A note from Equities.com CEO Paula DeLaurentis:

I am deeply honored to consider George Gay (left in photo above) a friend and mentor in the sustainable investing community. I first met George in 2018 when I had the tremendous privilege of taking over the reins of a conference he had lovingly produced for over 35 years — SRI in the Rockies.

When I renamed it The SRI Conference & Community, I knew I was inheriting not just an event, but a legacy of community building and education that George had carefully cultivated for decades. His dedication to advancing socially responsible investing and his commitment to bringing together like-minded individuals to learn and grow has been truly inspirational.

Last week, George received one of the industry’s highest honors — the 2025 Joan Bavaria Award from US SIF and Trillium Asset Management. Presented at the US SIF FORUM in Washington D.C., this prestigious award recognizes leaders who embody the collaborative and innovative spirit of Joan Bavaria, a visionary in sustainable investing who passed away in 2008.

The following is George’s complete acceptance speech, delivered with characteristic humility and profound respect for the pioneers who built this industry:

Maria and Matt,

Thank you for this great honor and privilege. I am deeply appreciative and humbled to be recognized.

If Socially Responsible Investing (and I use that term intentionally) were to have a Mount Rushmore, there is no doubt that the first face to be honored would be that of Joan Bavaria.

In the film, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” they say “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The legend is that the Social Investment Forum was created about 54 years ago, in Joan Bavaria’s living room in Boston. I wasn’t there, but I do know people who were.

My first event with the, then, Social Investment Forum, was in the summer of 1989, at the refurbished South Shore Country Club in Chicago. For some reason, I was invited to dinner with the key leaders of the industry; Jerry Dodson of Parnassus, Joan Shapiro of South Shore Bank, Peter Kinder and Amy Domini from KLD, Wayne Silby from Calvert, and Joan Bavaria. I can assure you that I learned more about this industry from this one dinner than would have been possible in any other way.

Seven or so years later, my now retired partner and friend, Steve Schueth, then with Calvert and the Chairman of SIF, convinced me to fill a vacant seat on the SIF Board of Directors. We had previously merged the annual SIF Conference with First Affirmative’s SRI in the Rockies, so my participation on the board made sense with both groups pushing to grow the size of the industry.

It was on this board that I got to know Joan the best. She had recently responded to the grounding of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound in Alaska by creating the Valdez Principles, later renamed the CERES principles. First Affirmative was a founding signatory of these principles and worked with Joan and Trillium and other members of the Forum to publicize the principles and expand their adoption.

As most people know, Joan was a brilliant person and a fierce gladiator in the defense of right against wrong. But, sitting next to her at Forum Board meetings, I learned, with her whispering snarky comments into my ear, what an incredibly witty person she was as well.

In 2008, after being informed at our Conference that Joan had been diagnosed as having six months to live, I felt stunned and personally betrayed when she actually passed away less than two months later.

So, to receive an award in recognition of this incredible, inspirational woman is the highest honor of my career.

The backing of sustainable investing colleagues

I have so many people to whom I am grateful. I will not share too many names of people that most of you have never heard of, but there will be a few that I have to include.

First, I have to thank Ed Winslow, who offered an inexperienced newly-minted CFP a job and then, through his innovative thinking forged an alliance with Co-op America (now Green America) leading us to a specialization in SRI.

During my 38 years at First Affirmative, I have been privileged to work with an incredible group of employees and advisors, and to serve thousands of clients. We produced 33 annual conferences and I honor Kathy Lewis’s support for each of them.

In 2000, Kevin O’Keefe led the launch of the first managed mutual fund product using only SRI mutual funds. A few years later, we launched the first Unified Managed Account using all socially screened models on the Folio Financial platform. Most recently, Theresa Gusman, our current Chief Investment Officer, along with our friends at YourStake, led the release of our incredibly customizable Values Aligned Direct Index Solution.

Over the years I have been blessed to work so many wonderful people in the industry. Some, like our advisors Lincoln Pain, Laurie McClain, Richard Barr, Brian Laverty, David Dobkin, Charlotte Kania, Brenda Lenz and Tom Moser who left us far too soon. Other great friends like Jan Bryan, Linda Jacobs, Ron Cohen, Georgette Frazier, Mel Miller and Charles Sandmel who have entered retirement. And active advisors like Dwain Gump and Chris McHugh, Jim Horlacher, Harry Moran, Pam Brandt, Scott Buttfield and Jim Frazin who have each been with us well over 25 years.

Also, in the industry; Tim Smith, Mark Regier, Hal Brill, Michael Kramer, Justin Conway, Leslie Samuelrich and Erin Gray, Bob Helmuth, Anthony Eames, Jon Hale, Alisa Gravitz, Rebecca Adamson, Frank Coleman, Lisa Woll…The list goes on and on. I value each one of you that I have come to know and respect in this industry more than you can ever imagine.

Beyond West Point’s motto of “Duty, Honor, Country” there is, from the Cadet Prayer: “Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretense ever to diminish. Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.”

51 years ago I also swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” I never suspected that I might have to figure out how to fulfil that oath this late in my life.

For my dad, who supported everything I did from Little League and Boy Scouts to every team at my high school, I learned “neither rain nor wind nor sleet nor hail shall stay this courier from his duly appointed rounds.”

And equally present, my mom, who found a way to be an expert in everything that was important to her, from Golden Retrievers to our family genealogy and gave me the gift of the desire for lifelong learning.

And from my mother’s favorite poem, by Frank Dempster Sherman:

It is my joy in life to find
At every turning of the road
The strong arm of a comrade kind
To help me onward with my load

But since I have no gold to give,
And love alone must make amends
My only prayer is while I live,
“God, make me worthy of my friends.”

To you, my friends, thank you.

About the Joan Bavaria Award

The Joan Bavaria Award honors leaders who embody the collaborative and innovative spirit of Joan Bavaria, who co-founded both US SIF and Trillium Asset Management. Bavaria was instrumental in creating the CERES Principles (originally the Valdez Principles) following the Exxon Valdez oil spill and was a pioneer in bringing environmental and social considerations into investment decision-making.

Previous recipients of this prestigious award include Napoleon Wallace of The Southern Reconstruction Fund, Sr. Patricia Daly of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment, Christiana Figueres of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and in 2024, Joy Anderson, Suzanne Biegel (posthumously), and Jackie VanderBrug for their work in Gender Lens Investing.

George Gay joined First Affirmative Financial Network over 35 years ago and founded SRI in the Rockies in 1990, later known as ESG! For Impact. His career has been dedicated to providing clients with values-aligned investment solutions and creating educational opportunities for sustainable investors across the United States.

George Gay’s recognition with this award cements his legacy as one of the foundational figures in sustainable investing, someone who has spent over three decades building the community infrastructure that continues to advance this vital field today.

Read more: Young investors are demanding real ESG accountability