Just Five Questions: Todd Jorgenson ’20

Dr. Todd Jorgenson ’20 is Chairman of the National Security Index (NSI) and a member of the board of directors. He is also Founder & CEO of East Valley Implant & Periodontal Center and a Director-at-Large of the Yale SOM Alumni Advisory Board.

What’s a global trend you are following where you see an opportunity or bright spot in this challenging macro environment?

I am very focused on the opportunity to shape and guide progress and transparency around human rights and national security risks in the public markets. 

There’s a significant opportunity to reshape global norms around issues that include human rights, AI governance, biotech, cyber threats and national security threats. Although there is a lot of “noise” around these issues they are not widely understood in the context of global alignment between countries, sectors and capital markets and there’s a startling lack of data, transparency and measurement around these risk factors. 

These risks and their impacts are something SOMers understand deeply and why I am part of the founding team of the National Security Index (NSI)—which listed on Nasdaq as an ETF in December 2023.  NSI was co-founded with classmates Justin Bernier ’20, Amit Sengupta ’20, Jason Mangus ’20, and JR Lanis ’22. Our focus is to enable informed investment in emerging markets without compromising U.S. national security and human rights interests. To do that, we built the framework to identify, track and separate those investments and by sharing that data we are creating the transparency and benchmark required to allocate capital to investment vehicles that meet traditional institutional investment criteria and also do not bear the risks associated with investing in enterprises engaged in human rights violations or who have sanctions against them by developed nations. 

The response from all sectors has been extremely positive and we’re optimistic this will drive significant progress in addressing these challenges at scale. At some stage, we’ll see billions of dollars shift out of countries and industries if they are bad actors; at scale this will deliver tremendous value to citizens, industries and governments.

Look at ESG and the sweeping impact of investors who demanded transparency around a public stock's environmental, social and governance metrics and progress. While ESG has been “weaponized” and politicized, it’s also been a forcing function for most large enterprises and industries to make significant investments that will continue to deliver superior returns but also lay the foundation for a more sustainable future for everyone.

What’s an example of how SOM’s mission informed your professional path?

There are so many. We had a class called State and Society that underscored that we are essentially functioning in a geopolitical system where the way states and nations are governed has a direct impact on capital markets. My experience at SOM made very clear that the way nations are governed not only impacts a single individual but the public markets.

When we have global alignment on human rights and a governance, reporting and transparency framework that makes that data publicly available, an individual with no human rights will have the leverage to impact a large multinational, the public markets and ultimately the public and private sectors.

My SOM experience was invaluable in my understanding of how business decisions impact society, industries, nations and the world and that it’s all interdependent. We are, and need to be, just as concerned with what’s happening in Africa, China and the Ukraine as we are with what’s happening in the United States. You can’t make meaningful business decisions without understanding the whole landscape.

What’s an SOM experience that helped shape the way you understand business and society?

You really can't do anything alone. There is no way to be a lone wolf and build anything of lasting impact and importance.  This is among SOM’s greatest lessons.  If anyone didn’t understand that when they arrived they did on day one, they quickly learned it.   Whether that was with Amy Wrzesniewski and Marissa King in Organizational Behavior, Barry Nalebuff and Daylian Cain in Negotiation, Rodrigo Canales in Innovator or Tristan Botelho in Entrepreneurship - it’s understood you are so much more impactful with a team. Across my teams, I quickly learned how powerful we were as a group versus my narrow silo of  experience and I saw how much expertise everyone collectively brought to the problem we were trying to solve.

That’s what happens at SOM, it’s not only the culture; through your experience with faculty and classmates you expand your understanding of the impact of collaborating by actually collaborating with a community that is so diverse you experience the value of collective impact.

For example, during Innovator with Dr. Canales, we literally built a company and team, we set the stock price, marketed and evaluated the impact of the company.   Entrepreneurship with Botelho was  fantastic, we learned how to build a board where the diversity of the membership has a direct impact on the company’s value proposition. I loved Negotiation with Nalebuff and Cain; you learn so much from the negotiation lens in terms of how to build a board, distribute shares, “grow the pie” and scale . In Investor with Roger Ibbotson we built  a company, pitched it to the class and created a portfolio that would beat the S&P benchmark. Roger’s incredible experience and insight informs everything. He decides if he would be an investor based on whether you have clearly shown you’d beat the benchmark over 10 years.

All of these experiences have very much informed the venture I have now built with several SOM classmates and all of these courses  contribute to a class of alumni who understand what it takes to build and retain a team that won’t splinter. The faculty are so accessible and deeply invested in our success. Other faculty members like Sonia Marciano, Heather Tookes, Sarah Biggerstaff, and David Bach—I’m not sure they know how much they influenced me, but they are all a huge part of the reason Yale SOM alumni are able to make such an impact as leaders.

What’s a favorite SOM memory, faculty member, mentor or class?

Every week, new memories were created. My classmates and I would sit in a coffee shop or pub and for fun—we would apply what we learned that week to evolve our venture idea and the impact it would have on building our business.  When we polished our ideas further we’d take it to our professors and sit with them and iterate the plan. A lot of conversations with Nate Novemsky, Roger Ibbotson, Howard Forman and Professor Sudhir helped us evolve our vision and ambition for our venture. They, along with many others, were exceedingly  helpful and impactful. They will never know how influential they were for me.

What are you excited about for the year ahead?

I’m optimistic about the opportunity to create the same kind of urgency, alignment, governance and transparency around human rights and national security as we’ve seen in ESG.  

Collectively, we haven’t cared as much about human and civil rights violations as well as national security as we did with ESG measures and violations. In 2024, this is going to change.  We are focused on where the puck is going, not where it is.  There are so many geopolitical developments that have accelerated the window of opportunity to move this forward including the invasion of Ukraine, conflict between China and Taiwan as well as the IndoChina theater. Our SOM training with a focus on business and society helped us look forward. 

We don’t always understand how capital markets enable these violations in the current environment. We are focused on providing the data, frameworks and transparency required to make informed and accurate decisions about diverting that capital away from violators. I’m extremely optimistic about the impact this will have on business, society and the markets.

Just Five Questions is an initiative led by the Yale SOM Alumni Advisory Board. Want to learn more? Contact Lee Race ’93 with feedback, thoughts, and/or questions.