The Calvert community

Barbara Krumsiek is president, CEO and vice chairman of Calvert Group, an $8.4 billion investment management company with 29 Mutual Funds. At the 'Spirit in Business' conference in New York she told the story of how, at her interview for the top position with Calvert some five years ago, she mentioned that she and her husband were supporters financially of a number of Buddhist meditation centers in US and Canada. The hiring agent responded, "Calvert Group is founded on the principle of Right Livelihood (one of the eight perfections in Buddhism)!

"Now I was really curious about the Calvert community," she said. "My husband had been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for 25 years. His teacher was Trungpa Rinpoche. Somehow the pieces of my life's purpose began to fit together in a way that had never happened before. Finding a place where I could realize my business aspirations while being myself seemed too good to be true. Five years down the track I still find the Calvert community an amazing place.

"We actually do have a corporate culture of concurrency. We believe it is possible to operate on three levels simultaneously. We want to be a leading mutual fund company and all that implies with sales growth and profitability. We want to be an organization that leads in social analysis and social issues work. And we want it to be a great place to work for all. What is a corporation if not a community? We are a business, of course, but we are also a community of 170 people ...

"When searching for some principles to reflect Calvert attitudes, we came up with the expression 'Six modes of behavior.' There is a Buddhist term to describe them: Paramitas. I think they well describe the essence of living in the Calvert community: Intelligence, exertion, discipline, patience, generosity, and meditation. These principles also have transcendent possibilities, which I believe the spiritual teaches us to develop. You can use these principles to nail down the signposts on the road – every one of these principles applies to every business task, no matter how everyday or how lofty. They seem to resonate with people of all faiths or of no faith at all ..."

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala