Monday, July 6, 2026

County Retirement Association to Get Briefing will on How Environmental, Social and Governance Affect Impact Investments

Trustees on the committee that oversees corporate governance for the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association will hear a research briefing in Pasadena on Wednesday from MSCI on how environmental, social and governance factors relate to investment returns.

The item, set for the July 8 meeting of LACERA’s Corporate Governance Committee and Board of Investments, is educational only — it carries no motion, vote or policy proposal. The presentation was recommended by Principal Investment Officer Scott Zdrazil in a June 26 memo reviewed by Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Grabel.

The speaker, Julia Morello, is executive director of MSCI Research & Development, where she leads a team within the firm’s newly created Emerging Risk function, studying how climate, artificial intelligence and geopolitical risk show up in company-level data. She joined MSCI in 2009 through its acquisition of RiskMetrics Group. Before her current post, she was head of sector and thematic research at MSCI, leading a team of sector, regulatory and carbon experts with a particular focus on ESG Ratings research. Earlier, she built the methodology behind the Access to Medicine Index and coordinated a World Health Organization report on global medicine access. She holds a Master of Public Health from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree from Skidmore College, where she focused on organic synthesis and chemistry.

LACERA’s own investment policy states that sustainability and governance factors “may present investment risks and opportunities,” and that how much any one factor matters financially depends on the industry, geography and time horizon involved. The fund pursues its governance approach through proxy voting, direct engagement with companies, industry collaboration, policy advocacy and investment due diligence.

Why it matters: LACERA is the largest county retirement system in the country, serving current and retired Los Angeles County employees. As of June 30, 2025, the fund’s assets were valued at $85.2 billion; more recent reporting puts total assets under management at $90.8 billion as of March 31, 2026.

The briefing arrives amid heightened national scrutiny of ESG investing at public pensions. In February, the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee sent a letter to CalPERS, the state’s largest public pension fund, questioning its investments in a clean-energy private equity fund whose value fell from $468 million committed since 2007 to about $138 million as of March 31, 2025. That controversy involves CalPERS, not LACERA; no comparable inquiry or investment loss tied to LACERA’s ESG approach was found in the public record.

LACERA’s Corporate Governance Committee last met on this topic Oct. 8, 2025, when staff reviewed the fund’s fiscal year 2025 proxy voting results and stewardship initiatives. The committee is chaired by Trustee Shawn R. Kehoe, with Elizabeth Ginsberg as vice chair.

The meeting begins at 8 a.m. Wednesday at LACERA’s offices, 300 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena.