This past summer, I had a couple of big a-has about my work with social impact artists. I started to ponder …
What if the question isn’t simply how artists can get capital to support their vision? What if capital needs artists to help it see where the future is going?
In my work as a film impact producer, I’ve seen visual storytelling move people and conversations in profound ways: policymakers finding new entry points into complex problems, audiences responding viscerally to stories that demand change, individuals opening up about how an issue has touched their own families.
Through story, image, music, and movement, artists help us understand what data alone cannot: what matters to people, what moves their hearts, what is shifting in culture, and what kind of future we might want to build.
Artists are the first responders of social change. Before capital moves, before policy shifts, before markets adjust, someone often has to help us feel why a different future is worth building. Story creates the emotional and cultural conditions that allow innovation, philanthropy, and investment to take hold. And artists don’t simply reflect what is happening in society; they help create the will for what happens next.
That belief is central to my work through Artists for Impact™. I help social impact artists move beyond the idea that funding is about finding someone to write a check and toward understanding the different forms of capital and resources available to them, and building an ecosystem of relationships and partners around their work.
But there’s another side to that equation: helping capital understand what it needs from artists.
That’s the idea behind the Artists for Impact Spotlight Series. I want to bring forward artists, changemakers, and thought leaders who are at the intersection of creativity, capital, culture, and social change. For this edition, I couldn’t think of a more fitting conversation than the one I had with Jenna Nicholas, author of Enlightened Bottom Line: Exploring the Intersection of Spirituality, Sustainability, and Social Impact.
Jenna has spent her career challenging conventional ideas about capital, impact, leadership, and what it means to create meaningful change. In our conversation, we explore what happens when we bring another essential dimension into that equation: the power of artistry, storytelling, and culture.
I believe we’re at a moment when we need to stop seeing artists simply as recipients of capital, and start recognizing them as contributors of the cultural and human intelligence that can help inform where capital flows.
Artists aren’t just seeking capital. Artists can inform capital.
Enjoy the interview below, and if you haven’t read Enlightened Bottom Line yet, I highly recommend it. It’s one of those books I found myself dog-earing and underlining constantly.
Part I — Reimagining Capital
Good morning, Jenna. Thrilled to be speaking with you today. Your book title, Enlightened Bottom Line, immediately caught my attention. What does an “enlightened bottom line” mean to you, and why did this conversation feel so urgent now?
Jenna: The title traces back to a story about Wayne Silby, co-founder of Calvert Investments. At a Buddhist retreat, he was asked what he wanted written on his tombstone. He imagined it saying, “Here lies Wayne, the man who made 2% more than the next man.” He realized that wasn’t the legacy he wanted to leave.
That moment prompted him to ask how he could bring greater purpose and values into his work, and ultimately helped lead to the creation of Calvert, now a $45 billion firm and a pioneer in socially responsible investing.
I think many people have moments like this when they stop and ask: Who are we, and what are we trying to do in the world? Enlightened Bottom Line is about stepping back from maximizing financial return alone and asking how we can infuse our values, purpose, and meaning into our work and lives.
And given the challenges we’re facing right now, I think there’s tremendous receptivity to finding ways to bring these different parts of our lives together rather than keeping them divided.
You bring spirituality, business, and investing into the same conversation, three worlds that are often kept separate. What has your own journey taught you about bringing those worlds together?
Jenna: I grew up in the Bahá’í community, where there is a strong emphasis on aligning our values with our work and seeing work as a form of service. There’s also a recognition that our spiritual and economic lives aren’t separate projects, but deeply integrated.
That foundation shaped my understanding of how we contribute to an ever-advancing civilization, and it was a big part of my personal motivation. And, as I interviewed roughly 65 investors and business leaders across a broad range of spiritual and faith traditions, I kept hearing people say, “I don’t really feel like I could talk about this, but…” and then they’d share pivotal moments in their lives—loss, doubt, a “dark night of the soul”—that had profoundly shaped how they lead, invest, and make decisions. I wanted to create space for those experiences and explore how our inner lives inform our outer work.
Honestly, I expected more resistance to some of this. But I’ve been surprised by how much receptivity there’s been. There’s a concept in the Bahá’í writings about the forces of disintegration and integration at work in the world, and I think so much of what we see day to day reflects disintegration. So people are hungry to find and name the forces of integration.
That’s part of what led to the HEAL framework I present in the book: Hope, Empathy, Abundance, and Legacy. The hope piece in particular seems to resonate right now. A lot of people are feeling less hope these days, and when they see real examples of people actively cultivating hope and integrating it into their work, there’s real openness to that.
—
Part II — Artists, Storytelling & Cultural Change
You’ve spent your career helping people think differently about capital. What do you think artists and storytellers bring into that conversation?
