#109. Cedar Leaf Capital (Thursday, October 31, 2024)

#109. Cedar Leaf Capital (Thursday, October 31, 2024)

What was your best day…of contributing to a cause in your own unique way?

Economic reconciliation is a movement that’s been growing, especially in Canada, in the last several years. It can mean different things to different people, but in short, it “strives to achieve economic balance and equality for Indigenous Peoples to redress the fundamental social, political, and financial harm enacted through systematic disempowerment”.1

An important topic, for sure. But while I was an economist by title, my field of specialization (sovereign bonds) did not lend itself to any natural engagement with it for the first ten plus years of my career.

My opportunity came in July, when senior representatives from Cedar Leaf Capital reached out to my debt management team (#114, which I had recently returned to as a principal analyst after several years in foreign reserves). Cedar Leaf was poised to become the first majority Indigenous-owned investment dealer in Canada, a significant development. And after follow-up conversations, we all figured it would be a great idea to host them at our institution.

My director and I assumed it would be a small thing. So we contacted Jawad, my good friend who led our department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, who directed us to the DEI director (Mandy) and Indigenous specialist (Michelle) in HR. And from them, we found out this had a lot of potential linkages with our institution’s own initiatives on the reconciliation front.

So, it ended up becoming much bigger than any of us expected. I volunteered to take the lead in organizing the one-hour event, which would include: (1) a speech by our executive policy director; (2) an opening and closing by a local Indigenous Elder (featuring a traditional transfer of tobacco); and (3) a thirty-minute fireside chat with the Cedar Leaf CEO Clint Davis and one of his directors Misko, to discuss their business and the broader theme of economic reconciliation.

With Michelle’s help, I spent many hours educating myself on economic reconciliation and many aspects of Indigenous culture. Working with her and Cedar Leaf, I wrote up a series of well thought-out panel questions that tried to bring out unique insights at the intersection of reconciliation and financial markets. While Mandy and I took care of the extensive logistics2.

As the Halloween date of this event approached3, the key remaining question was: who would moderate the panel? As just an analyst (albeit a principal analyst), I was probably too junior. But as I was now the most knowledgeable person here on all these diverse topics, my director and his bosses decided it was a no-brainer for me to take on this special responsibility. If I was up for it.

I sure was. And super-excited as well. This was my chance to contribute to the economy, to Canada as whole, in a way that went beyond my ordinary job responsibilities but was just as (if not more) substantial.

And the session goes as well as it possibly could have. The filled-up auditorium of a hundred4 (along with a sizable virtual audience) watches Clint, Misko, and I share a highly dynamic and insightful exchange5. And thanks to all the homework I did and Clint and Misko’s own enthusiasm, we’re able to really elevate this beyond a generic Q & A into something quite informative (and, to a small extent, inspiring) to everyone in the room. Of particular interest to my colleagues is how our (or any) institution could learn from traditional Indigenous business practices, and how their environment-focused investment approach could go hand-in-hand with global green initiatives.

Things wrap up with lunch with the Cedar Leaf representatives. And as we give our hearty handshakes and depart, I think to myself just how much it was me who made this event what it is. Not only by being a natural go-getter and dynamic speaker, but by truly caring about adding value to the causes I deal with – even if the cause itself is completely new to me.

  1. From the Vancouver Economic Commission, the first result that shows up in Google when you search that phrase.
  2. A lot more goes into organizing a conference than I, my director, or anybody else doesn’t regularly deal with these things could have imagined.
  3. There must be something about Halloween and proud moments in debt management. Dr. Greenwood’s visit was nine years before to the day, #114.
  4. Mostly thanks to my director and I’s pestering everybody we knew in our institution to come, as well as getting my close friend Aaron Brookbank to promote this to the self-identified Indigenous staff within the government (where he was now a director).
  5. Which, thanks to a few instances of deft moderating on my part (which Mandy the conference pro finds especially impressive), we’re able to squeeze seamlessly into the strict thirty-minute timeframe, without missing any important topics or having any awkward cut-offs.