Investing in Innovation
We strive to catalyze innovation by backing mission-driven businesses and initiatives that are designed to materially enhance opportunities in our communities. These strategic investments take the form of capital, resources, and collaboration with change-agents who promote opportunity, equity, and inclusion in the ecosystems in which we work.
Preston James, CEO, DivInc (third from right), and DivInc team members.
DivInc is a member of our B.Innovative community in Austin.
B.Innovative
B.Innovative is our “in-house” program for purpose-driven startups, investors and ecosystem-builders to catalyze entrepreneurial activity and thought leadership across underserved stakeholders.
We provide collaborative workspace and wraparound services to help our resident innovators raise the future. Located in our Baltimore and Austin offices—so far—B.Innovative enables us to invest in our communities and, equally importantly, brings our colleagues into the flow of new ideas, fresh thinking and diverse perspectives.
Brown Advisory Seed Capital
We use balance sheet capital to invest in next-generation innovators—helping to catalyze game-changing new business ideas and support emerging innovators with the capital they need to move the world forward faster.
Our balance sheet investments focus on four key themes where early-stage innovation seeks to disrupt large total addressable markets: health-care reimagined, future of work, next-generation consumer, and frontier technology.
*Brown Advisory is not affiliated with CrossBoundary.
CrossBoundary
Challenging ourselves to look for strategic opportunities that can unlock investments for clients led us to partner with CrossBoundary*—a frontier markets firm whose mission is to provide private capital to underserved markets. With 23 offices on five continents, CrossBoundary co-locates in our London office, which has allowed us to find new ways to collaborate and increase our mutual understanding of global investment opportunities—from sovereign bonds to nature-based finance to solar-powered mini grids.
Responsible Investment Forum
We are proud to be the founding partner of the Responsible Investment Forum, hosted by the Rothschild Foundation and Tortoise Media. The Forum convened for the first time at Waddesdon Manor in Aylesbury, England, last October, bringing together some of the most thoughtful and innovative business leaders, academics and investors for thought-provoking debate, respectful disagreement and mutual learning.
Karina Funk, Brown Advisory's Chair of Sustainable Investing and Co-Portfolio Manager of the Large-Cap Sustainable Growth Strategy, serves as an advisory board member. We view the Forum as a new kind of venue to discuss the role of finance and investment capital in solving our sustainability challenges—in a way that will genuinely make a difference.
James Harding, Editor and Co-Founder, Tortoise Media; and Kate Gordon, Former Senior Advisor to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy; in conversation at the Responsible Investment Forum.
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Sustainability and Stewardship
As we strive to make a positive and material difference for all of our stakeholders, we are cognizant of our responsibilities to our communities—we believe we have an obligation to contribute to and enhance the lives of others through financial, intellectual and hands-on partnership.