Oklahoma Treasurer Todd Russ has used the state investment pools he oversees against corporations engaging in climate change and diversity initiatives, purportedly to refocus their attention away from politics and on their fiduciary duty of maximizing shareholder profits.
But Russ, who is also a minister, steered a contract managing $2 billion in taxpayer money to a Christian investment firm that partnered with his close allies during the bid process. Russ directed the firm to conduct so-called Oklahoma values tests of portfolio managers, indicating his own conservative religious politics are fair investment criteria.
Despite delivering record returns, NEPC, the longtime investment consultant for the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust was fired last year in favor of Innovest Portfolio Solutions, a firm founded by devout Catholics that serves many Catholic dioceses and religious organizations. Russ chairs TSET’s Board of Investors, which published the request-for-proposals last year. But the bid process may not have been very competitive; Innovest had been a client of Russ advisor Jerry Bowyer, who is himself an Episcopal deacon.
Additionally, during the time period that Innovest was under consideration for the contract, the firm partnered on multiple projects with key Russ allies at the State Financial Officers Foundation, including Bowyer, who are also major players in the Christian finance industry. At least one project involved payment from Innovest to SFOF.
Oklahoma Watch obtained exclusive audio, photos, and documents from multiple events held by the anti-ESG coalition, of which Russ, Bowyer, and SFOF are frequent participants.
Neither Treasurer Russ nor his office responded to multiple requests for comment.
“A fight for western civilization”
Since his arrival in state government finance in 2023, Todd Russ has been a key member of the State Financial Officers Foundation: it bestowed Russ with a 2023 Rising Star Award, and his deputy Jordan Harvey with a 2024 honor and a spot on SFOF’s 2025 leadership team. The group itself is a key member of the network of conservative nonprofits fighting the so-called War on Woke against corporations that have engaged in climate change and diversity initiatives, often referred to in the shorthand as ESG and DEI, which are values-based investing frameworks.
GOP power broker and Catholic super lawyer Leonard Leo, who is armed with a $1.6 billion war chest, funds this anti-ESG network. On a quest to “crush liberal dominance” of American culture, he has been a critical engineer of the conservative Supreme Court majority and overturning Roe v. Wade. Consumers’ Research, which has claimed to be SFOF’s top donor and has deep ties to Leo, leads the effort.
Chanting the mantras of political neutrality and fiduciary duty, the Leo network assails corporations for taking political stances (such as joining a climate pact, supporting LGBT rights, or requiring pay equity), which it claims harm shareholder profits. SFOF’s role is to organize red-state treasurers to threaten blacklisting and to divest from government investment pools, such as pension funds.
But behind closed doors, Leo associates assert the need to gain as much political ground as possible and take “scalps” from their perceived enemies, like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who committed his companies to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. With a Democrat at the helm and $14 trillion of assets under management, including many state funds, BlackRock makes a juicy target for Republican state treasurers such as Russ. He blacklisted the firm and subsequently was sued by a retired public employee to stop the state from divesting. In early April 2026, the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that divestment would cost the state pension funds millions of dollars, and ruled against Russ. In exclusive audio from the 2025 Consumers Research Summit, when asked to provide a fiduciary argument for state treasurers to divest from BlackRock that would trump the millions in losses, SFOF CEO O.J. Oleka conceded that he lacked direct academic research. On political neutrality, he said that “it depends on what’s going on at the time,” and suggested that they should not appease ESG proponents, a group including big banks, because the results would be akin to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler.
Oleka framed their work as “a fight for Western civilization,” drawing a line from supporting ESG to hating America and becoming Marxist, and explicitly stated the partisan nature of their work: “Just because we won in November, or because we got some great executive orders, we’ve got to keep going. And I'm thankful that we've got a lot of financial officers who are doing it.”
Mr. Oleka did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Russ allies in anti-ESG network set sights on board consultants
Treasurer Russ plays a prominent role for SFOF’s national anti-ESG advocacy campaigns, including sign-on letters to corporations, media interviews, and events. He regularly partners with Oleka; Derek Kreifels, who is SFOF’s former CEO and current board member; and SFOF advisory council member Jerry Bowyer. In January 2025, Kreifels launched his own financial consultancy, Prospr Aligned, with Bowyer as his head of corporate engagement, and registered as an executive lobbyist in Oklahoma. The following month, Russ formally hired Bowyer as a corporate engagement advisor to TSET.
According to a previously unreported agenda obtained from a source who was present, both Russ and then-SFOF CEO Kreifels were speakers at the 2024 Consumers’ Research Summit, which has been held annually in late January at the swanky Sea Island Resort in Georgia for several years. Russ’ travel disclosure to the OK Ethics Commission confirms he attended.
Both Kreifels and Bowyer attended the 2025 summit, but neither had a formal speaking slot. During the comment period for Oleka’s panel, Kreifels noted that none of the “bad asset managers,” meaning those supporting ESG, get hired by state pension boards without the recommendation of investment consultants. “Callan, Aon, NEPC, there’s about 10 of them, and they’re all in this together. They all love the ESG space,” he said, as he urged the audience to start pressuring board consultants.
Mr. Kreifels did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Perhaps coincidentally, just two weeks earlier the TSET Board of Investors, chaired by Russ, issued an RFP for an investment consultant to oversee its $2 billion portfolio, despite record returns from its incumbent vendor, NEPC.
