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Joining us right now is Daval.
Patrick is the former governor of Massachusetts and now a senior advisor at the private investment firm the Vistria Group. It's also co director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Daval, great to have you.
Here, and I want to kind of pick up absolutely, and I want to pick up where we left off with our last guest, Mark Lipscholtz. Of course a pioneer in the private credit space. You have a long history in the investment space, particularly on the private equity side, and now of course in your role at the Vistria Group. Here, how is business right now?
Business is good.
You know, we are facing some of the same challenges everyone else is. But because we take a view of long term value, which is, you know, how do you build an economy company by company that is good not just for shareholders as cordon as that is, but also for employees, for members of the community, for the environment. And I think that shift in thinking about capitalism as being more inclusive is exactly what the vistory of Group is about. And frankly, where lots of our trends are pointing.
So from that perspective, I think our prospects are very very good.
Well, can you give us some specific examples of potential investment opportunities with the idea of inclusive capitalism, the idea of making an impact, because I'm sure as you know, Devaul, and we've come a long way over the last four years where everybody seemed to be talking about or reimagining of capitalism, to today where we have this huge pushback where now everyone just wants to keep their head down and not say anything.
Well, I don't know how huge it is.
It may be a few leaders who are trying to keep their heads down, but it takes some courage really to lead us to the next place. And frankly, there are a lot of secular trends, especially from young people, who are insisting that capitalism cannot be just about a few winners and everyone else being losers. That we have to have a way of thinking about value that includes
the interests of all of those affected. And frankly, what we have seen in our own investment here is that there's a premium to be harvested.
For that for everybody.
So we're investing in some sectors that are inherently impactful. That is healthcare for example, knowledge and learning or education generally, financial services, the kinds of things that are fundamental for people being able to lift themselves and their families into the middle class and to sustain themselves there. And we are measuring both financial return and the ways in which we can drive that, and they very much connected social
or environmental impact. And we've been able to deliver both the superior returns and measurable, meaningful and lasting impact. I think that's exactly what capitalism ought to be and can be.
Same time, healthcare plus private equity have equaled a lot of negative headlines in recent years.
And we've seen we've been following that yet.
Yeah, and we've seen regulators take a closer look into this sector and the involvement of private equity firms. What kind of level of screening. What's your sense of regulators devoting resources into looking into private markets and their investments in this space since this is a space you are pretty active.
In, so Scarlet, the first thing I want to say is I want to acknowledge that the regulators and others who are policy bakers have reason to be concerned about what's going on in healthcare. Not all of that is attributable to or because of private equity. We have a really fractured, overly complicated healthcare system that is often about sick care and that healthcare.
So I want to make that point first of all.
Secondly, I think there are a number of proposals we've seen out there, including ones from the federal government, on a set of principles around health private equity and it's involvement in healthcare that frankly, we've been doing already and seem to make sense to us.
We're taking a closer look at them.
We're scrutinizing those and other proposals against our own set of our own playbook, if you will, with respect to how we invest in, why we invest in, what our expectations are of the companies that we invest in in terms of building them from where they are today to where they need to be. But that is what inclusive capitalism is or ought to be about. I think the
best and most effective regulation is not no regulation. It is regulation that is working alongside those of us who are trying to do the right thing and those of who are affected by what we're trying to do to make sure we get things in the right balance.
You know, Deval, given all that you said, and I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but I do want to get your thoughts on the passing recently of someone that I know you were close to and that a lot of us really followed in this space.
And that's the passing on Christopher Adley. I mean, he really sort of espouse for years, for decades, really the idea of how to create a more inclusive economy, a more inclusive society here and I kind of wonder, and forgive me that this is the wrong question, but where are those thought leaders today? Where is that leadership today coming from to sort of push us forward?
You know, first of all, Chris was a teacher and a friend and a colleague of mine. And my heart goes out to his family and to his professional family, which is huge because we're all feeling that loss.
He believed, as I do, that we oughtn't have.
You know, we should be thinking about how to improve our society from the perspective of one sector alone. Right, It's not going to be government alone that solves the big challenges that face humankind. And I say that as someone who was a policymaker and believes in the role of government. It's not going to be the not for
profit sector alone. It's going to take all of us, including the business and commercial sector, and so taking that broader view about how we include and are conscious of and manage around all of the interests that are affected by business and by our commercial interests is critical, and
it is how we will actually solve problems. It's been a false choice for a long time that you had to trade return for impact, that business could just do what it did and only should do what it did to deliver financial return for owners, and the consequences of that would fall on government or the not for profit sector, by the way, all of which we all also pay for today. The scope and scale of our challenges as such, it's going to take all sectors pulling in the same direction.
And that's what inclusive caplism is about. Chris was right about it in his time. I think there are many many of us, including the as yet undiscovered young people, who have been forcing these questions, sometimes in very different language that we have to learn to listen to as well.
All right, Daval, we really appreciate your joining us to day. Daval Patrick is the former governor of Massachusetts, and of course, he is the current co director of the Harvard County School of Central for Public Leadership and the senior advisor of the Vistria Group.