In this week's episode of HPS Insights, Alberto Lopez Valenzuela, Founder and CEO of the reputation intelligence, analysis, and media monitoring company alva, joins HPS Partners Bryan DeAngelis and Matt McDonald for a conversation on alva's technology, the importance of business leaders having access to quality data, and reputation management more broadly. The group chats about how the markets and the current political landscape increasingly require companies to consider the factors that impact their reputations, including social media and the growing lack of trust in institutions.

Drawing from his background in intelligence, Alberto notes that there is a significant demand for quantification of intelligence for businesses. alva's stakeholder intelligence tools, currently five offerings that allow alva to understand, predict, and mediate reputational challenges, emerged from that thesis. alva's tools serve clients by monitoring and analyzing data from all media types to help them better understand and respond to reputational issues. Specifically, alva's approach can help the leadership of a business understand how their company is being portrayed by key stakeholders in order to determine if changes need to be made.

The group also talks about how ESG issues have become key for business leaders as businesses and investors have increasingly embraced stakeholder capitalism. alva has developed new models to analyze ESG and is, among other things, looking into how much policymakers and other key stakeholders care about ESG issues. Alberto argues that whether or not ESG is a company's top priority, it should be transparent about its aims, its goals, and what it wants its impact to be.

Learn more about Alberto and alva's work, and get a copy of Alberto's book here.