Adam Torres and Troy Duffie discuss inclusive capitalism.
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Show Notes:
In this episode, Adam Torres and Troy Duffie, Director, Financial Markets at Milken Institute, explore inclusive capitalism and the HBCU Fellows Program.
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About Troy Duffie
Troy Duffie is a director of MI Finance at the Milken Institute and has a background in venture capital, social impact investing, and affordable housing. Prior to his role at the Institute, Duffie held numerous roles at S&P Global and worked as a climate tech and social impact investor at NextEra Energy Investments, the corporate venture arm for NextEra Energy, the largest generator of renewable energy in North America. As a proud HBCU alumnus, Duffie serves as head of the Milken Institute’s HBCU Strategic Initiative and Fellows Program and, in partnership with eight HBCUs, connects students with resources, soft skills, and internships with asset managers. Duffie has conducted independent research in Ghana, China, and Cuba around the importance of equitable investment and the impacts of globalization on “non-Westernized” cultures. As a passionate advocate for affordable housing, he has partnered with startups, local governments, and community development corporations to alleviate the affordable housing shortage across the US and Canada. Currently, Duffie serves as chairman of the board of the St. John Community Development Corporation, a multimillion-dollar not-for-profit developer of affordable housing in South Florida and is leading a team to create a faith-based 501(c)(3) to advocate for and build affordable housing in the Denver Metropolitan Area. Duffie received his MS in finance and BA in economics and community development from Howard University.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and I’m proud to say, Hey, we are at the Milken 2024 Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. And my guest today, Troy Duffy is on the show. Troy, I didn’t get to, I didn’t get to talk to you last year. I know you’re one of the Milken experts.
Hey, first off, just welcome to the show. Thank you, man. I’m so happy to be here. You have a great first name. That’s my middle name, Adam. Come on, man. Firstborn. That’s how we do it. You can’t go wrong with some Adams. That’s what I say. I met an Adam yesterday same thing. I said the same thing, man. You got a great first name.
He was like, our parents were lazy, the first name. And then they just gave us the, Hey, it’s a win. They were strategic. Right. That’s what I was trying to spin it. He wouldn’t, he didn’t want to be spun, man. Oh, I’ll take it. Well, first off Milken, Milken Conference, your role as a director. How’d you get here?
Talk to me. Yeah, man. So my story starts in Miami, Florida. I grew up in Miami between really two different communities. I grew up and was born in a community called North Miami Beach and then spent the majority of my time both, you know, every day via church and nonprofit stuff in a community called Overtown.
Over town, if you’re not familiar with the city of Miami is not unlike, you know, West Baltimore or not unlike the south side of Chicago, not unlike Harlem, you’re at this you know, historically thriving African American community that because of federal policies and you know, eminent domain words, I didn’t understand growing up.
It became, you know, community that was riddled by crime and blight. After being a community that was really the, the pinnacle of the Harlem Renaissance, Overtown literally was called the Harlem of the South. And so I was traveling as a kid from North Miami beach to 15 minute drive every single, every single day.
And I was at five, six, seven years old. I could notice the differences between the community I lived in the community. I served in a community where my friends and my cousins and where I went to church, right? How different that was. Raise those questions. And by like the time I was 15 years old or so, I had language to explain it, right?
I had an imminent domain and you know, urban renewal. I had some of the language that I now use to kind of explain the explain the situation away. So I make the kind of conscious decision. to go to Howard University major in economic development. And most of my life has been trying to use finance and the tools around finance to change the world.
Right. And and so that’s how I got to the Milken Institute. I was a, I was an investor who I wanted to have a bigger impact on the world and have a wider outreach. And the Milken Institute, you know, was a, was a wonderful partnership in that. A lot of our work here is focused on inclusive capitalism, right?
And so you know, not just thinking about communities in terms of what I do in my night job, but in my day job is thinking about you know, capital allocators. How do you get as many people as possible? Women, people of color, indigenous folks, people from around the world involved in the financial system.
How do you ensure they get access to capital? So I like math. Because it doesn’t have an opinion like data because it doesn’t have an opinion. The data shows that when you have a more inclusive environment, a more diverse workforce, more diverse investment team, that it actually leads to better performance.
So if you’re a fortune 100 company, if you’re a fortune 500 company, this is something that shouldn’t matter to you. If you’re a capital allocator, if you are somebody who is an investment manager, Right. This is something that should matter. And so we spend a lot of time in research and policy on that area.
How did you first learn about milking? Like the brand, the conferences, I’ll tell you how I did my milking story. You’re going to laugh. I walked in here by accident. It was like nine, nine years ago. I was just nine years. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like it is now, but it was amazing then too, by the way. But you used to be able to get into the lobby without, like, I was just walking to meet a buddy, you know, have, have a cocktail.
And I’m like, what’s this conference going on? I’m looking around. I’m like, wow, that’s amazing. Yeah. That was my first, I was just in the lobby and I didn’t really actually know everything. And then I was like, wait, was that will. I am. I just saw that just walk by and like this. And then I’m like, wow, that’s amazing.
