Indices Prevail Over Active Management

progress news
1st Quarter 2010
“This year marks our twentieth year in business. Upon achieving
this milestone, we at Progress are very thankful for all of the various
industry stakeholders that have contributed to our success.”
- Thurman V. White, Jr.
Indices Prevail Over Active Management
Stephen Quirk
One Year Summary
On the heels of the March 9th, 2009 market bottom, March
31st, 2010 marked a tremendous one year run for equities as
evidenced by the following indices’ performance: Russell Top
200 46%, Russell Midcap 68%, Russell 2000 63%, MSCI EAFE
55%, and MSCI Emerging Markets 82%. Value outperformed
Growth across equity styles. The Barclays Aggregate returned
8%. Concurrent with such outstanding index performance
was the challenge for active managers to keep pace as
batting averages suffered. Strong market strength favors low
quality stock indicators such as smaller market capitalization,
non-earnings stories, low ROE, low price and no dividend
yield. As active managers generally seek high quality stocks,
they suffered accordingly.
First Quarter Summary
Domestic equities had an outstanding quarter as the
Russell 3000 returned 5.94%. The rally was fueled by
mid and small cap stocks as the Midcap and 2000 Indices
returned 8.67% and 8.85% respectively while the Top 200
returned just 4.55%. Value outperformed Growth in all
Continued on page 4
Page 6
I nside this Iss u e
Page 9
Back
Manager Profiles
Staff Article
Coming Soon
Phocus Capital | John Hsu
Progress Partners with Kellogg
Plan Sponsor & EM Conference
Changing the Face of the Investment Management Industrysm
Message from the President & CEO
to Goldman Sachs to “pay-to-play” scandals in New York,
Illinois, New Mexico and the most recent allegations in
California, we are all faced with events that have breached
the fundamental trust on which capital markets and market
decisions rest. Just as B.B. King would cry in his Mississippi
blues voice that “The thrill is gone … the thrill is gone away,”
so do many now lament that the same thing has happened to
the fundamental trust in our industry’s investment firms and
decision-makers—that “The trust has gone away!”
“Our challenge as institutional investors is to ensure
that our firms (and our plans) are run with integrity
and that our business, investment, client service and
ethical practices are unquestionable. ”
- Thurman V. White, Jr.
A Time for Ethical Leadership
We are pleased to bring you another edition of Progress
News. In this issue, we will provide you with our recent market
commentary and highlight two of our funded managers:
Phocas Financial and John Hsu Capital. Also, this quarter,
Progress employees had an opportunity to volunteer in their
community through CityTeam. You’ll be able to read about
our volunteer experience on pages 10-11.
Recently, newspaper headlines and industry e-newsletters
have been rampant with stories about ethical challenges
in our industry. Coming on the heels of the recent financial
crisis, our industry’s image and its business and investment
practices are being challenged more than ever before. Many
of our public and corporate pension fund clients are just
recovering from two years of the worst financial and market
crises since the Great Depression. Although we’ve experienced
a modest recovery to date in the U.S. market, the continuing
market volatility is unprecedented. Global markets are still in
an uproar as Greece teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Our
federal, state and local governments face devastating budget
deficits. Fully funded pension liability levels are at risk. Unclear
market signals have created a malaise and uncertainty
among plan sponsors. This has dramatically affected their
overall asset allocation and plan investment decisions.
In the face of the financial crisis and the beginning recovery
now come the ethical crises of the past year. From Madoff
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Our challenge as institutional investors is to ensure that our
firms (and our plans) are run with integrity and that our
business, investment, client service and ethical practices
are unquestionable. The greed, skewed personal priorities
and illegal practices of some financial services firms,
intermediaries and plan decision-makers have created a
charged new environment. Today, with many of our public
plan clients, most if not all decisions—no matter how
innocuous and/or prudent—may be questioned. Due to
the illegal behaviors of a few, typical communication and
interactions between managers and public-plan decisionmakers may now be off limits. The quality of information
exchange and engagement within the industry is constrained.