The RFP outlined an approximately six-month schedule, with responses due in February, finalist notification in May, and an award to be made after a June presentation to the board. The decision would ultimately come down to just two choices: incumbent NEPC, which Kreifels disliked for ‘loving’ ESG, and Innovest Portfolio Solutions, a client of Russ advisor Bowyer that participated in anti-ESG advocacy campaigns in the Leo network as early as 2024. In government procurement, open bid processes prohibit inappropriate communication by vendors with procurement officials to limit improper influence. Those norms appear to have been violated during the TSET RFP consideration period.
“In general, prohibitions on back-channel communication in government procurement act as a safeguard in the public interest against corruption,” said Lisa Graves, founder of corruption watchdog True North Research. “If a vendor in an open bid carried on a close relationship with an advisor close to the official overseeing that contract, and sponsored an event for a group tied to both the advisor and the official, that would raise questions about potential favoritism in my view.”
“The devil has taken advantage of our Christian assets”
In early April, Innovest hosted its inaugural Christian Institutional Investors Conference, with a panel featuring Bowyer and another Bowyer client, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian Right legal juggernaut responsible for overturning Roe v Wade that provides much of the legal muscle for the anti-ESG coalition. Later that month, Innovest sponsored a panel on values alignment for state fiduciaries featuring its President Wendy Dominguez, Bowyer, and Kreifels, at the spring SFOF conference in Orlando, which was attended by Russ. His travel was paid for by SFOF, according to a filing with the OK Ethics Commission.
Innovest CEO and Co-Founder Rich Todd joined Bowyer on his May 20 podcast to discuss “How the Financial Consulting Industry Weaponizes Christians’ Money Against Them.” Without explicitly naming NEPC and Oklahoma, Bowyer bemoaned secular investment firms “not aligned” with the Christian faith as “completely inappropriate” for red states. He added, “They are the major barrier right now to faith institutions and say, red states et cetera having their values and their virtues expressed in their portfolio.”
From there, any appearance of neutrality disappeared. Corporate supporters of clean energy and reproductive rights were homicidal, Marxist agents of Satan. “The devil has taken advantage of our Christian assets, especially in proxy voting. Corporate cultures have changed. They’ve become anti-Christian,” observed Todd, who in other contexts describes his firm as secular. Here, he dropped that pretense: “Satan will not give up his fight for sure, but I really do believe this is a fight of good vs. evil.”
The Innovest chief continued, “[BlackRock CEO] Larry Fink is the leader of this. He still talks about stakeholder capitalism, which in many ways is rooted in socialism or Marxism. Catholics do not do well in communist or socialist countries, they’re killed.”
TSET notified NEPC and Innovest on May 23 that they made the cut. Days later, Treasurer Russ, his advisor Bowyer, and SFOF alum Kreifels appeared on a panel entitled “Breakthroughs in Public Markets” at an institutional investor conference held by Christian finance firm Sovereign’s Capital, according to a social media post from one of Sovereign’s co-founders. Hosted inside the Museum of the Bible, the event appears to have been fairly secretive, given the scant details available online. It’s not clear if anyone from Innovest was in attendance, nor whether Russ paid for his own travel, as he did not file an ethics disclosure with the state.Mr. Bowyer, Ms. Dominguez, and Mr. Todd did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
According to the US Christian Chamber of Commerce, Innovest was set to feature Bowyer talking about the importance of proxy voting alignment in its Quarterly Faith-Aligned Webinar Series on June 10. An Innovest Q2 recap notes that his was the inaugural episode. A few days later, Innovest CEO Richard Todd wrote an article in The Daily Signal about Christian proxy voting analysis, in which he cited a study conducted by Bowyer in 2023. The publication described Innovest not as secular, but as providing “investment consulting services to faith-based organizations.”
“Finding Innovest was an answer to prayer”
In audio of the June 18 TSET board meeting recorded by Oklahoma Watch, there were clear differences between the final presentations. NEPC Partner Doug Moseley was given a palpably colder reception from the board than Innovest President Wendy Dominguez. NEPC’s presentation focused on performance and the benefits of scale from their recent acquisition, with ESG concerns only addressed in questioning. A big player in the Christian finance space, Innovest tailored its pitch throughout to appeal to Chairman Russ’ desire for “Oklahoma values” alignment, while curiously avoiding the subject of faith, with one exception.
Board member Debbie Mueggenborg asked Dominguez what assurance she could give that Innovest would be diligent in its evaluation process. “We are aligned with your values. We don’t have a big contingency of clients that are searching for ESG,” Dominguez replied, adding, “Because of that, we work with a lot of religious organizations.”
There was little deliberation, but Board Trustee John Waldo did air his doubts over the legality of Innovest slashing its fee by $60k during its pitch that day. He wanted to know if there was disparate communication between the vendors: “So no one has communicated with them any, nothing?”
Russ replied, “No. I don’t think that would probably be ethical.”
While it’s unclear if Russ himself had outside communication with Innovest during the bid process, it is clear that his close advisor Jerry Bowyer certainly did, and extensively throughout. And Russ and Dominguez attended the same Innovest-sponsored SFOF conference in April. It beggars belief that they would not have had any contact there.
Was NEPC asked to sponsor SFOF panels? Or its CEO given the opportunity to be interviewed by Russ confidantes like Jerry Bowyer?
At the end of Bowyer’s May podcast, Innovest’s CEO sung the advisor’s praises: “I’ve gotten to know you over the last three or four years and you’re a leader in this movement.”
“You’re an answer to prayer,” replied Bowyer. “Finding Innovest was an answer to prayer.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