And then I got acclimated and understood and started attending. But, but how’d you find out just about milking in general? I didn’t, I knew who the person was, but I didn’t know about the conference. I just lived down the street. That was all I found out. No man, I, it’s twofold. So one is You know, Michael Milken himself.
So I, I read the book and just kind of stumbled upon who he was why should white guys have all the fun? It’s a Reginald Lewis’s autobiography. And he mentions this character, Michael Milken, I don’t know, 25 times in the book. Wow. And at some point I’m like, who is Michael Milken? I had no idea. That’s amazing.
I know you’re a finance guy too. So I get it. I get it. Yeah. This was like, you know, whatever, 10 years ago, the book, the book’s been out for 40 years. So. And I, I’m like, you know, who is this guy ? And so I look him up, I’m like, oh my God, this guy is amazing. And, you know, in all the news articles and everything, of course it was a really interesting kind of discovery.
And then I was at a job and my boss really wanted to go to the Milken conference. Mm-Hmm. And you know, he was discussing, this is my boss at the time was on, is on the board of the company. Mm. And he sees the ticket price. He said, oh, we can’t spend that on a ticket. Said, well, how much are the tickets?
How much tickets were? And I was like. Whoa. for a conference. . Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so that was how I discovered both the conference and then the the institute and the and Mike Milken, you know, kind of . Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. I, I love it. I love, I love hearing everybody’s like story on how they first stumbled upon this.
Yeah. Because, but why, I mean. I the other side now with the institute and otherwise, but why do you feel like to kind of get a pay it forward question? Why should people be at this conference? There’ll be other executives, other entrepreneurs, other movers out there that, that are just stumbling upon this interview for the first time.
Like, and they’re going to say the same thing. Why? Yeah. So I would say that folks from around the world invest in the Milken Institute Globe conference because it’s an investment as a ticket, as a sponsor. Because they know that it’s going to be time well spent. I saw a lot done in a couple of days.
The people you meet, the people that you, it’s unlike anything else. And that right there is why it really has the value that it does. I was sitting with you know one of our, one of our sponsors for our HBCU program earlier today, and he does conferences for a living. It’s effectively, you know, who he is and what he does.
It’s a big part of his portfolio. Yeah. 50, 000 people, 150, 000 people on both sides of his conferences. And he says, I hate when my time is wasted. And this was time well spent. People from around the world come here and they know that they can do their fundraising. They can do their relationship building.
They can do their marketing in one place and not have to spend six months doing it. You can do it in a week and know that, Hey, I’m going to be here on the front side of Milken. I’m going to be able to hear on the backside of Milken. And just go really deep with folks and know that I’ll get some, get some work done.
So I think there’s, there’s a lot of tremendous value. And then I, I’d say secondarily, you know, there are a lot of finance conferences that are just finance conferences. Yeah. You know, they talk about private credit, talk about private equity, talk about hedge funds and you go home. There aren’t topics we aren’t afraid to cover.
So whether it’s DEI, whether it’s anti semitism, whether it’s gun violence, right? There’s a there’s a willingness to kind of go where no other financial conference will go. Yeah, and so you’re gonna feel like it leads to trends. Yeah, even I heard that that got that the gun issue was added this year. Mm hmm.
Yeah, and Added by our CEO, moderated by our CEO, you know, on his panel. And so it tells you where the leadership and the thought is coming from. And it’s, I think this idea of like demystifying topics that seems so polarizing that actually there are a wide swath of human beings on the planet that care about, and that we have a chance in talking about it, we have a chance to change things.
So you mentioned the HBCU program. Like, like, let’s go a little bit further. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, man. So I actually came here just for the HBCU program. That was, I was looking to do something different. And I’m an HBCU graduate. For those who don’t know, HBCUs are historically black colleges and universities.
And historically black colleges and universities were really started after the civil war to educate formerly enslaved africans Right, and the idea was, you know, they needed a space in a place where They would be brought up to speed and so a lot of them education around, you know, welding and agriculture, right?
If you weren’t you know, in the fields, they were doing basic education around literacy. And they’ve, they’ve become these pinnacles of African American. And now I think just success in general is really African American success. But. But I, I went to school at Howard. So I went to school with kids from Nepal and from South Korea.
Right. So HBCUs are incredibly diverse kids from Nigeria, from Ghana, from South Africa, from London, right? It, it brings people from across the world. But we launched this HBCU program, the Milken Institute just what we talked about earlier about this power of convening, that if you get people in this place you know, the Milken Institute Global Conference and the Milken Network writ large, you really can change things.
In a very real way. And so the HBCU program, how it works, I’ll be brief. We, we launched last year 2023 with 16 fellows from what we consider regionally diverse HBCUs. And so what that means is that we got students from across the country from various HBCUs and we educate them on private equity, on hedge funds, on venture capital, really what we call demystifying Wall Street.
Yeah. Yeah. And once we’ve done that, we provide them with internship opportunities, opportunities. Sponsorship opportunities and they get a chance to travel to conferences. So much of the world of finance is relationship based. And so traveling to a conference like the Milken is a global conference, but they’ve been to a ton of others and San Diego and Las Vegas and New York.
in the Hamptons, right, is building their network really early on with each other. And then in a larger community. And so it’s a really significant program. We have 20 students this year who were at the conference with us. Wow. That’s amazing. How does, what that, can you imagine, like take you back to college and take you back to those days and you were one of those 20 students.