Ironically, many of the new rules of engagement designed to
“police” certain conduct may actually result in less informed
plan investment decisions.
A prime example of this is the now challenged use of thirdparty marketers. Given the pay-to-play scandals involving
so-called private-equity placement agents, the legitimate use
of third-party marketing firms by small, emerging, long-only
managers has now become debatable and may even be
prohibited by some plan sponsors. This poses a new dilemma
with far-reaching business impact for small firms—many of
which do not have the resources for dedicated marketing staff.
It may also result in many plan decision-makers simply not
knowing about smaller, newer firms in the universe that show
promise. Yet this is the new environment in which we must
operate. As emerging firm leaders, we must recognize this
new reality and the ethical dilemmas many of us face as we
engage decision-makers and work to grow our businesses.
We must develop new business practices that help us achieve
our objectives while protecting us from running afoul of
ethical, legal or regulatory proscriptions.
This new environment creates an opportunity for us to
differentiate our emerging firms. We can and should do this
through our ethical leadership—striving to create investment
progress news
Contents
firms with honest and transparent practices. Our investment
strategies and services should perform as represented so they
can continue to produce competitive results and engender
the trust of our clients. There is a sound business case for
ethical leadership and for creating a culture of integrity in
our emerging investment firms. And the new environment
demands that we pursue ethical leadership strategies now!
As business leaders, we must create cultures that can sustain
our firms as long-term, viable businesses—cultures where our
values and ethics are consistent with our fiduciary duties and
are compliant with the legal/regulatory/policy frameworks
that govern our industry. Even for small emerging firms,
leaders must be conscious of the need to create ethical
cultures not only in our firms but also within our industry.
Then we must work together to create our vision of the future
by holding ourselves and our peers accountable to an even
higher standard of integrity so we can achieve a robust vision
that works for everyone.
The global market crisis and the recent ethical challenges for
our industry have created a new “normal” for all stakeholders.
For these reasons, one of the themes we will explore at our
upcoming Progress CEO Roundtable focuses on this new
environment and the need for “ethical leadership.” The CEO
Roundtable is a periodic forum that brings together the CEOs of
our funded managers (now some 65 emerging firms) to share
best practices and learn from industry experts, policy makers,
and each other. The CEO Roundtable is but one component
of a comprehensive program of manager assistance activities
in which we engage our funded managers throughout their
tenure with Progress. This year’s Progress CEO Roundtable is
being co-sponsored by the Price Center for Entrepreneurial
Studies at the UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los
Angeles. The CEO Roundtable will be held on June 23–24.
We will report on the deliberations at our CEO Roundtable in
future issues of Progress News.
This year marks our twentieth year in business. Upon achieving
this milestone, we at Progress are very thankful for all of the
various industry stakeholders that have contributed to our
success. One of the traditional 20-year wedding anniversary
gifts is platinum. It is noteworthy that the characteristics of
platinum are strength and endurance. To have pioneered
and then succeeded as we have in this niche of managing
emerging managers means that Progress has indeed evolved
into a strong, and we hope enduring, business. And our best
is yet to come. We look forward to continuing to celebrate our
20-year anniversary and exploring the state of the emerging-
1st Quarter 2010
Cover Story
Indices Prevail Over Active Management
Cover
Stephen Quirk
Manager Profile
Phocus Financial Corporation
6
John Hsu Capital Group, Inc.
7
Staff Articles
Progress Partners with
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Progress Staff Serve Their Community by
Volunteering at CityTeam for a Day
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manager industry with our plan sponsor clients, submanagers
and friends at our Plan Sponsor and Emerging Manager
Conference coming up soon.
As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions. Thank
you for affording us the privilege to serve this industry. We
remain bullish on emerging managers and the prospects for
emerging-manager investing continuing as an institutionalized
part of the industry landscape. We look forward to at least
another 20 years of Progress.
Sincerely,
Thurman V. White, Jr.
President and CEO
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1st Quarter Market Commentary | 2010 Market Performance Summary
capitalizations as the Russell 3000 Value returned 7.05% while the
Russell 3000 Growth returned 4.87%.
