Harry Van Buren

KC Burton

“One of the things that shareholder activism really needs to do is to develop an alternative vision for what the good economy looks like.”

That’s Harry Van Buren, consultant to the Episcopal Church’s Social Responsibility in Investments Committee, setting forth his notion of the future of shareholder activism.

“ICCR’s identity, what distinguishes us, is the moral drive, the sense of social rightness, that is embedded in our faith practices that find common ground around, it is right to care for one another, it is right to protect this planet, it is right to further people’s well-being, and it is right for us to work together in doing that.”

And that’s Kermit “KC” Burton, Deputy Director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, laying out his vision of ICCR.

We hear from both on this, the final episode of the yearlong Arc of Change podcast series produced by Sea Change Media leading up to and celebrating ICCR’s 40-year anniversary.

Harry Van Buren first heard of ICCR in 1994, while pursuing a divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, when he wrote to Business Ethics magazine  seeking organizations that worked at the intersection of corporations and social responsibility.  Van Buren joined ICCR then as a seminary intern, and hasn’t left since, serving as staff and consultant to the Episcopal Church’s Social Responsibility in Investments Committee.

Arc of Change Co-Producers Bill Baue and Francesca Rheannon sat down with Van Buren in the ICCR offices overlooking the Hudson River in Manhattan in late 2008, just as the financial meltdown was unfolding.  They started by asking Van Buren for his own personal perspective on what ICCR brings to the nexus of business and ethics.

A few months later, in early 2009, Baue and Rheannon returned to the ICCR offices to interview KC Burton, ICCR’s new Deputy Director.  He had spent the past dozen years as a Senior Associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and previously worked as Public Affairs Manager and Corporate Responsibility Manager for the Baltimore Sun.  They started by asking Burton, what is his personal vision that brought him to ICCR.