It’s life changing. And where would you be? Where would you be right now had you gotten that start at 20 years old? That’s life changing. You know? The connections, the contacts, being there, that’s amazing. And the ability for them to pay it forward and to help bring others into that. It’s amazing. Man, and I think what’s so incredible about these students is that you know, when you talk to them, it’s never about making money.
Yeah. It’s never about getting rich, which is probably what I thought. It’s another, no, that’s another generation. If you were looking, if you’re in the, depending on what, what, what spectrum of the millennium or Gen X or any of that. No. When I, I went into finance, that’s my previous career. I’ve been in media eight years now, but before that 14 years in finance and I got into finance to make money.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s what we did. For them, it’s changing their community, man. That’s amazing. For them, it’s like, in every interview, every conversation, I want to take this back to my parents. I want to make sure that I’m able to take the lessons that I’ve learned to make sure that my family doesn’t experience poverty that I experienced growing up.
It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s been an incredible privilege of my life to lead this program. That’s amazing. So going into, you know, we’re in we’re in May and we got a lot of months left. What are you excited about this year? Well, how’s the rest of the year? Like let’s, we’re dreamers out here, by the way, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of, a lot of investors, a lot of people that watch this, give me some dreams.
Like what’s the rest of the year look like for you? Yeah. So, I mean, I would say I’m committed to leveraging the Milken network for the betterment of people who are dreamers. And so if there are entrepreneurs, there are diverse investors. There are people of color there emerging managers who are trying to, you know, scale and find access to space like this.
I think there’s a, a deep commitment that’s personal, a deep commitment from the top of the, of the house that’s just based on that. And so the idea behind inclusive capitalism means we have to live it out. And so a big part of that is like trying to make that actionable. I’ll tell you a little bit about what we’ve done so far and tell you where we want to go.
So in terms of what we’ve done so far, the inclusive capitalism program was launched. Thank you. So maybe three years ago or so, and we launched with an executive council. Executive council has about 22 members asset managers, asset allocators, some, you know, phenomenal foundations, endowments university, university endowments, pension plans and then we have some asset managers and they kind of spectrum.
We have some very large asset managers, some of the largest in the world and Blackstone and, or excuse me, in BlackRock and Carlisle and Aries and Apollo. And then some, you know middle market firms like Davidson Kempner, and then some diverse and emerging firms like Trident and 1863 Ventures. And the idea behind it is to not have what my boss would call the hall of mirrors, right?
We got, the largest allocator and the largest asset managers, you wouldn’t get anything done. And so it’s to have a diversity of perspective around how to ship the asset manager asset management industry forward. Within all of that context, we’ve produced two white papers. One has gotten picked up by the treasury department.
Amazing. And so they’re using it. Congrats, by the way. That’s a big deal. Thank you. It’s hard. Thank you. And I think it’s, People don’t think that, like, research makes a difference. Research goes, you know, on a shelf somewhere. We say, ah, you know, why you, why you focus on that? But it becomes a, a tool. It becomes an arrow and a quiver that a policy maker can go back and pull and say, Hey, we’re doing this that’s based on data.
Right. We’re going to change this system or this policy or we’re going to push something forward based on data. And so I think it’s been special and significant to be a part of that. And so, yeah, we’re incredibly grateful for that. And then in terms of, you know, what does that look like going forward?
I think building programs very similar to the HBCU program, internally based on data that leverages the Milken network for good. And I think that, you know you know, undoubtedly there’s some some talk around the Milken Institute Global Conference. In terms of reputation, but I’m here to tell you that there are people who are working every day to kind of remind people How we’re leveraging that network who we’re bringing into the room how we’re trying to platform nonprofits and foundations Not just of the of the biggest and the highest order But of the smallest order and that comes from people who are working at the Institute every day To make sure that it’s as inclusive as possible Amazing.
Yeah. Well, Troy, it has been great having you on the show today. I want you to look in the camera and tell everyone how they can follow, how they can learn more and how they can get involved. Yeah. Everything we’re doing I do this every day. Go to Milken Institute, inclusive capitalism. Just Google it.
Just Google it. You’ll see the panels we’ve done. You’ll see the papers we’ve produced. We’ve done some great fireside chats. I’m on LinkedIn at Troy Duffy. You can type my name in and my picture will come right up. Then I’m not really on Twitter or X or whatever it’s called nowadays. Ah, nobody knows.
It’s okay. You know, Elon was at the conference, but you know, he was, he was, we appreciate we appreciate that free content. That’s been great. I was speaking to some of my my colleagues earlier today and they were like, it was, he was, there was, it was no controversy and we got great footage out of it.
So that’s awesome. Yeah. Thank you. For everybody listening we’ll put all the links in the show notes so that you can check out Troy’s work and connect and don’t forget hit that subscribe button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new interviews and new content, speaking of good content and Troy, thank you so much for coming out.
It’s been a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
