October 10, 2024, Adrian, Michigan – The Adrian Dominican Sisters Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) held its annual meeting during the last week of September and shared the fruits of that meeting in a September 27, 2024, Fireside Chat in the Weber Center Auditorium.

After the Board and staff members introduced themselves, Cynthia Crim, PAB Chair since 2022, offered an update. The Board approved five loans to community organizations. The Board’s greatest accomplishment during the meeting, however, was adopting the 2023-2028 Strategic Plan, which had been approved last year by the PAB and the General Council. “More than anything, we spent a lot of time listening to each other and really studying and making sure the plan embodied all of the Enactments,” particularly diversity, gender equity, and environmental sustainability, Cynthia reported.

Details on the Strategic Plan and on the five organizations whose loans were approved will be included in upcoming PAB articles published on the Adrian Dominican Sisters public website.

Cynthia also announced the Vision and Mission of the PAB, crafted during the meeting:

Vision
Rooted in the Vision, Mission, and Enactments of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, the Portfolio Advisory Board envisions a beloved community without poverty, hunger, homelessness, and ecological degradation. The beloved community is shaped by its collective voices and is committed to promoting racial and gender equity and systemic changes to policies and practices of institutions inhibiting its realization. Building on its collaborative strength, the beloved community is an active, healthy, and thriving space where all are welcome and have a voice.

Mission
The Mission of the Portfolio Advisory Board is to use the assets of the Adrian Dominican Sisters to build the beloved community. We invest in community organizations that create opportunities for those who are marginalized and that embody values of collaboration, inclusiveness, right relationship with Earth, and racial and gender equity. We use our voice as shareholders in corporations to promote policies and practices that build the beloved community.

Marilín Llanes, OP, PAB Director and Portfolio Manager, announced the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of PAB, Building on Legacy, Impacting the Future, set for Friday, September 26, 2025, at Weber Center. The celebration will include a video telling the story of PAB through the voices of 13 Sisters, Associates, and lay members of the Board. Details are forthcoming.

Sister Marilín also encouraged Sisters and Associates to check out the refreshed PAB page of the Congregation’s public website, which features pictures and articles depicting the work and partners of the PAB. Articles focus alternatively on corporate responsibility efforts and community investments.

For the remainder of the Fireside Chat, Eric K. Foster, Co-Founder, Chair, and Managing Director of Rende Progress Capital, spoke of his work offering loans and other financial services to businesses owned by people of color. Rende has been part of the PAB’s portfolio since 2020, Sister Marilín said. “We were very taken by [Rende’s] whole mission and vision because it was so aligned with our values.” 

Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rende has 47 loan customers, Eric said. Those clients “represent statistically having higher loan denials than their white peer business owners,” he explained. “In credit, they have had similar credit worthiness to white businesses, but in our landscape in Western Michigan, they cannot get a bank loan.” Of his clients, he said, 70% never received a loan before Rende took them on.

Eric emphasized the impact that loans have on the lives of the entrepreneurs of color and the people they serve. One company, Reliable Medical Transport, offers rides to vulnerable people with mobility problems for non-emergency medical appointments as well as non-medical activities. With loans, Reliable Medical Transport and other businesses have been able to expand, increase their revenue, and pay higher wages to their employees, he said. 

Eric thanked the PAB for the loan that he had received from them, enabling him in return to offer loans to entrepreneurs of color. He also encouraged them to stand strong in the face of a movement of “aggrieved white people who fought back against affirmative action,” which has persuaded some corporations to stop funding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. Many companies are “under pressure from those who tell them that it’s wrong to promote racial justice,” Eric said. But as a 501(c)3 organization, he added, the PAB has the right to offer grants and investments to people of color and other marginalized groups. “Don’t stop it,” he said. “Don’t cave in.”

View the entire Fireside Chat below or in our public video library.

Caption for above photo: Members of the Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) during their September 2024 meeting are, from left, Carla Manning; Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP; Marilin Llanes, OP, Director and Portfolio Manager; Bibiana “Bless” Colasito, OP, General Council Liaison; Sidney Williams, Jr., in back; Judy Byron, OP; Kris Cooper, Office Manager; Joseph Barker II; and Cynthia Crim, Chair. Not pictured are Carmen Mora, Vice Chair, and Mary Minette, Mercy Investment Consultant.

