The Office of Climate and Sustainability convened a nine-session series during the 2023-24 academic year. Each session in the series was facilitated by faculty-student pairings and focused on topics such as fiduciary duty, climate investing opportunities, climate risk, equity considerations, regulatory considerations, stakeholder influences, indirect investment structures, and how Duke’s peer institutions are managing their portfolios. The sessions brought in 16 expert voices from industry, government, academia, and NGOs to share knowledge and best practices.
The series has spurred an ongoing multidisciplinary research project examining possible paths forward for Duke’s investment portfolio, benchmarking Duke’s endowments’ impact relative to those of peer institutions, and collaborating to share methodologies for emissions impact measurement. DUMAC, the Duke University Management Company, is actively collaborating on this work. Four students are currently involved in this independent study project.