Rachel Tronstein - Social Investment Council Profile

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from and what do you do for a living?

I’m an extremely proud native Midwesterner (suburban Detroit) with a thing for outdoor sports, Pistons’ basketball, and social change. I work at the Clinton Global Initiative, which is a project of the Clinton Foundation. At CGI, I work to stimulate and expand member’s work in the fields of energy and climate change.

Why did you get involved with Echoing Green and our Social Investment Council? How have you been involved?

All the folks I kept running into doing really smart work had their start as Echoing Green Fellows. I figured that the organization had to know what it was doing in terms of identifying talent and innovative solutions, and I was eager to learn more about the approach and help out. For the past two years I’ve reviewed applications, which is a great way to get a sense of what’s happening on the ground. I’ve also been working with current and former fellows like Gary Kosman of America Learns (http://www.americalearns.net) and Felix Lloyd of Cents City (http://www.centscity.com). Gary and Felix have both developed really innovative web-based platforms that are being used to improve American education.

What is your social change passion?

Integrating social imperatives into corporate operating activities. We’re seeing all these great examples of business models that integrate social, economic, environmental, and ethical factors once considered ancillary to corporate interest. As someone who is impact-oriented, these new commercially viable solutions strike me as efficient models that more accurately account for the longer-term significance of social issues to corporate success. It also means that business will probably continue to leverage its immense resources towards social good irrespective of changing economic situations.

What is your favorite song/movie/book of all time?

It’s near impossible to choose just one in any of these categories. So….

Book: The Whiz Kids by John Byrne, Candide, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Song: Street Hassle by Lou Reed, Superman by The Clique, Oh Yoko by John Lennon, Foggy Notion by Velvet Underground, and Monkey’s Gone to Heaven by The Pixies

Movie: The Right Stuff, Iron Man, Manhattan, and Animal House