8 September 2026
How many finance professionals are really thinking about post-growth?
Dear friends,
As summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) winds down and vacations end, we turn our attention to a busy fall ahead of us. The calendar is filling up for Anastasia, Matt, and Steve as we are being invited to speak at more events and contribute to more projects interested in integrating post-growth ideas into finance.
These efforts are starting to bear fruit. The Investments & Wealth review recently published an article on post-growth portfolios written by a wealth manager at Morgan Stanley. More and more people are daring to question the finance fundamentals we previously took for granted. These ideas are starting to catch on.
To get a sense of how widespread this thinking actually is, we will soon be running a global survey to measure financial professionals’ understanding of Ecological Economics and post-growth. If you are part of a membership organization for financial professionals that would be open to sharing the survey with its membership, let us know. More on that project below.
As always, if you have other ideas or feedback, you know where to find us.
Take care and keep caring,
The Team at Arketa Institute
Coming Soon: Post-Growth Survey of Financial Professionals
We have been working with Fred Basso and Dario Krpan at the London School of Economics (LSE) to develop a survey of global financial professionals. The survey will go “in the field” in the next month or two and seeks to gauge the general level of understanding of Ecological Economics and post-growth concepts in our industry. We aim to target a wide range of financial professionals—who are not sustainability professionals—so that we can better understand the “baseline” knowledge of these ideas in our industry.
We are excited to work with the team at LSE due to their experience running similar surveys (see e.g. this study with Giorgos Kallis and Jason Hickel, published in The Lancet Planetary Health) and their expertise in the topics covered by the survey.
Arketa Institute plans to report on the survey’s findings in late 2026 or early 2027. This may also lead to an academic article, published with the support of the LSE team.
Post-growth enters the mainstream Wealth Management conversation
In August, we were pleased to come across an article in Investments & Wealth Review titled: The Post-Growth Perspective: A Client-Aware Framework for Resilient Portfolio Construction. The article was written by Noel Pacarro Brown, CIMA®, CPWA®, Senior Vice President, Financial Advisor at The Conscious Wealth Management Group at Morgan Stanley, one of the largest investment banks and financial services companies in the world.
In her article, Brown makes the case that the world may be moving to a post-growth phase, basing her conclusion on the work of Donnella Meadows, Herman Daly, Gaya Herrington, and others. She then walks through how investors might construct portfolios built for a post-growth economy.
This frank discussion of the realities of a post-growth world is a welcome development, and one we highlighted in our own blog on LinkedIn.
Anastasia Appears on ‘The Moral Footprint’ Podcast
Anastasia recently joined Jeni Miles on her podcast 'The Moral Footprint' to talk about our work, her story, and why you might be closer to an impactful career than you think.
Anastasia and Jeni discuss how Arketa Institute came about, springing from a tension many financial and sustainability professionals feel while working to uphold a system they know is self-destructive. Their conversation also discusses the blind spots built into today's financial markets, the potential of post-growth pensions, and how each of us are uniquely positioned to start seeding systems change.
You can find more of Jeni’s work at Whole Loop Labs, where she supports mission-driven businesses and individuals in shifting towards regenerative business practices.
Calendar: Upcoming Events & Projects
September 25, 16:30-17:30 CEST / 10:30-11:30 EDT: Our next Post-Growth Finance Happy Hour! Drop in anytime to informally discuss Ecological Economics and finance with us. Subscribe or write to us directly to receive the Zoom link.
September 29: We’re bringing together a global network of NGOs that work directly with pension funds to discuss engagement strategy and coordination. Let us know if you know of organizations we should invite.
October 1: Steve and Anastasia will present at the Swiss Association of Actuaries’ 2026 Sustainability in (Re-)Insurance Conference in Zurich, Switzerland.
October 6-8: Steve and Anastasia will be at Building Bridges in Geneva, Switzerland, co-hosting The Pension Paradox deliberative session on Wednesday, October 7th.
October 29: Matt is slated to speak at an event hosted by the Center for Sustainable Business at the University of Pittsburgh.
November 9: Matt will present an update on Arketa Institute’s work to the senior-level changemakers of The Catalyst Network.
November 16-17: Matt will speak at a Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) event in Charlotte on November 17th.
Curious what else we’ve been up to? Check out our news archive.
Arketa Institute for Post-Growth Finance
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Written with love entirely by humans.