By Mary Minette
Mercy Investments Consultant

Image attribution: kris krüg, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - Gulf of Mexico, CC BY-SA 2.0

August 19, 2024, Adrian, Michigan – In the 2023-2024 proxy season, the Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) filed 19 shareholder proposals. Eight were withdrawn for agreement; eight went to a vote; two were omitted from the proxy statement; and one (Smith & Wesson) will be voted on in September. 

According to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), overall shareholder filings decreased from 460 in 2023 to 400 in 2024. Climate change continues to be the top issue area for filing, but human rights and workers’ rights were the second highest issue area filed this year. 

The top industries receiving shareholder proposals in 2025 were banks and oil and gas companies. Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, ExxonMobil, and Chevron continued to receive the most shareholder filings. In 2024, the PAB filed at all of the above companies except for Chevron.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed companies to omit 52% more proposals from their proxy statements in 2024 than in 2023. Two proposals filed by the PAB were omitted from proxies. Both proposals requested more detail from large U.S. banks regarding their climate transition plans.

The PAB filed shareholder proposals with five pharmaceutical companies concerning their patenting practices and how they impact patient access to affordable medicines. One proposal went to a vote, and four were withdrawn for agreement. Notably, Pfizer agreed to make significant improvements in its Human Rights Policy as well as committing to establish a human rights due diligence process around its pricing and access initiatives in the next 12 months. Gilead agreed to provide additional disclosure, including listing all the in-force patents it currently has on its top five selling drugs.
  
The PAB co-filed a resolution asking Exxon to issue a report evaluating the economic, human, and environmental impacts of a worst-case oil spill from its expanding operations offshore of Guyana. During a call with investors, Exxon shared additional information on how it is enhancing process safety and managing spills. The company also shared that it has assessed the costs of responding to a Guyana spill with an independent third party, assuring the company that $2 billion would cover the cost of the spill. Based on the information shared by the company, investors decided to withdraw the proposal. 

However, in January, ExxonMobil took the extreme step of suing two small shareholders to keep a climate change proposal off their proxy ballot, rather than going through the SEC “no action” process to ask for approval to omit the proposal. The company elected to continue the suit even after the shareholders agreed to withdraw the proposal and took an aggressive stance against other shareholders with proposals on its proxy ballot, questioning whether they were “real” investors or merely activists with an “extreme agenda.” 

In response, several ExxonMobil shareholders filed exempt solicitations urging their fellow shareholders to vote against members of the board, including CEO Darren Woods and lead independent director Joseph Hooley.  

Despite these actions indicating shareholder disapproval of company leadership, ExxonMobil continued with its aggressive stance and its lawsuit. The lawsuit was finally dismissed by a court in Texas after the shareholder proponent agreed in writing not to refile their climate proposal with the company in the future. 
 

October 5, 2021, New York, New York – Fifteen members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) drew support from 43.9% of the shareholders of Smith & Wesson for a proposal that the gun manufacturer adopt a comprehensive human rights policy in light of rising gun violence in the United States.

The Adrian Dominican Sisters, represented by Sister Judy Byron, OP, were the primary filers of the proposal. Fourteen faith-based organizations from ICCR co-filed.

In a press release, ICCR noted that this amount of support from shareholders – compared to 39% support for a similar proposal in 2019 – “demonstrates shareholders’ mounting concern with the company’s lack of attention to the growing risks of gun violence.” The proposal calls on Smith & Wesson to include in the policy “a description of the processes the company will use to identify, assess, prevent, and mitigate adverse human rights impacts.”  

“Undisputedly, something must be done about the misuse of guns in our country,” Sister Judy said in her September 27, 2021, Shareholder Statement. “As a leading firearms manufacturer we genuinely believe Smith & Wesson has the knowledge and the expertise to engineer the solutions we need to reduce gun violence and save lives.” 

