Green Finance Means Sustainability
"I came to Bocconi almost by chance. Initially, I thought about pursuing a medical degree, but at the suggestion of my parents, who kept repeating ‘you’re good at math’, I took the admissions test and then I discovered finance.” Stefania Di Bartolomeo is now the founder and CEO of Physis Investment, a fintech company that operates globally, bringing a new level of transparency to the financial industry and allowing investors to measure and monitor the impact of their investments through data. Thanks to her degree in Economics and Finance from Bocconi University, her Master of Arts in Sustainable Finance from Harvard and a résumé built in both Italy and the Netherlands, she is one of the leading experts in the field of green finance.
Before creating her startup and becoming, in addition to other roles, a guest lecturer at several different universities, Di Bartolomeo had to overcome doubts about the path she chose. She says: "The first years of university were great, I remember the strong sense of community and my relationships with classmates who would later become friends. At a certain point, however, attending classes ranging from derivatives to the construction of portfolios, I felt disconnected, emotionally detached from what I was doing. I didn't want to work in finance in its purely speculative aspect – something was missing." Thanks to some of her professors, she thus approached ethical finance, even though at the time there were no courses or textbooks dedicated to the subject. "I was fascinated by this different purpose of using financial instruments, there was more than just pure maximization of profit. I remember that I was almost self-taught because the literature on the subject was still in its infancy," she adds.
After graduating in 2014, she chose to specialize in the US and attended Harvard. "I was immediately struck by the fact that, in addition to your qualifications, in the admission letter you had to present yourself as an individual and not as a student. They were looking for the leaders of tomorrow and from the first classes it was clear that they were interested in our ideas and the impact we could have on the world."
Little by little, an awareness of wanting to impact the financial world through new metrics was born. Her first work experiences were in Amsterdam, always in the area of sustainability, where she worked for Sustainalytics, and then in Italy as a fund manager for Sella Sgr, the country's first impact fund. "I was just 27 years old and I had to build a portfolio from scratch. I remember that I never stopped studying – if I wanted to be innovative I had to be constantly learning. I often told myself that the things I studied yesterday were already old. And then I made sure to create a support network. Competent people who I could share doubts and strategies with."
All of these experiences came in extremely handy in the creation of Physis. "I was in my 30s and I realized I wanted something different. As a fund manager, I was one of the youngest, and I struggled to get financially rewarded for my work despite the results. In the Italian cultural context, I was told: ‘you can't earn more than a 45-year-old’. And it was unacceptable to me in terms of mentality. The day after my birthday, I decided to leave Italy without having another job lined up." An apparent leap into the void that, however, led her to collaborate with her professors and start consulting for various institutions working in sustainability.
Experience after experience, the idea of a startup took shape and was developed thanks to the US Fintech Sandbox program. Thus was born the platform that today has 15 people and collects useful data to assess a company’s reliability and carry out cross-checks to extrapolate information for supporting investments. With clients in both Europe and the US. "For example, we can know how much C02 a company has consumed or how much water has been recycled in a year. On inclusion, it is possible to know how many women have been hired and in what roles, monitoring the gender gap," she adds.
As a startupper, Di Bartolomeo explains that she has learned a lot: "I had always been convinced that the success of the company depended entirely on me and my team. Then, after the Silicon Valley Bank scandal, where we were clients, I realized that I could also fail due to external causes. That experience, that made us stronger than before, allowed me to grow a lot as an entrepreneur. I understood that, in order to be successful, it is essential to evaluate external risk factors and the context of the market in which you operate.” To any younger women interested in sustainable finance, she therefore gives this advice: "The market has grown a lot and sustainable finance is a world in the making. You can make a difference because there is a need for new talents. There is no shortage of room for us, but you have to believe in your potential."