Capital Goods fueled large cap performance as the industry
returned 14%. On the flip side, both Utilities and Telecomm
Services had negative returns. Banks led the small cap rally
as they returned 15% while Telecomm Services had a negative
return. The two biggest fundamental factors that we observed
were price/book and market capitalization, respectively. Stocks
with lower price/book ratios and lower market capitalizations
outperformed stocks with higher respective metrics.
1.43%. Emerging Markets fueled the performance as
they returned 2.45% while EAFE returned just 0.94%.
Non-U.S. performance was led by the Pacific region (especially
Japan) and the Yen while the European region (especially
Spain) and the Euro dragged performance.
The Barclays U.S. Aggregate returned 1.78%. CMBS returned
nearly 8% while mortgages and corporate bonds (especially
financials) outperformed. On the flip side, treasuries and
agencies underperformed. Low quality issues outperformed
high quality across the fixed income spectrum.
Non-U.S. equities did not keep pace with their U.S.
counterparts as the MSCI World Ex U.S. returned
1 Year Batting Averages
(eVestment Quarterly): Return
May 2005 - March 2010 (not annualized if less than 1 year)
Index vs. Zephyr Large Core Universe
Russell 1000 Growth
Russell 1000
4
Index vs. Zephyr Large Growth Universe
5th to 25th Percentile
Median to 75th Percentile
5th to 25th Percentile
Median to 75th Percentile
25th Percentile to Median
75th to 95th Percentile
25th Percentile to Median
75th to 95th Percentile
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progress news
Index vs. Zephyr Large Value Universe
Index vs. Zephyr Small Core Universe
Russell 2000
Russell 1000 Value
5th to 25th Percentile
Median to 75th Percentile
5th to 25th Percentile
Median to 75th Percentile
25th Percentile to Median
75th to 95th Percentile
25th Percentile to Median
75th to 95th Percentile
Index vs. Zephyr Small Growth Universe
Index vs. Zephyr Small Value Universe
Russell 2000 Growth
Russell 2000 Value
5th to 25th Percentile
Median to 75th Percentile
5th to 25th Percentile
Median to 75th Percentile
25th Percentile to Median
75th to 95th Percentile
25th Percentile to Median
75th to 95th Percentile
Created with Zephyr StyleADVISOR. Manager returns supplied by: eVestment Alliance
1st Quarter 2010
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Manager Profiles
Seizert Capital
Partners
Phocas
Financial
Corporation
Location
Alameda, CA
Products
Large Value, Small Value, REITS
Assets Under Management
$504 Million (As of March 31, 2010)
First Funded by Progress
July 15, 2009
Ownership
Asian American
Firm Background
Phocas Financial Corporation, 100 percent employee-owned,
was founded in May, 2005, and was registered with the
Securities and Exchange Commission in June, 2005. The firm’s
chief executive officer, William Schaff, was intent on producing
high-quality institutional value equity strategies based on
his experiences as the founder of Bay Isle Financial, as an
investment analyst, and as a separate account and mutual
fund manager, all positions he had held since 1985. Phocas’s
first product was an equity REIT strategy that launched on July
1, 2005. The firm’s second strategy, U.S. small-cap value
equity, launched on May 1, 2005, and within two months it
had received more than $50 million from three institutional
pension plans. A third strategy, U.S. large-cap value equity,
launched on January 1, 2008, and less than three months later
it received $190 million from Wells Fargo Funds Management,
LLC. The firm’s principals consider service to current clients to
be among their highest of fiduciary obligations.
Investment Strategies
Small Cap Value Equity Portfolio is sector-neutral versus the
Russell 2000 Value Index. It typically contains between 100
and 125 positions, each smaller than 2% of total portfolio
value. The diversification is designed to attenuate risk in the
portfolio and buffer the volatility that often characterizes smallcap stocks. One significant competitive aspect of this strategy
is its sector neutrality versus its benchmark in the Financials
sector. That has meant that since inception, the strategy
has always held between 30% and 40% of its total portfolio
value in Financials, including about 9% in REITs. Many of the
firm’s competitors eschew the Financials sector, which Phocas
analyzes using the decades-long experience of its portfolio
managers and the firm’s time-tested, in-house analytical REIT
and Financials models.
