Aligning capital with climate, communities, and long-term value

December 2025

Insights from Meketa’s Mission-Driven Investing Day.

Institutional investors today are navigating a landscape shaped by rising expectations. Clients, beneficiaries, and communities increasingly expect capital to do more than deliver risk-adjusted returns. They want portfolios that contribute to climate resilience, strengthen local economies, and support long-term societal well-being. This shift raises an essential question for allocators: how do you design a mission-driven investment program that aligns financial objectives with an organization’s values and priorities?

Building such a program requires more than adopting a framework or adding a thematic sleeve. It calls for integrating investment beliefs, community context, operational constraints, and long-term impact goals into a coherent portfolio approach. It also demands clarity around the tools, partnerships, and decision-making structures that allow mission considerations to sit alongside traditional investment criteria.

These questions shaped the conversation at Meketa’s Mission-Driven Investment Day Roundtable, where Nicholas (Nick) Abel, Investment Director of Sustainable Investment and Stewardship Strategies at California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), and John Balbach, Director of Impact Investments at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (MacArthur Foundation), joined a discussion led by Ryan Decker, Private Markets Consultant at Meketa. Together, they explored how large asset owners translate mission into investment strategy, navigate complexity across markets, and support catalytic solutions with the potential to reshape systems.

From the fiduciary lens of a public pension fund to the catalytic work of a private foundation, their perspectives revealed distinct approaches animated by a shared ambition: unlocking capital in ways that strengthen both portfolios and society