ZineZone Amy Domini: interview

Amy Domini

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ZZ: Let's start at the beginning. How did you become interested in money?

AD: I'm 49 years old. I came of age during the Vietnam War. I was a teenager during Civil Rights. The concept of working on Wall Street was not on my radarscope until about 1973, the year I graduated from college. That year was the first time that it ever occurred to me that I had to earn a living after college. So I did what a great many women of my generation did, which was take a typing course. And even with the typing course, I couldn't get a job. So I eventually ended up photocopying in a brokerage firm, and from that, became very interested in finance and Wall Street.

I loved the game. I loved the chess-game aspects of finding stocks and understanding them, being better at picking a stock than somebody else -- and I spent ten years as a stockbroker. About halfway through that period, I got to be quite fascinated with the idea that people were making money in a way that conflicted with their personal values set. And, more specifically, I was encouraging people to make money in a way that conflicted with my personal values set. And that began to really bother me. There was a period in there where the defense industry was the hot industry, and that, particularly coming from a Vietnam War protest background, bothered me as a way to encourage people to make money.

I began looking around for ways to find out what companies were involved in industries that I philosophically had a difference of opinion with, and didn't find very many resources, which just amazed me. I could go to American Friends, the Quakers, who are pacifists, and find information about armament manufacturers. And Harvard University was publishing a list of who did business in South Africa. I could find lists here and there, but there was no consolidated resource. And it was really the creation of a consolidated resource for investors who wanted to apply social or ethical criteria to their investing that caused the whole Wall Street picture to come together for me and really catch fire. That was about five years after I became a broker.

So, I spent the first five years loving the game of Wall Street, but without the passion that I had once I began to discover this idea that you might be able to integrate social criteria and then you might actually influence corporate policy.

Next page | "If not you, then no one."

On video: When did Amy start losing her passion for Wall Street?


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