Closing Plenary: Empowering Change through Impact Investing in Hollywood

 

The May 9 Closing Plenary of the Mission Investors Exchange (MIE) 2024 National Conference featured award-winning director Ava DuVernay and Roy Swan, head of Ford Foundation's Mission Investments Program, in a special conversation on empowering change in Hollywood through impact investing. DuVernay and Swan will share the innovative financing model that supported DuVernay’s most recent film, “Origin.”

 

The film, inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed 2020 nonfiction bestseller, “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” is an eye-opening exploration of the systems of social stratification and discrimination that exist in society. The film also represents a new model for Hollywood, one that disrupts the typical financing structure while giving power to the filmmaker and artists, with impact embedded into every element of how a movie is made. 

 

The Ford Foundation, alongside Emerson Collective, Pivotal Ventures, Anne Wojcicki Foundation, and several other philanthropic investors, financed the $38 million film through an innovative blended investment structure.

 

This unique philanthropic partnership, which allowed DuVernay to independently write, cast, and produce the film, showcases how impact investing can be used to address structural inequities, reconstruct narratives, and empower lasting change.

 

Learn more about the 2024 conference here.