Jenna: I think it’s incredibly important. In our Impact Experiences, we have consistently engaged artists and musicians, particularly in metabolizing some of the challenges in engaging in this work of systemic issues.
For example, when we were exploring the fact that less than 2% of the $82 trillion asset-management industry is invested in women- and people-of-color-led companies and funds, and when we look at the extractive nature of the systems that have led to that, the power of art and music as a way of telling the story of that we weren’t just presenting data. We used art and music to help people understand and metabolize the trauma and grief, is a really important aspect of that.
One of our mentors says, “data plus context equals truth.” I think storytelling provides that context. It allows us to engage more deeply with the truth and the reality we’re confronting.
You reference Marshall Ganz’s idea of “action-driven hope,” which really resonated with me. I think this is at the heart of what many mission-driven artists are trying to do: using story, emotion, character, sensory experience, and craft to help people see differently and imagine what’s possible. How do you see artists contributing to action-driven hope, and helping move people from awareness to action?
Jenna: I was thinking about this through a quote from Rodin, one of my favorite artists:
“The main thing is to be moved to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.”
I think moving from awareness to action begins with being deeply moved and allowing ourselves to be moved. That’s where art can create transformative impact. When we’re deeply moved, we can’t help but then translate that experience into action.
But community is also critical. At the end of our Impact Experiences, we ask participants to make commitments to themselves and then to the group. That shared accountability matters because something can be incredibly inspiring in the moment, and then life happens.
We need mechanisms that reconnect us with the “why”, both through our individual journeys and through community.
I’ve been thinking and writing lately about the idea that art and story are precursors to impact investing. From my perspective, artists help create the emotional and cultural will for where capital can flow to make change. What’s your reaction to that idea? Do you see a role there for art to be a critical piece of the endgame, to evolving policy, understanding data, impacting people’s lives?
Jenna: Very much so. A piece of work we did was with an initiative called Culture Bank and it was in collaboration with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and it’s all around the idea of seeing artists as asset contributors to society and recognizing cultural assets.
We often think about investment as financial capital, but there is also social capital, human capital, and spiritual capital. The contribution of artists to society is something we can too easily undervalue.
We need a recalibration around all the ways artists contribute to our social and economic systems.
If you were advising an impact investor who had never considered supporting artists as change-makers, how would you make the case that art deserves a place in their portfolio?
Jenna: I think the key is creating deeper bridges between investors and artists. Too often, we’re speaking parallel languages. We need opportunities to form genuine relationships and see the fullness of one another’s stories and journeys rather than engaging transactionally.
Artists are essential to our social fabric. That needs to be the starting point, not something added on at the end of an investment strategy.
Whatever issue someone cares about, artists have the ability to tell stories and engage people in ways that can deepen and expand that work.
—
Part III — Resourcing, Legacy & the Big Picture
Many mission-driven artists tell me they feel uncomfortable asking for financial support. What’s one belief about money or fundraising that you would encourage them to let go of?
Jenna: I would encourage artists to recognize just how valuable what they’re contributing really is.
Financial resources are only one form of resources, of capital. It can actually be a privilege for funders to engage with artists and participate in their work. There are many more people who have money than have great artistic skills.
So rather than seeing fundraising as a transaction, I encourage artists to see it as an invitation to share in the journey together. Don’t underestimate the value of what you’re contributing or approach the relationship as though you’re simply asking someone to give you something.
You’re inviting someone to be part of something meaningful.
Wow, you totally get us social impact artists! Thank you for acknowledging the import or piece of the puzzle. One last topic I want to hit on is Legacy, the “L” in your HEAL framework. How do you hope people think about creating their own legacy through the choices they make today?
Jenna: I think a lot about Indigenous concepts of seven-generation thinking: What legacy are we inheriting from seven generations before us, and what impact do we hope to leave for seven generations into the future?
When we’re making decisions, how do we think about them through that lens?
I also think about daily reminders. I had a professor in London who literally kept a coffin in his office. It reminded him, and everyone who visited, that we are all going to die one day. How does that awareness influence the decisions we’re making today?
It doesn’t have to be as extreme as having a coffin in your office. But having practices that remind us to ask: How does what I’m doing right now connect to who I want to be in the world and how I want to show up?
—
What a privilege to speak with you today, Jenna. There’s so much more we could explore, maybe a Part II is in order. 😊 I devoured your book in two sittings, and my copy is dog-eared to the max. It’s earned a permanent spot on my go-to bookshelf.
Thank you for expanding the dialogue around impact into the deeper territory of spirituality, consciousness, and enlightened action—and for sharing your wisdom with my community.
-Simone