In 2021, when I co-founded Pulsora — a sustainability data platform built to help enterprises measure and improve their impact — I sensed immediately that this company felt different from anything I had created before. I had launched products, opened markets, and built teams throughout my career, but Pulsora carried a deeper purpose I couldn’t fully articulate at the time.
Only recently, through unexpected academic research, did I understand why.
The research: Daughters change leaders (and companies)
A comprehensive study published in the Journal of Financial Economics found a powerful pattern:
CEOs who have daughters lead companies with significantly higher corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance — about 9.1% above the median firm.
The researchers analyzed hundreds of executives and over a thousand children. Their findings were consistent and robust:
- Parenting daughters increases a leader’s pro-social decision-making
- These CEOs invest more in diversity, environmental action, and employee well-being
- The effect is causal, not correlated
- It is even stronger if the first-born is a daughter
In other words:
Daughters influence the values of leaders, and those values influence the companies they build.
When I encountered this research, it felt deeply personal — because it described my own journey with surprising precision.
My story: Two daughters who became my moral North Star
When my co-founder Murat Sonmez and I began exploring the idea of Pulsora, I discussed it with my two teenage daughters. Their reaction was immediate and unlike their response to anything I had worked on before.
They cared.
They challenged me.
They saw the importance before I fully did.
Climate action.
Fairness.
Equity
The desire to have companies accountable for the world they shape.
These themes weren’t intellectual—they were part of their worldview. And as their father, that worldview had already been shaping me for years.
Leading a company in sustainability wasn’t just another venture. It reflected the future they would live in. And the weight of that truth influenced the decisions I made and the focus I brought to Pulsora from day one. My daughters shaped the values I brought into Pulsora.
And Pulsora became an expression of those values.
Pulsora as evidence of the research
Pulsora exists because of a simple belief: Enterprises must be able to measure their environmental and social impact with the same rigor they apply to financial performance.
But beneath that belief is another: We owe future generations transparency, accountability, and action.
Would I have founded a sustainability data company without being a father to two girls?
Maybe.
Would I have felt its urgency, its meaning, and its responsibility in the same way?
Absolutely not.
The research says leaders with daughters are more likely to embed these values into the organizations they build.
Pulsora is the clearest proof I can offer.
A founder, A father, and a realization
I did not set out to validate a social-science hypothesis. But I now recognize that I am living evidence of one.
I am a leader whose daughters shaped his worldview. And the company I built reflects the world I hope becomes theirs.
If the next generation will inherit the consequences of our decisions, it’s only fitting that they should also inspire the solutions.
My daughters inspired mine.