A consultant to the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Portfolio Advisory Board, Sister Judy went on to note that the intention of the proposal is not to put Smith & Wesson out of business or to abolish the Second Amendment. “We seek to make the business, the products, and the consumers who buy them, safer,” she said. “We seek – as everyone here must surely do – to save lives.” 

By Robert Rudy

There was a time in the early 1990s, Alison Yonas recounts, that a rapid increase in the size of the Latino community in North Carolina was creating a serious crime problem for new immigrants. “Some newcomers were coming from places where people did not use financial institutions or feel comfortable doing so,” she said. “They were easy targets for robbery and home invasions.”

In 2000, as a grassroots response to crime against Latino immigrants, the Latino Community Credit Union was established to provide a safe place for the Latino immigrants to save money and become more comfortable with financial situations. Through the years, the credit union has received loans from both the Religious Communities Investment Fund (RCIF), directed by Adrian Dominican Sister Corinne Florek, OP, and the Adrian Dominican Sisters, through the Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB). 

The low-interest loans have helped the Latino Credit Union in its services to the local community. “When people come from countries where financial systems have failed or their experiences aren’t as strong, and you come to this country with issues of language and cultural concerns about entering a bank, it’s hard to feel comfortable,” said Alison, Vice Present of Development and Strategic Investments for the credit union.

Based in Durham, the Latino Credit Union now has 75,000 members in 12 branches throughout North Carolina. Alison said the credit union provides bilingual and bicultural services which do not require a credit history and are geared to be accessible to members – from starter accounts to checking accounts, IRAs to affordable mortgage loans.

RCIF has been involved with the Latino Credit Union since lending the organization $150,000 in 2010, Alison said. She explained that the relationship of RCIF and the credit union is an easy one because of the alignment of their missions and because “people with RCIF are leaders in socially responsible investing.”

The Latino Credit Union provides banking solutions and education through workshops on such topics as budgeting, saving, and credit. “The workshops are one of the most inspiring parts of the work that we do,” Alison said. “We have a graduation ceremony at the end of the workshops. For some of our members, it’s their first experience graduating.”

The credit union has also helped more than 2,300 “dreamers” – those who immigrated to the United States as children with their parents without formal papers – with a loan for the $465 application fee for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The Latino Credit Union has provided more of these loans than any other country, Alison said.

Posted July 2018

Feature photo: The Latino Credit Union, organized into 12 branches in North Carolina, offers financial services to those who might not otherwise have access to those services. Photo Courtesy of Latino Credit Union

March 5, 2018, Adrian, Michigan – The Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) continues its 43-year-old mission of socially responsible investing with a new structure and staff. The changes were outlined in a recent presentation to Adrian Dominican Sisters living on the Motherhouse campus.

Much of the presentation focused on the new structure of the PAB, which was put into place after the December 2016 retirement of Lura Mack, long-time Executive Director of the PAB. Most recently, Dee Joyner, Chair of the PAB at the time, was asked to serve as director of the Congregation’s new Office of Resilient Communities. This office was established to help the Congregation live out its 2016 General Chapter Enactment to “facilitate and participate in creating resilient communities with people who are relegated to the margins.” Dee, an Adrian Dominican Associate, had served as Vice President of Commerce Bank and Economic Developer of St. Louis County, Missouri. While she is no longer the Chair, her new position involves overseeing the PAB.

The PAB is now headed by Co-chairs Rosemary Martin, former Chair of the Community Investment Committee, and Kathy Woods, former Chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee. The two committees – now working as one streamlined Board – represent the dual functions of the PAB. 

In introducing the two new Co-chairs, Dee noted the “wealth of experience” they bring to their new role on the PAB. Kathy, a former Adrian Dominican Sister, was one of the founding members of the PAB, with extensive experience in not-for-profit organizations, particularly hospital work and counseling. Rosemary, an Adrian Dominican Associate from North Carolina, also has been involved in the non-profit world. She founded and directed an international adopting agency, placing more than 2,000 children from other countries into loving homes in the United States. She now works for an accreditation company for service organizations.