Large Cap Value Equity Portfolio is sector-neutral versus the
Russell 1000 Value Index. It typically contains between 55
and 65 positions, each smaller than 3% of total portfolio
value, unless the benchmark weight of that specific stock is
higher. As with the small-cap value strategy, diversification is
designed and embraced to reduce portfolio risk.
The firms’ U.S. equity REIT strategy is sector-agnostic and
concentrated, usually containing fewer than 30 stocks. Research
from this strategy drives REIT selections for both the smallcap value and large cap-value strategy, in which benchmark
sector weights are some 9% and 3%, respectively.
All three of these Phocas investment strategies are available
via mutual funds rated four stars by Morningstar, Inc.
Investment Philosophy
The objective of the small-cap value and large-cap value
strategies is to outperform their respective benchmarks, the
Russell 2000 Value Index, and the Russell 1000 Value Index,
over time. In practice, this is done by eliminating companies
with above-average risk based on valuation, liquidity and/or
balance sheet criteria.
Stocks are selected for inclusion in the strategies based on
fundamental undervaluation relative to their peers in their
respective groups or General Industry Categorization Standard
(“GICS”) subsectors. Phocas distinguishes rigorously between
portfolio management and security selection.
Investment Process
Phocas emphasizes security selection and does not take sector
bets. The firm does not take sector bets because management
believes that it is exceedingly difficult to make correct sector
Continued on page 8
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progress news
Manager Profiles
John Hsu Capital Group, Inc.
Location
New York, NY
Assets Under Management
$379 Million (As of March 31, 2010)
Ownership
Asian American
Products
U.S. Equity, Global Equity,
International Equity, Core Fixed Income,
Sycee Capital China Fund
First Funded by Progress
July 1, 1996
Firm Background
John Hsu Capital Group, Inc. (JHCG), is a registered
investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of
1940. It was founded and registered in 1991. The firm
was founded and is owned by John Hsu, chair, CEO and
CIO. John Hsu is an investment professional with extensive
experience as a chief investment officer responsible for
corporate, insurance, pension and endowment assets. The
clients of JHCG are primarily public pension and endowment
accounts, as well as corporate and ERISA accounts and those
of high-net-worth individuals.
Investment Strategies
John Hsu Capital Group provides investment management
services for global equity, international (non-U.S.) equity, U.S.
equity and fixed-income accounts. In addition, Sycee Capital,
LLC, an unregulated investment advisor under common
control with John Hsu Capital Group, was launched in 2003
to manage dedicated Greater China portfolios.
Preservation of capital over the long term is the primary concern
of JHCG. They do not believe extreme risk positions are
necessary in order to achieve consistent and superior returns.
Using their global, top-down perspective, they combine their
risk-averse investment strategies with the longer-term needs
and objectives of their clients.
Investment Philosophy
John Hsu Capital Group (JHCG) believes world events are
highly volatile and that they have significant impact on
financial markets. Money managers must have an in-depth
understanding of the sociopolitical and economic structures
of key economies. JHCG takes a global, top-down approach
to asset management and seeks to examine the qualitative
roots of economic indicators using macro analytical ability
and global forecasting skills.
JHCG believes that if the investment mandate is for
international portfolios, the United States nevertheless should
still be part of the review process. The United States has
the world’s largest economy and remains the engine of all
global economies. Domestic U.S. economic and political
developments are, thus, key considerations in the investment
process for international portfolios. Therefore, it is essential for
international investment managers to understand the policy
actions of the Federal Reserve, the presidential administration,
and Congress as well as those of key foreign governments
and central banks. The chair and founder, John Hsu, having
been associated in the mid-‘80s with Dr. Alan Greenspan
prior to his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve,
has a unique insight into the process of the Federal Reserve
and central banks in general.
