Author, niece put ideas of latest impact investing book to music - Pensions & Investments

Impact investing is something to sing about, if you ask author Jed Emerson and actress Jackie Emerson, who have a video they hope will resonate with millennials.

Mr. Emerson said his initial ideas for a video to accompany his eighth impact investing book, "The Purpose of Capital: Elements of Impact, Financial Flows and Natural Being," included more predictable visuals of nature and commerce before he decided "that was just too boring."

Instead, he collaborated with his niece, Ms. Emerson, whose film credits include "The Hunger Games," to create something she calls "School House Rock meets School of Rock." The four-minute video — "IMPACT: The musical! ('What if')" — is set in a classroom where a droning lecturer gets taken over by students singing and dancing about better ways to think about money.

"The goal is to get people thinking about how money can truly be used as fuel for change, and to call out a culture that values capital for capital's sake — rather than valuing capital for the sake of the good it can do," said Ms. Emerson, who loved her uncle's book, by the way.

The admiration is mutual, said Mr. Emerson, who was impressed with "how she electrified and set to music what are really a very complex set of ideas ranging from dualism to the purpose of capital being so much more than simply the generation of financial return."

The video had its debut Oct. 1 at the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam, a center for American culture, and can be seen on YouTube.

While you are thinking of how best to invest, here are some lines to sing along with:

What if we redefined what money is and can do?

What if we thought of capital as energy too?

What if we thought of cash in a completely new vein?

What if we utilized our funds for impact not gain?

Enjoy the show.

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