Q&A with Joe Sanberg: A journey from Wall Street to activism
Joe Sanberg, co-founder of Aspiration, went from Wall Street to activism and funded The L.A. Trust COVID-19 Youth Task Force this summer.
Joe Sanberg is an entrepreneur, philanthropist and activist. After graduating from Harvard, he became a Wall Street analyst but left because he disliked working in an industry that “totally divorced service from profit.” He invested in start-ups like the meal delivery service Blue Apron. In 2013 he co-founded Aspiration, Inc., a socially conscious financial services company. Sanberg was instrumental in establishing the California Earned Income Tax Credit in 2015 and founded CalEITC4Me, one of the state’s largest anti-poverty programs. Introduced to The L.A. Trust by Emily Kane of Ethos Giving, he funded the COVID-19 Youth Task Force, implemented by The L.A. Trust, L.A. Unified, and the UCLA Department of Community Health Science, Fielding School of Public Health.
Q. You grew up in Southern California, attended Harvard and worked as a Wall Street analyst. What prompted you to become a socially conscious investor and anti-poverty activist?
A. The values that my mom instilled in me as a young person. And my brother telling me, when I was 29, that my 18-year-old self wouldn’t like the person that I had become. The fact that I had become disconnected from my core values sparked me to reconnect with the person my mom raised me to be and with what I believe my purpose in this world is.
Q. COVID-19 struck communities of color especially hard. How do healthcare, education, income inequality and racism contribute to poor health outcomes?
A. Most of all, what the Covid-19 pandemic showed us is that the lie we’ve been told that we, as a nation, can’t afford to do transformational things has always been a lie. We can afford to do all the things we need to do to end poverty, provide healthcare and root out systemic racism from our institutions, we just lack the political will to do so. We saw that when it came to rescuing corporations, there was no scarcity of trillions of dollars worth of bailouts for them, which is yet another reminder that the United States has what it needs to create financial security, justice and fairness for all its citizens. This is the fourth major instance within a century through which we’ve been reminded that there’s no scarcity of resources in this country. We were reminded when the economy was bailed out after the market crash in the early part of the 20th century. We were reminded when we spent trillions of dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were reminded when the government bailed out Wall Street banks during the 2008 financial crisis. And we were reminded yet again during the Covid-19 pandemic that the reason we are not providing justice, fairness and economic security for all is not because we can’t afford to do so, it’s because the government has chosen not to do so.
Q. We mentioned Harvard and Wall Street, but you were raised by a single mom in very modest circumstances. Why are so many Americans trapped in intergenerational poverty?
A. So many Americans are trapped in intergenerational poverty because of our system. Our system is designed to trap people in poverty, not help them get out of it. Our system and our tax code are designed to ensconce wealth in the hands of those who already have it, which definitionally, also ensconces the legacies of racism, misogyny and slavery that go back to our nation’s founding. Our country was founded with slavery encoded into its laws; with the inability of women to vote and own property. Our tax code is prejudiced in favor of legacy wealth. Our system makes concrete the very injustices that go back to our nation’s founding.
Q. You’ve said you quit Wall Street because it “divorced service from profit.” How have you managed to link service and profit as an investor?
A. I don’t think of myself as an investor; I think of myself as an entrepreneur and business builder. And as an entrepreneur, I create organizations whose success is connected to the value they deliver to their stakeholders, their customers, their employees and their communities. How do we remarry profit and purpose? There’s nothing wrong with making money as long as you’re delivering value to people. What’s gone wrong on Wall Street is that profit has become its own purpose.
Q. In addition to income inequality, you’re passionate about the environment. This is really a social justice issue, since people of color live in communities subjected to the worst pollution. How do we work for environmental justice?
A. We work for environmental justice by innovating in both the public and private sectors and by applying pressure on businesses and government to radically reduce carbon emissions here in the United States and around the world. Solving the climate crisis is going to require innovation -- the creation of new things that perform in new ways. But it’s also going to require changing behaviors we are accustomed to, like reducing how much we drive gasoline-powered vehicles and how much fossil fuels we burn to create energy. We need the next generation to create new companies and organizations that do not plunder the planet for profit but utilize sustainable resources. We need you! And remember, there is no environmental justice without racial and economic justice, and there’s no racial and economic justice without environmental justice. The communities that are hardest hit by injustices are those that have the least power. Injustice is about a power imbalance, and so we must empower young people to join together and use their voices and their resources to demand change.
Q. If you could flip a switch and just change one big thing, what would it be?
A. That every person would have free healthcare.
Q. You’re only 42. What do you want to do with the rest of your life? What would you like your legacy to be?
A. I’d like my legacy to be that I did everything I possibly could, as sincerely and effectively as I could, with my God-given time and abilities, to end poverty. I want to be able to look back on my life and know that there was nothing I could have done that I didn't do.