Investment Process
The investment process at JHCG begins with a comprehensive
analysis of global political economies. Secular and cyclical
trends covering major sectors of these economies and their
impact on the valuations of the capital markets are taken
into consideration. Particular attention is paid to Real Gross
Domestic Product growth, inflation, corporate profits, central
bank policies and interest rates. The firm also monitors
currency cross rates and commodity prices and trends—in
particular, the price movements of gold and energy, in order
to gain a thorough perspective of inflationary trends.
The fiscal and monetary policies of the major OECD countries,
as well as those of China, are continuously monitored and
reviewed. China has recently surpassed Germany as the third
largest economy in the world and has the highest growth rate
Continued on page 8
1st Quarter 2010
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Manager Profiles
Phocas Financial Corporation
rotation calls over multiple, consecutive, complete marketcycles. Instead, for its main equity strategies, Phocas
targets sector neutrality versus those strategies’ respective
benchmarks. The managers try to pick the most attractively
valued stocks in each sector and subsector represented in
those benchmarks.
Consistent with not taking sector bets, Phocas also does not
use cash tactically. Cash holdings in portfolios are “frictional.”
The firm positions and structures its portfolios to enable
patient investing that is assisted by portfolio diversification.
In that way, single positions do not jeopardize performance
of overall portfolios. In other words, diversification is used to
protect both returns and potential returns.
After stocks are bought, they are sold when their valuations
have risen three or four deciles above the deciles in which
they were bought, relative to their GICS peers.
John Hsu Capital Group, Inc.
on a sustained basis. Economic forecasts are based upon
a macro driven, global, top-down view—a view in which
fiscal and monetary policies, geopolitical issues and such
marketplace perceptions as consumer confidence, inflation
and market psychologies are the key determinants.
This review of geopolitical considerations by region and
country is followed by an analysis of the degree of flexibility
that governments and central banks have in controlling the
direction and movement of interest rates. This process then
leads the analysts at JHCG to a perception of how various
economies will perform. Based on these forecasts and
business cycles, sectors and industries are then selected to
be overweighted and/or underweighted. Individual stock
selection is next and is based on earnings momentum
measured against stock price valuations.
The investment process at JHCG is an outcome of these major
facets of their global, top-down approach, giving them a grasp
of the business cycle and the interest rate cycle. When these
factors are superimposed on the market cycle, the outcome
enables the analysts to form an overall investment strategy
encompassing regional (for global and international portfolios)
and sector weightings, as well as individual stock selections.
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progress news
Staff Article
Progress Partners with W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Johnita Walker Mizelle
The Kellogg Foundation at its core strives to support children,
families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions
that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and
as contributors to the larger community and society.
Progress Investment Management Company and The W.K.
Kellogg Foundation have partnered together to create an
emerging manager program which will support and cultivate
entrepreneurial, high-potential investment managers.
Under this partnership, the Kellogg Foundation will establish
up to a $100 million diversified portfolio of emerging fixed
income and equity managers. Progress is extremely proud
to have been selected as the manager of this program and
to have the opportunity to partner with such a prestigious
organization, which has for the last 80 years set the gold
standard for supporting individuals and organizations that
help create stronger communities.
Kellogg Foundation CIO, Joel Wittenberg explains “By
establishing the emerging manager program, we are
executing on our commitment to live out our core mission
in everything we do. We have a long tradition of helping
vulnerable children achieve success as individuals and as
contributors to the larger community and society.”
He goes on: “Through this program, we are extending
that cycle of support by investing in the talent pipeline and
providing opportunities for high-potential managers to
grow their businesses. We believe that expanded access to
emerging managers leads to competitive investment returns,
increased innovation, and diversity in the investment industry,
and ultimately will help strengthen our communities.”
The values that both Progress and the Kellogg Foundation
share will enable this partnership to be a successful one.
Both organizations share a commitment to improving
the communities in which we live and work and can now
integrate their missions by establishing this emerging
1st Quarter 2010
manager program. The Kellogg Foundation at its core
strives to support children, families and communities as they
strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable
children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors
to the larger community and society.
