Tariq Fancy, former CIO for Sustainable Investing, BlackRock, Author, and Founder of Rumie

Tariq is a renowned investor and entrepreneur, leading voice for ESG reform. Formerly BlackRock’s CIO for Sustainable Investing, and author of contrarian essay “The Secret Diary of a Sustainable Investor” that went viral in 2021. He is the Founder of Rumie, which pioneered ‘microlearning’ for mobile phones and is today used by millions of youth in over 200 countries, including girls in Afghanistan.

Tariq's unique perspective and experience give him unparalleled insights into arguably the most important challenge for global capitalism today: how to merge sustainability and social imperatives with traditional business models focused purely on profit. He has served as a successful investor, hands-on turnaround specialist, and entrepreneur, has lived and worked across North America, Europe, and Asia, and speaks four languages.

In 2018 and 2019, he served as BlackRock’s first-ever Global Chief Investment Officer for Sustainable Investing. After leaving he began publishing op-eds challenging the ESG status quo, culminating in a 2021 viral essay entitled “The Secret Diary of a Sustainable Investor” that argued that business leaders are “answering inconvenient truths with convenient fantasies.” The essay was called ‘riveting’ by the Economist and sparked a growing backlash against widespread ESG industry practices that constitute greenwashing with little to no real-world impact.

Tariq found himself at the nexus of capitalism’s attempt to merge profit and purpose after a genuine foray across both extremes. On the ‘purpose’ side, from 2013 to 2017 he founded and built Rumie, an award winning digital non-profit that pioneered smartphone-based ‘microlearning’ that is used today by millions in over 200 countries – including by Afghan girls to learn safely from anywhere on a mobile phone. As of 2023, Rumie’s learner base is growing exponentially with improved learning outcomes and exciting new evidence that it is replacing social media time for youth in North America. Rumie is a graduate of Y-Combinator, the elite tech incubator that also produced Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit, is winner of Google’s National Impact Challenge, and is the subject of a 2016 Harvard Business School case study.