Entrepreneurs for Good interviews Annie Chen, founder and chair of RS Group, a family office based in Hongkong.
Who She Is
Annie Chen, considered a pioneer of impact investing in Asia, initially built investment relationships and portfolios with funds that had no track record but showed promise and before terms like “conscious capitalism”, “philanthro-capitalism”, or “blended values” became mainstream.
Ms. Chen believes that one of the most pressing issues today is moving the modern world towards a path of sustainability. Born and raised in Hong Kong and now a mother, she says fear motivates her – she wants a better future for her children.
Ms. Annie Chen was educated in the U.S. with a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and a Masters in LLB from Columbia Law School.
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Partial Transcript of her interview with Gabrielle Williams, Research Analyst at Collective Responsibility.
Annie: “My name is Annie Chen. I am the principal of a mid-sized family office that’s based in Hong Kong, called RS Group.
For the last six years, we have been on a mission and on a journey. And our hope is to become a catalytic force in transforming our economic system so that it doesn’t jeopardize the well-being of the planet or the people, but will actually us towards a path of sustainable development.
I think different impact investors – that’s just one hat that they wear. They could be a business owner. They could be an employee somewhere, but they have some money to invest, and they want to invest it for impact. They could be large corporates wanting to start a new business line.
So it doesn’t – so “impact investor” doesn’t describe just one type of animal. They can come from everywhere, they can come from any different type of background. So I think it’s really the mindset, is that if you truly believe that you can invest to generate values – and by “values”, I mean not only financial value, but social value and environmental value.
If you believe in that fact, then there’s no reason why you wouldn’t question, say, if you’re a business owner, then “How do I create value – social, environmental, and financial value – through my own business?” Or if I’m an employee, I would ask, “So how is the company that I work in generate all those values? And if it’s not, and if they only think about the financial value, am I in a position to also be a change agent? To start asking questions, like ‘Where is the environmental value that we’re creating? Where is the social value that we’re creating as a business?’”
So I find it interesting that people try to pigeonhole impact investing as just this one thing and kind of miss that, if you buy into impact investing, then you’re, by definition, buying into the fact that investing generates not simply financial returns – but that it could have possible positive social and environmental value generation. And if that’s the case, then why shouldn’t that apply across the board to all kinds of businesses?”
