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INVESTING INSIGHTS
AT WILLIAM BLAIR

Blake Pontius, CFA

Director of Sustainable Investing

Blake Pontius, CFA, is director of sustainable investing. In this role, he coordinates the firm’s integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in its investment processes and provides ESG research support to the global equity team. Blake also leads the firm’s ESG leadership team. Previously at William Blair, he was a global portfolio specialist and institutional client relationship manager. Before joining William Blair in 2005, Blake worked at UBS Asset Management and Mercer. He is a board member of Easterseals DuPage & Fox Valley, and a member of CFA Institute and CFA Society Chicago. In addition, Blake holds the SASB Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) credential and the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing. He received a B.A. in economics, with honors, from Michigan State University and an M.B.A. in finance, with distinction, from DePaul University.

Embedding ESG Factors Into Strategic Decision Making

Blake Pontius, CFA
Global Equity

Companies are increasingly embedding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into their strategic decision making, and certain companies are generally more favorably exposed to these trends—including companies in the building materials and consumer-related industries. Watch...

COVID-19 Drives ESG Demand

Blake Pontius, CFA
Global Equity

Investor demand for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration has increased rapidly across regions and asset classes in recent years and is now poised to accelerate in the wake of COVID-19. To help frame the...

China’s ESG Transformation

Blake Pontius, CFA
Global Equity

China is the world’s worst polluter, so why feature it in a series about the critical but underappreciated value of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in emerging markets? It’s also the world’s largest investor...

Why ESG Matters in Emerging Markets

Blake Pontius, CFA
Global Equity

The January 2019 collapse of a Brazilian mine tailings dam—which released 11.7 million cubic meters of toxic mud, killed at least 150 people, and led to a corruption probe—underscores the critical but underappreciated value of...

Is Sustainability Sustainable?

Blake Pontius, CFA
Global Equity

Given investors’ surging interest in combining financial return objectives with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors—a concept known as “blended value”—some may be tempted to dismiss this as a transient trend.1 But our journey to...

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