“Progress is extremely pleased to be the Kellogg Foundation’s
partner in this ground breaking initiative,” said Mona S.
Williams, executive vice president of Progress. “This program
will help the Kellogg Foundation achieve its investment
objectives by engaging some of the best investment talent in
the industry. Together our two organizations will work to level
the playing field for emerging managers.” This emerging
manager program is Progress’s first mandate from a large
foundation in the history of the firm.
At press time, two managers had been selected. Herndon
Capital, formerly Atlanta Life Investment Advisors, based in
Atlanta, GA, with $1.7 billion of assets under management
was hired to run $15mm in large cap value. Ambassador
Capital Management, based in Detroit, MI, with $816 million
in assets under management has been hired to manage a
$15 million intermediate core fixed income mandate.
Through this partnership, Kellogg expects to maximize both
its financial returns and social efforts by investing in the highpotential talent characteristic of emerging managers. We
salute the Kellogg Foundation team for their ongoing work
in both the U.S. and globally and share their commitment
of racial and gender equality and improving the lives of the
next generation.
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Staff Article
Progress Staff Serve Their Community by
Volunteering at CityTeam for a Day
Maria Maragos
On March 19, 2010, thirteen Progress employees spent
the afternoon preparing, serving and eating meals with a
group of homeless men in a live-in recovery program at the
CityTeam Ministries mission in San Francisco. The experience
was both rewarding and eye-opening. Our community
outreach is consistent with the firm’s values that we give back
to our community and help those less fortunate.
In trying to identify a project for my colleagues and I, I found
this organization through a simple Internet search. CityTeam
Ministries is a non-profit organization serving the poor and
homeless in the Bay Area, throughout the United States, and
in various countries around the world. CityTeam provides
food, shelter, clothing, recovery programs, youth outreach,
camps for at-risk, inner-city kids, discipleship and other care
to people in need. CityTeam has a program that provides
“bags of love” to the underprivileged and needy who live in
Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SROs) in the neighborhood.
Volunteer groups at the mission put together bags of groceries,
lunches and basic hygiene items and then deliver them doorto-door. CityTeam also has a foot-washing program in which
volunteers soak and wash the feet of the homeless and
provide them with a clean pair of socks.
The men’s recovery shelter is located just five blocks from the
Progress office but is in the heart of one of San Francisco’s
worst neighborhoods. This specific recovery program is in
place for men who are on a self-destructive path due to drug
and alcohol abuse. Because of the location of the mission, the
temptation for and access to drugs and alcohol are readily
available right outside the mission’s doorstep. Interestingly
enough, that is how one of the men we met came to the
CityTeam program. Pedro, a father in his 60s, sold drugs
right across the street for many years. He watched from afar
as people came and went from CityTeam and was able to
witness the work of this organization. Pedro has now been
clean and sober for 18 months. He has graduated from the
program and is working, functioning and integrated into
society. Pedro wants to give back to CityTeam and help others
in the recovery program. He is involved in several Bible study
groups with the men at CityTeam. Aside from that, he is also
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excited about the new father/daughter relationship he is
establishing with his 8-year-old. We started our day by going
to Costco and picking up enough food to prepare lunch for the
group. Progress employees, with the help of the head cook at
CityTeam, Sky, prepared and served a restaurant-style lunch
of chicken with pasta, broccoli, a mixed green salad, bread
and butter, ice cream and cookies to the program’s men and
some other homeless individuals from the community who
were invited to have lunch. The Progress team was able to sit
down and eat with the men, talk to them and listen to their
stories. I spent some time with Sky and was amazed to learn
that he had grown up as a “regular” child in the Midwest. He
had been married and had lived in Hawaii for many years.
He started a business from the ground up, eventually selling
$3.5 million worth of souvenirs to tourists in Hawaii. He lost
everything to his alcohol addiction. When Sky came to San
Francisco, he used to refer to any bad neighborhood as “6th
and Mission.” Ironically, that is where he now resides. Sky
has been clean and sober for three months. He is active in
a church outside of CityTeam; he loves to sing and perform,
and it was clear from the moment we met him that he is
outgoing and has an artistic side. Sky credits CityTeam as
being an organization that provides all of the integrated levels
of support—spiritual, psychological and social—one needs to
recover from addiction.
