{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller: the Virtuous Cycle of a Successful City","description":"In this episode of Capital for Good with we speak with Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller and recent Mayoral candidate. As Comptroller, Lander serves as the city\u2019s chief financial officer, budget watchdog, auditor, and custodian of the City\u2019s five public pension funds, representing the retirement security \u2014 $275 billion in assets \u2014 of over 750,000 current and retired public sector workers. As fiduciary, Lander has ensured these assets are invested with a prudent, diversified, long-term approach, while also becoming a national leader on responsible investment when it comes to issues of climate change, worker protections, strong governance, and diversity. At the time of this interview, ranked choice voting had just concluded for the Democratic primary for New York mayor, with Zohran Mamdani winning in an upset over both Lander and former Governor Andrew Cuomo. We begin the conversation with Lander\u2019s early days working in community and economic development at the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center, where he learned how to use \u201ccapital for good:\u201d creative financing for affordable housing, including new ownership and equity models for wealth creation for lower income families, small business support and job training. These issues would inform Landers\u2019 decade in the City Council, where he co-founded the Progressive Caucus and advanced legislation on workers\u2019 rights, tenant protections, affordable housing, education, and public safety. We also explore Lander\u2019s work leading the rezoning of the Gowanus neighborhood (and former Superfund site) to create 8,500 new housing units, nearly half affordable, and affordable art studios and community spaces, as a successful model of inclusive development.  Lander discusses the Comptroller\u2019s \u201cmost sacred responsibility:\u201d its role as fiduciary of the city\u2019s pension funds, and Lander\u2019s work to deliver retirement security \u2014 achieve market rate returns \u2014 while stewarding resources \u201cin ways that build on the values New Yorkers share.\u201d We walk through a number of examples where the Comptroller\u2019s engagement as asset owner led to better conditions for workers, greater accountability on corporate net zero commitments, enhanced board oversight, and improved financial returns. His office has also hit its performance targets while expanding the diversity of partner fund managers. \u201cI believe firmly that attending to environmental, social and governance risks, the ESG work, is not just consistent with fiduciary duty, but an essential part of fiduciary duty,\u201d Lander says. In recent years he has worked closely on these issues with other comptrollers and state treasurers across the country. We touch on the New York City mayoral race, the twist and turns of ranked choice voting, and the developments just before the June primary that brought additional attention to the election: Lander\u2019s arrest escorting a migrant out of immigration court, the Office of the Comptroller\u2019s recovery of $80 million illegally removed from a New York City account by DOGE, and Lander and Mamdani\u2019s cross-endorsement. Of the latter, Lander notes, \u201cit wound up unlocking a very lovely response I hadn\u2019t anticipated,\u201d a kind of hopefulness, as voters and young people especially saw that \u201cpolitics can involve people working together towards shared goals for the city we love.\u201d Lander is clear eyed about the very real challenges facing the New York: affordability, government capacity to deliver a well-run city \u2014 to keep streets and subways safe and clean \u2014 and to manage budgets and growth in the face of significant headwinds from Washington. This means continuing to strengthen the cross-sector coalition he ran on to create what Dan Doctoroff has called \u201cthe virtuous cycle of a successful city,\u201d one that harnesses and celebrates growth while investing in the public goods that make that growth possible and more inclusive, and make opportunity and prosperity more broadly shared. If we can do that, he says, \u201cI know we can keep that virtuous cycle going.\u201d Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good\u202fon\u202fApple,\u202fAmazon,\u202fGoogle,\u202fSpotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at\u202fsocialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu.  Mentioned in this podcast: This Is Brad Lander\u2019s New York, (New York Times, 2025) For the Long Term Who Should Lead New York City?, (New York Times, 2025) ","author_name":"Capital for Good","author_url":"http:\/\/tamerinstitute.libsyn.com\/website","html":"