Truvalue Spotlight: Behind the Scenes with Eli Reisman

Blog April 29, 2019

Director of Product Management, Eli Reisman, and Co-founder and CPO, Phil Kim, share Truvalue Spotlight with the team


Spotlight on the Truvalue Platform is getting rave reviews and industry recognition for its automatic detection of ESG events.  I had the opportunity to sit down with the director of product management, Eli Reisman, to get a behind-the-scenes look at what went into Spotlight.


Anne: Thanks for your time, Eli. Can you tell me more about Spotlight, announced in January?

Eli: Sure.  The new Spotlight solution on the Truvalue Platform is a first-of-its-kind event detection solution based on an algorithm that can quickly identify material ESG events taking place for the 10,000+ companies that we cover.

As the amount of information investment professionals are asked to cover and understand increases every year, it’s important that Truvalue Labs continues to deliver tools like Spotlight that can quickly distill large amounts of information and surface valuable insights, in order to save our clients time.


Anne: What has the feedback from clients been so far?

Eli:   We released Spotlight a few weeks ago.  So far we’ve mainly heard from analysts and portfolio managers, and the response from our customers has been really positive so far.  They are thrilled to be able to view the major positive and negative ESG events quickly and easily, without giving up the ability to do deep dives into our larger dataset.

Research analysts have shared with us that Spotlight makes it easier for them to quickly filter out the noise and drill down to focus on what matters.

Analysts who are responsible for fundamental or ESG-specific research are often tasked with covering wide swaths of the market.  On any given day they need to sift through a large amount of news, so Spotlight is a game changer.

Portfolio Managers have also been very vocal about how this feature makes ESG more accessible within their everyday workflow, because it helps them to monitor major ESG events that are happening for all of holdings in their portfolios.


Anne: What was the impetus to create Spotlight, the event detection solution, in Truvalue Platform?

Eli:  Spotlight was mainly  developed based on direct feedback from our customers.  For a while now, customers have expressed that they are impressed with our system’s ability to aggregate large amounts of unique ESG data on companies.

However, when you are working with datasets where the data points are in the millions it becomes hard to see the forest for the trees.  Spotlight was built to help our customers to elevate their view so that they don’t need to sift through the data in order to find out what’s happening with a company on a high level.


Anne: How about the underlying technology, how does AI help make Spotlight possible?

Eli:  Truvalue Labs is a technology company first, which means we are always staying up to date on the latest AI developments.  For Spotlight, we are incorporating multiple different AI techniques, which would not have been possible just a few years ago.

By building Spotlight using an AI engine, we are able to go beyond controversy data by producing an event detection feature that is systemic in nature, making it free of human bias.  That’s added to the differentiator that we are able to surface both positive and negative events, rather than just focusing on controversies alone.


Anne:  Thanks for sharing some of the background on Spotlight today, Eli.   

To learn more about Spotlight and our ESG research & analysis platform, visit the Truvalue Platform product page.

Eli Reisman is the Director of Product Management, responsible for Truvalue Labs’ core product offerings. Before joining the company, Eli worked as the Director of Partnerships at SASB where he managed the licensing and integration of SASB’s framework within SABS partner’s products. Additionally, Eli also managed the development of SASB’s internal products, including the SASB Navigator, the company’s first web-based research library. Prior to SASB, Eli spent six years at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). 

Eli holds a Bachelor’s degree in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College and earned his MBA from George Washington University.

Anne Acosta is the Director of Marketing at Truvalue Labs and manages the company’s integrated marketing programs and operations. She has over 20 years’ experience in the investment management and Fintech sectors at SS&C Advent, Thomson Reuters and Scudder in consulting, research, product management, product marketing, and marketing. 

Anne earned her MBA at the University of Texas at Austin and Tecnológico de Monterrey and her BA in Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs at Miami University.


Originally published on January 24, 2019.   Revised on April 29, 2019.