Another recovery patient had lived his entire life in San
Francisco. He worked for the city as a maintenance worker in
Golden Gate Park. One day he was asked to trim the trees
in the park. Something went wrong with his safety harness.
It suddenly snapped, and he fell 30 feet and landed on his
hip and back on the concrete below. Ever since the accident,
he has suffered from a hip problem. That incident started his
decline to addictions and ultimately homelessness. He has
finally decided to get the hip surgery that has been suggested
he have during the last 10–15 years. He is scheduled to have
surgery in early April.
Also at lunch was a man who first graduated from the
program in 2006. His picture was proudly displayed on the
wall with the other graduates. He is now back working with the
progress news
CityTeam program after a relapse. He said when he relapsed
he knew there was one place he could go for help where
no one would judge him. He is on track and is scheduled to
graduate again in a few months.
The CityTeam program is highly structured. These men have to
want to be there, and they have to want to make a major change
in their life, which can be a difficult decision and commitment.
The men come from all walks of life – some have previously
been successful in business and some have had families, while
others have suffered despair and tragedy throughout their
lives. These people are lonely and misunderstood, and many
are depressed. They are OUR neighbors.
realize the importance of receiving help and support from
others along the way. We should pass along the gifts we
have—whether they are time, knowledge, or money—to our
communities. If every person who is not struggling spent at
least one day a year giving of themselves to others who are, I
am convinced we could make a change in OUR communities
while enriching our own lives. Progress looks forward to
continuing to serve CityTeam in the future.
CityTeam aims to help homeless people get off the street and
guide them toward rehabilitation by transforming lives, healing
families, bringing reconciliation and breaking the cycle of
destructive behavior or poverty. CityTeam does not accept
government funding; it relies mainly on individual donors. Since
the organization is faith-based, many corporations shy away
from contributing. However, CityTeam gets weekly food donations
from places like Starbucks and Chipotle Mexican Grill.
The men begin their day with prayer and prayer group
each morning. They are able to take career classes and
receive help, guidance and mentoring in the afternoon. In
the evenings they are free to participate in activities outside
the shelter. These men are drug-tested every day. We met
men who had just started their first day at CityTeam and men
who had graduated from the program. The community on
6th and Mission is one of people struggling and in need of
a second chance. These men working toward recovery are
able to demonstrate to the watching community that they can
transform their lives and even give hope to others.
Above: Mona Williams & Alex Hsiao prepare to serve lunch to
the guests and residents of CityTeam San Francisco.
Below: Stephen Quirk enjoys lunch with the residents and learns
a bit about their struggles.
“In light of all of the negative stories we hear about people
in the media, it is truly gratifying and comforting to witness
people (at CityTeam) living a life of compassion. Acquiring the
knowledge of how quickly and easily one’s life fortune can
deteriorate was powerful. Moving from my world of creature
comforts to a world where no meal is assured, and back
again, was humbling.” Stephen Quirk, Progress Investment
It can be easy to get caught up in our own problems, but is
important to realize that there are countless less fortunate
people in need of an extra hand. Many of us have endured
hard times from one extent to another in our lives, and we
1st Quarter 2010
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Comments, suggestions and letters to the Editor are welcomed. The views expressed herein by persons other than the staff of Progress Investment Management
Company, LLC, are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Progress Investment Management Company, LLC.
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Progress Newsletter
Attention: Linda D. Cornett
Progress Investment Management Company, LLC
33 New Montgomery Street, 19th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
Copyright © 2010 Progress Investment Management Company, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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progress news
1st Quarter 2010
President & Chief Executive Officer | Thurman V. White Jr.
Editor | Linda D. Cornett
Design & Layout | Norma Lissette Galdamez & Susana Ley
Photo Credits | Cantrell Portrait Design
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