Mission Matters

A focus on the long term can transform the role of corporations

When LTSE set out to build a new public securities exchange that focuses on value creation over the long term, the early team was comprised mainly of serial entrepreneurs. And me.

The youngest company I worked for before joining LTSE was McKinsey & Company, a mere 90+ years old at the time. LTSE marked a huge change for me. Though working for a promising startup has proven to be among the most fun and challenging aspects of the job — the one that pushes me farthest out of my comfort zone and therefore creates enormous learning for me — that’s not why I joined LTSE. That was not even on my bucket list.

My career has included roles in the nonprofit, academic and private sectors. If there is a theme that ties my experiences together, it’s that I have always loved working in a place where the mission matters. From running a human rights center, to leading policy on broadening financial access at the Treasury Department, to building the NYSE’s global corporate responsibility program, I am motivated by the feeling that I am making a difference.

LTSE is a mission-driven company as well. We are seeking to change the capital markets by enabling companies and investors to build value over time.

Everyone here at LTSE is committed to our mission, but we each came to that mission not only from different places, but also, for many of us, for different reasons. Seeing up-close the side effects of short-termism from his work in the Lean Startup movement led our founder Eric Ries to conceive of and create the LTSE. For me, it was working in corporate responsibility and on environmental, social and governance issues at NYSE and beyond that made Eric’s ambitious vision so compelling.

If we succeed in changing the capital markets as we intend to, LTSE will achieve goals that range from promoting innovation, to helping unclog the IPO pipeline, to my vision of changing the broader role of corporations in society.

Since I began working in this field, I have become increasingly convinced that the one way to shift the perspective of every company so it will consider its role in the broader world is to focus on measuring success in years and decades, not weeks and months.

A company overly concerned with this quarter’s numbers — as today’s public markets often demand — is not thinking, for example, about its employees’ long-term engagement or its impact on the environment.

But a company that is focused on building its business and advancing its vision over time operates differently. It knows, for example, that its employees are partners for long-term growth and that investment in training is just that — an investment –not simply overhead. And I believe that if we can create an ecosystem that brings companies into alignment with their long-term investors, such investors will be able to better recognize and reward companies that are poised to attract customers, build their businesses, and serve the needs of shareholders — as well as other stakeholders critical to sustainable success — after they go public.

Changing the impact of companies in our society demands a fundamental shift in the incentives of financial markets. And that’s why I am at LTSE. By rewarding a focus on the long term, by bringing investors and companies together in a compact to create value over time, we seek to change the role (and standing) of companies in our society.

And if LTSE enables me to contribute to that change, then I will have achieved my own mission.