Earth Angels: The Investor

Jack Robinson's mutual funds have helped finance eco-friendly innovation and business, making money for clients at the same time.

(Photo by Tanit Sakakini)

In most of Jack Robinson's industry - the investment industry - the only green that matters is money. Putting capital into the other kind of green has historically been about as attractive as buying into companies like Enron, post-scandal. The widespread perception, says Robinson, is this: "If you become environmentally responsible, it's going to cost you money."

But Boston-based Robinson, 65, comes from a family of radicals. His parents, once New York City residents, bought a plot of land in rural Connecticut in the 1940s, moved young Jackie there, learned how to live as farmers, and even wrote a book about it, The "Have-More" Plan.

And so, in 1983, Robinson, an investment banker, founded a mutual fund company in Boston, the Winslow Management Co., hoping to persuade clients to invest in environmentally responsible companies - not just out of good will, but to make money as well. "We were on the bleeding edge for about a decade," Robinson says. "It was a long haul. But we stuck with it and refined our approach and educated a lot of people on the subject."

The company, which in the early '90s managed $50 million to $75 million annually, now oversees about $500 million in assets, Robinson says, as investors have awakened to both the moral and financial benefits of green investing. Think Whole Foods, for example, a core holding in the Winslow fund for a dozen years. Then think about how much money you would have earned if you had invested in the grocery chain that sells organic and natural products in, say, 1992, when the share price was around three bucks. (Now it's in the mid-$40 range.) That's the genius of Jack Robinson. "He was a pioneer," says Katharine Preston of Essex, New York, an early and still-satisfied Winslow client. "He was a prophet before his time."