In both corporate responsibility and community investments, the PAB collaborates with other communities of women religious. Pat Zerega, senior director of shareholder advocacies for Mercy Investments, works with the PAB in the area of corporate responsibility. The PAB also collaborates with other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in working with corporations to help them to be more socially responsible in their actions and policies. 

Since the retirement of Lura Mack, who did much of the work with community investments, the PAB sought the help of an organization that could help in that area. Members of the PAB unanimously chose the Religious Communities Investment Fund (RCIF), founded and directed by Adrian Dominican Sister Corinne Florek, OP.

Kris Cooper, Office Manager, has served the PAB on the staff since 2013. Other members of the PAB are Sister Patricia Leonard, OP, Associate Director of St. Ann Place, a homeless hygiene center in West Palm Beach, Florida; Sister Marilín Llanes, OP, school psychologist in Joliet, Illinois; Lloyd Van Bylevelt, an Adrian Dominican Associate who serves at the Peace Education Foundation in Miami; Marcy Brown, Vice President in Commercial Treasury Management at First Federal Bank in Adrian; and Margaret Weber, who works for the Basilian Fathers in Toronto in the area of socially responsible investment. Sister Elise García, OP, is the General Council liaison to the PAB. Pat Zerega and Adrian Dominican Sisters Judy Byron, OP, and Corinne Florek, OP, serve as consultants.

A Passion for the Peripheries
Co-creating an Economy for All
Investing in the Environment
Prophetic Witness
Uniting Faith and Capital
Cultivating a Legacy
Making a Difference Bit by Little Bit
Ministry through Collaboration

These are the titles of the Religious Communities Investment Fund’s (RCIF) annual reports for the past eight years.

During those years, RCIF has grown from a $3 million fund begun by 11 congregations of women religious to a $10 million fund sponsored by 28 congregations. These congregations believe that they are called to use their financial resources as a ministry to help overcome social and environmental inequities. RCIF’s portfolio includes loans to intermediaries such as loan funds, credit unions, and international microfinance institutions, as well as direct loans to nonprofits.

RCIF’s mission is to promote economic justice through investments in low-income communities worldwide. The fund seeks to promote an economy of solidarity and to reflect the Gospel values of economic justice, compassion, human dignity, and environmental stewardship. As Adrian Dominican Sister Corinne Florek, OP, the founding Executive Director, has said, “We promised the congregations that this fund would be as effective, efficient, and prophetic as when each congregation operated their own fund.”

RCIF enables smaller congregations that never had their own community investment program to participate in this ministry. “The investment is an extension of our charism into an arena where we would not otherwise be visible – a spiritual parallel to the hidden life of the Holy Family in Nazareth,” said Sister Gladys Guenther, of the Sisters of the Holy Family, at the fifth anniversary celebration of RCIF. 

RCIF is “another way to turn the coin on our diminishing resources so that they are working to transform underserved areas,” said Sister Cathy Minhoto, of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. “Through partnerships we never had 50 years ago, we are able to continue our mission and we can see the impact our investment makes globally.”

The Adrian Dominican Sisters joined RCIF in 2017. The advantage of membership is that it allows for larger and riskier loans. Some of the more intriguing loans made possible by RCIF were to organizations such as Los Angeles House of Ruth, a domestic violence prevention program; the YWCA of Watsonville, California, which offers a program to empower Latina girls; a student cooperative in Bloomington, Indiana, for their residence; and Friendship Bridge, which provides microfinance and health clinics to indigenous women in Guatemala. 

A unique feature of RCIF is its development of prayer cards for the congregations. Each year, RCIF chooses five organizations and gives prayer cards to the Sisters in the member congregations, describing the organization and asking them to pray for the staff and clients. “When I do a site visit and I talk to the staff about who the Sisters are and that we come with not just money but also our prayers, I see many eyes well up with tears,” Sister Corinne said. “Our prayers are deeply appreciated because this work is hard and it takes strength and courage from staff, as well as their clients.”

RCIF is delighted that the Adrian Dominicans have become a member to continue this ministry of economic justice.

Left: This Guatemalan weaver is one of the clients of Friendship Bridge. Right: Girls practice yoga as part of their empowerment program at the YWCA in Watsonville, California.