In Memoriam Valery Lucas-Leclin
It is with great sadness that we learnt about the passing of Valery Lucas-Leclin.
Valery was the Head of Index Research at Wilshire Indexes and one of the pioneers of sustainable finance research over a career spanning 25 years [1].
We can claim the immense honour of working with Valery at our inception, he was our first prospect and championed us to shape and sharpen our understanding of controversial investment screening.
In one of our very first exchanges, I remember him challenging the name BigTXN, saying that it was hard to remember and I then recall Valery telling us he had named his startup Grizzly RI, a company he sold to Beyond Ratings in 2018. He jokingly went on to say that the name of his startup was memorable because it was scary!
Valery had a wonderful sense of humour and he recognised when and where he needed to step in as a mentor, a quality that proved invaluable for the first steps of BigTXN — his opinions about data, index products and research were sincere as much as they were brutally honest, Valery did not hold back.
My most memorable moment, was to be challenged by Valery to produce a screening dataset for UNGC compliance of Paris Aligned Benchmarks. His challenge morphed into a 72hr marathon mapping of one of our datasets to an ISO methodology — resulting in an output data product, which Valery fondly referred to as ‘beautiful data’. He was upfront with a compliment as soon as he saw carefully considered research. The thing that Valery once referred to as ‘beautiful data’ was inspired by his suggestion, and that creation eventually became BigTXN’s UNGC Screening Solution.
Regrettably, I never had the opportunity to meet Valery in person, but his influence on our success is immeasurable. As a critical thinker, he pushed us to ask tough questions and challenge our assumptions. As a mentor he provided positive reinforcement and helped us to think ahead about the value of what we were producing.
Valery’s legacy will inspire us for many years to come and his name will always be remembered at BigTXN.
Haider Mannan (Founder & CEO) — BigTXN
[1] https://www.responsible-investor.com/sustainable-finance-pioneer-valery-lucas-leclin-dies/
