickly grew into a research scientist position at one of the country's leading R&D consortiums, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC). While there, he received four patents for his work in cutting-edge electronics manufacturing. Over time, it became clear that this type of work didn't satisfy his soul; fortunately, his next golden opportunity was around the corner.
When the CEO of MCC came back from Washington with a mandate to better understand environmental issues facing the electronics industry, Greg volunteered to lead the effort.
The team's ground-breaking study of the life cycle of a computer workstation laid the foundation for a $20M program fostering environmentally conscious manufacturing initiatives funded by the Department of Energy. Over the next seven years, as Director of Environmental Programs, Greg pushed the frontier of what was possible and helped clarify what was needed to move the industry toward environmental responsibility. But he wanted to have more of a direct impact.
With approval from the MCC Board, Greg and two other partners started a non-profit organization to put their research into action.
The non-profit generated a feasibility study for an eco-industrial park centered on recovering and recycling electronics at the end of their useful life. Finally, Greg had found his way to work that fed his soul, but the effort was ahead of its time. In the late 1990's the policies, processes, and business opportunities were not yet coalescing to realize this vision.
Greg headed northeast to Ithaca in 2001 for a slower pace and lower carbon footprint lifestyle. At his new co-housing community, EcoVillage at Ithaca, he became the managing partner in designing and building a new neighborhood of 30 homes, overseeing the construction and finances. Drawing on his business background, Greg began helping friends and neighbors with their personal finances and discovered a passion for the work. He found that he especially enjoyed the direct connection with people that is central to financial planning.
It was time for a third career, following his careers as research scientist and real estate developer. Greg enrolled in Boston University, received a certificate in financial planning in 2007, and completed further training in life planning from the Kinder Institute. Next, he started his own firm and began his advisory career as part of the Garrett Planning Network, intending to go ‘beyond' socially responsible investing. Greg also joined the First Affirmative Financial Network, where Hal and Jack Brill began as advisors before founding Natural Investments. He was invited to fold his firm into Natural Investments in 2010 and became a partner in 2017.
Helping others do well and integrate their financial choices with their values is Greg's way of giving back.
With his commitment to sustainable living and fostering the best within corporations, for Greg, becoming a part of Natural Investments is like coming home.
He joined a group called Walk for the Earth that was making a pilgrimage from California to Washington D.C. Although he originally only planned to walk a few weeks with the group, he was among those that strode into Washington D.C. and a smaller group that walked across Europe the following year. He also explored the Middle East before returning to the U.S. This long journey gave him firsthand experience of both domestic and international issues, group leadership skills, and an even deeper commitment to working for positive change. Hal settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico because it offered the opportunity to work for progressive change in a beautiful natural setting and a multi-cultural context. He poured his energy into a variety of nonprofit organizations that were all working towards what in the mid-80's was starting to be called "sustainability". It was at this point that Hal's path took an unexpected turn. Having experienced the difficulties that nonprofit organizations face in obtaining capital, he saw that the fledgling field of SRI offered an entirely different way to work for positive change. Rather than trying to extract charitable money from people, why not simply redirect money that was already invested into enterprises that could build a better world? Hal's father, Jack Brill, had recently started working in SRI in California, and had been offered a book contract by Crown Publishers. Hal offered to do the research for Investing from the Heart, a book that helped advance the field of SRI and brought the Brills national attention.
started her work in the New Economy space at Schumacher Center for New Economics after graduating from Princeton University in 2009, where she wrote her thesis on the intersection of spiritual beliefs and economic action. She went on to work with Michael Shuman from 2010-2014, researching local investing for his books Local Dollars, Local Sense and The Local Economy Solution. She co-founded Regenerative Finance in 2014 to organize other young people with wealth to shift control of capital to communities most affected by racial, economic and environmental injustices.She is a member of Resource Generation, a nonprofit organizing young people with wealth to redistribute land, wealth and power, and she has served on the board of directors of the Schumacher Center for New Economics since 2017.
Kate loves dance and feminist performance art, and enjoys creating comics about Buddhist economics, Jewish economics, and racial justice and reparations. Kate lives in Philadelphia, PA, with her partner who is also named Kate.
Job Titles:
- Its Third Financial Advisor
- Shareholder Advocacy, Sustainable Investment Public Policy, Local Green Economy, Permaculture / Services
After 10 years as a client, Michael joined Natural Investments as its third financial advisor in 2000. He was a Managing Partner of the firm from 2007-2023, at which time he became a Trust Steward and Manager. Known within the responsible investing community as a proponent of higher standards for the industry, he oversees the criteria of the firm's 30-year-old Heart Rating of sustainable and responsible mutual funds, and he coordinates its shareholder activism and public policy activities. For over 10 years he has served on the Public Policy Committee of US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investing and is a former Vice-Chair of this trade association's board of directors. Michael regularly engages corporate management, elected officials and federal agencies to adopt responsible practices, policies, laws, and regulations. He is co-author of the firm's third book, The Resilient Investor: A Plan for Your Life, Not Just Your Money and coined the term "regenerative investing" in the 2008 edition of Worldwatch Institute's "State of the World".
Michael earned a Master's degree from Harvard University in 1990, after which he served as Executive Director of Permaculture Drylands Institute and taught permaculture for over 25 years, usually with co-Manager Christopher Peck. He also founded Youth Ecology Corps, a program dedicated to youth leadership, service, and sustainability, and helped spawn two others, Rocky Mountain Youth Corps and the New Mexico Youth Conservation Corps Leadership Program. He was National Service Fellow during the Clinton Administration and has served on numerous commissions and boards over the decades that promote renewable energy, youth leadership, community service, and sustainability.
Tiffany worked in the non-profit sector for over a decade before transitioning into her work in finance. Her career has ranged from being Co-Director at YES!, Board member at Common Fire Foundation, founding advisor to Kindle Project Foundation, to directing national leadership retreats at Resource Generation, and serving on the Finance Committee for Haymarket People's Fund. She currently serves on the board of Kitchen Table Advisors and Pie Ranch.
Her entry into social justice work was through learning about race and racism in the US, and interning with the SE Regional NAACP's Prison Project in Atlanta, GA. During her brief stint in Atlanta, Tiffany was introduced to the work of Be Present, which helped to refine the philosophical underpinnings for how she approaches justice work. Racism is dehumanizing for everyone, and we must find ways to work towards collective liberation.
Tiffany loves hosting dinner parties, dancing and homemaking. She enjoys karaoke with friends, where she can allow her inner performer to run wild.