Do you have a LinkedIn account? Let’s put it to productive use. Let TIAA know how you feel about TIAA using their participant’s money to finance the climate crisis.
Recently TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett’s posted on LinkedIn, sharing her colleague’s letter to clients. Jose Minaya, CEO of TIAA’s investment arm Nuveen wrote to TIAA participants “whenever I’m asked how many basis points I’m willing to sacrifice for ESG factors, my answer is “zero.”” He could not have summarized TIAA’s investment strategy more clearly; TIAA pays absolutely no attention to the Environmental or Social impacts of their investments. Including at least $20 Billion (and counting) invested in fossil fuel industries.
Thasunda Brown Duckett doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, she doesn’t have a public email address, and she doesn’t respond to letters in the mail. But she does post on LinkedIn, and the people who work for her follow her account. By posting a short message, you’ll help shake things up inside TIAA and ensure that at least some TIAA employees are thinking about how their employer chooses to invest.
Posting Guidelines: Please make your posts serious and respectful. To amplify your message, you can tag TIAA executives by adding their names after the ‘@’ character. For example @Jose Minaya, @Micky Onvural, @David Nason or @Cecilia Conrad
CLICK HERE TO POST YOUR COMMENT
Here are some template posts that you can copy, paste and edit.
Ms. Duckett, TIAA has billions invested in fossil fuel companies. TIAA even owns a Canadian oil company and two fracked gas power plants! Your company can’t claim to be a good corporate citizen while funding the climate crisis. It’s time for TIAA to become part of the solution, not part of the problem. #TIAADIVEST
Dear Ms. Duckett, I so admire your work and integrity, and I plead with you to steer TIAA away from its many catastrophic investments in fossil fuels. The damage from climate change will increase dramatically if energy companies do not stop drilling and mining. Fossil fuel emissions are causing homelessness, drought, hunger, fires, and floods on an unprecedented new scales, intensifying the suffering of the world’s poorest. For the sake of people around the world, #TIAADIVEST
As a retired faculty member I am glad that I saved with TIAA. Since I stopped working I have been learning about the effects of air pollution on our health. I was shocked to learn how much illness and disability are the results of burning fossil fuels. We can not be healthy if we continue to burn gasoline and other fossil fuels. Please commit to divesting TIAA from fossil fuels. Divestment from fossil fuels is a necessary step to improving health in the USA and around the world. #TIAADIVEST
Greetings Thasunda Duckett! My savings for retirement are all in TIAA. But how can there be a secure future, for any of us, unless we act now to constrain and reverse our fossil fueled climate catastrophe. We must keep all fossil fuels in the ground. And that requires zero TIAA investments in planetary destruction–which is to say, in fossil fuels. Ms. Duckett: I ask that you reverse TIAA’s complicity in this evil. Today and not tomorrow. #TIAADIVEST
Ms Duckett, I was surprised and disappointed to learn that while TIAA claims to be a responsible investor, the company actually invests in fossil fuels, fracked gas plants and companies that steal land from small holder farmers. For example, TIAA is invested in the company that is building the Formosa Plastics complex in a predominantly Black district of St. James Paris, Louisiana, that is already overburdened by petrochemical industry development. The plastics facility would double toxic air emissions in the St. James Parish community where residents face significantly higher cancer risk than the average American. I don’t want my retirement savings to be invested in a company that consistently makes bad decisions that are destroying our environment and stealing the future of the next generation. When will you stop? #TIAADIVEST
As a TIAA customer, I am hopeful that your company will join the growing number of businesses that are embracing the fossil fuels-free investing tools needed to realize the sustainable future we so desperately need. Retirement isn’t worth much if our communities are increasingly becoming unlivable due to the climate crisis. The social and economic impact of the climate crisis is a dire and immediate threat to your customers, workers, and stakeholders. Groups like #TIAAdivest are putting forward reasonable solutions, and institutions from higher ed to Wall St are moving to implement them. Will you commit to joining the #sociallyresponsibleinvestment movement?