Whitney Tilson
He wrote several books, including The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind, The Art of Value Investing: How the World’s Best Investors Beat the Market, and More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times. He was one of the authors of Poor Charlie’s Almanack, the definitive book on Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, and has written for Forbes, the Financial Times, Kiplinger’s, the Motley Fool and TheStreet.com. He was featured in two 60 Minutes segments in December 2008 about the housing crisis (which won an Emmy) and in March 2015 about Lumber Liquidators, has appeared dozens of times on CNBC, Bloomberg TV and Fox Business Network, was on the cover of the July 2007 Kiplinger’s, has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and has spoken widely on value investing and behavioral finance.
Mr. Tilson spent much of his childhood in Tanzania and Nicaragua (his parents are both educators, were among the first couples to meet and marry in the Peace Corps, and have retired in Kenya). Consequently, Mr. Tilson is involved with a number of charities focused on education reform and Africa.
Regarding the former, Whitney:
- Was among the first people to join Wendy Kopp in 1989 to launch Teach For America.
- Has served for the past dozen years on the board of the KIPP Academy charter school in the South Bronx, which is part of a national network of 200 college prep public charter schools in low-income communities in 20 states and the District of Columbia.
- Is a board member and one of the founders of Democrats for Education Reform, which aims to move the Democratic Party to embrace genuine school reform.
- Is a well-known writer/blogger/commentator on education reform, with columns in the Huffington Post (see his web sites at: www.arightdenied.org and edreform.blogspot.com)
- Authored a 292-slide presentation, A Right Denied: The Critical Need for Genuine School Reform (posted at: www.arightdenied.org) that was made into a documentary by the same name in early 2010.
- Was one of the ~600 children in the famous Marshmallow Test in the early 1970s.
Regarding Africa, Whitney:
- Served on the board of the Fistula Foundation for a decade, which supports the Hamlin Fistula Hospitals in Ethiopia and other fistula hospitals worldwide.
- Was on the board of the Thorn Tree Project and the Samburu Scholarship Fund, which provide educational opportunities for nomadic children in northern Kenya.
He is also on the board of the Pershing Square Foundation, is a member and past Chairman of the Manhattan chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization, and served on the finance committees of Barack Obama and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. For his philanthropic work, he received the 2008 John C. Whitehead Social Enterprise Award from the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York.
Prior to launching his investment career in 1999, he spent five years working with Harvard Business School Professor Michael E. Porter studying the competitiveness of inner cities and inner-city-based companies nationwide. He and Professor Porter founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, of which Mr. Tilson was Executive Director. He also led the effort to create ICV Partners, a national for-profit private equity fund focused on minority-owned and inner-city businesses that has raised nearly $500 million. Before business school, in addition to Teach for America, He spent two years as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group.
Whitney received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, with a bachelor’s degree in Government. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughters.
621: Whitney Tilson, part 3: Talking sustainability with a Harvard-Trained Investment Advisor Who Flies Monthly
In our third conversation, Whitney and I get more friendly and conversational, fun conversation.
He’s been picking up more garbage, which I hope is part of a journey of continual improvement. Since long before we met, he rides his bike to get around the city. Otherwise, he’s focused on other things in life than sustainability. He’s examined a lot of parts of his life, but not his impact on other people mediated through the environment.
I’m not trying to change people who don’t show they want to change, so we just talk. You’ll hear a very thoughtful, active leader speak with me about his views and environmental values.
604: Whitney Tilson, part 2: Overcoming feeling uninformed about the environment to act on it
We start by my reading the emails where I invited Whitney to this podcast by cursing with a few f-bombs, showing how we started our interactions. Before recording our first episode we met in Washington Square Park and picked up litter together.
Read my emails cursing at Whitney Tilson that brought him to my podcast
Whitney shares how he created and maintains his following, speaking his mind, deliberately sharing provocative opinions. He shares how and why he engaged so much on the pandemic. I see that passion raising the potential for him to engage on sustainability, but we’ll see. He became as knowledgeable as anyone I know and led a large number of people on it.
Then we talked about carbon offsets. I shared my Two Carbon Cycle Explanation, though I’ve since simplified it in The simple explanation why offsets don’t work.
We talked about flying. I since found some peer-reviewed numbers, which I posted in Some flying pollution numbers. In the week before recording, he flew round trip to Seattle, Miami, Bahamas, and in the next week Rwanda.
Then he shared his reasons for not engaging on the environment. You’ll recognize them. Remember when he said he was uninformed? On the contrary, I’d say, he learned everything he needed to to justify feeling good about not changing his behavior. Even so, I respect and admire that he engaged in our conversation and started finding ways to act.
591: Whitney Tilson, part 1: Acting on intrinsic motivation versus feeling you have to save the world
Whitney’s background and accomplishments are incredible and we start with them. He shares his beliefs and mindsets that lead to his high performance in business, philanthropy, fitness, family, and more.
Then we share a fun part of how I invited him to this podcast. After he, in a friendly, helpful way, cursed at some of his newsletter readers in criticizing their behavior during the pandemic, I cursed at him in the same friendly, helpful way. The email got his attention. It led to us meeting in person to pick up litter in Washington Square Park (where he saw his first drug deal in the corner with the syringe drug users), then to recording in person at my apartment.
When we spoke on the environment, I heard a common mix: he connected deeply with it, including majestic experiences at some of Earth’s most extreme environments, and he also felt about its problems that he couldn’t do anything meaningful.
My favorite part of my conversation with Whitney was how he put up nearly every form of delay, resistance, and obstacle any other guest has responded to my invitation to act on his environmental values. I believe we were both patient, listened, spoke to be understood. After he found something to act on, you’ll hear the change in his perspective on acting on intrinsic motivation versus what sounded to me like trying to save the world, or feeling you have to, but disconnected from intrinsic motivation.
EDIT: Read my emails cursing at Whitney Tilson that brought him to my podcast