The wealth management firm is part of a trend of rising focus on areas of sustainable investment and impact-related portfolio management.

Glenmede, the wealth management house overseeing $40 billion of client money, has appointed Mark Hays as director of impact and sustainable investing and John Church as director of endowment and foundation impact portfolio management. The hires are part of a wider financial industry trend of activity in these areas.

Hays will lead Glenmede’s impact investing effort, running its development and how it is communicated.

Impact investment is a term applied to putting money to work to achieve goals such as halting pollution, reducing crime re-offending rates and illiteracy, while also trying to earn a financial return. (To that extent it isn't the same as philanthropy, where there is no specific financial return.) Another area is called environmental, social and governance-driven investing. Terminology can be confusing, prompting calls to clarify the situation.

Church is responsible for constructing and customizing portfolios for endowment and foundation clients who want to dovetail investments with specific values.

“The appointments of Mark and John to their respective positions captures a growing interest and excitement by both clients and advisors around this rapidly developing field," Gordon Fowler, president and chief executive, said.

Hays joins Glenmede from JP Morgan Asset Management, where he was vice president of sustainable investing. In this role, Hays developed an ESG integration framework and led its implementation for more than 25 investment teams. Prior to that, he worked as vice president of impact investing at Flat World Partners in London and New York.

Church previously acted as a portfolio manager for endowments and foundations in Glenmede’s Philadelphia office. He provided investment advice and portfolio management for foundations, endowments and other not-for-profit organizations. Church has also served as a research analyst in the manager research goup, performing due diligence on hedge funds and other externally managed strategies.