Open Eyes: Saying Yes to Impact Investing
Opportunities sometimes come from the most unexpected places. One of my friends and a featured storyteller of We The People Stage, Jimmy White IV, invited to head out to The Moth StorySLAM event at World Cafe Live back in February. I love The Moth’s podcast and had only been to one of their live events to that point. I decided to take Jimmy up on his offer even though I had a ton of work to do.
I met a few of Jimmy’s friends and acquaintances that night. One of the people sitting at the table that night was a man named Cory Donovan. He ran a business called ImpactPHL. I didn’t know this at the time. We were sitting at opposite ends of the table and would occasionally share pleasant small talk and french fries in between storyteller’s performances. We exchanged business cards before the night was through and vowed to stay in touch the way that every agreeable person does in a social setting so as to come off as pleasant.
I was sitting at my desk at work, taking a picture of Cory’s business card with my CardCam app when I received an email from him. I responded and told him how strange it was that he was able to beat me to the punch. He shared with me some information about an event that he was working on in May related to responsible investing practices. The investment world intrigues me but I hadn’t gotten into at that point. I told him about a project that I was trying to launch at the radio group related to all things wealth and wellness to suggest that there may be a possible connection so we set up a meeting to talk.
Fast forward to April and COVID-19 has swept through North America. The United States big cities were on lock down and all social gatherings outside of your immediate family were restricted. ImpactPHL was forced to cancel their annual conference which was scheduled to take place in the traditional 3D space. Instead of throwing in the towel, the quickly designed an entirely new virtual forum that took into account the challenges that Philadelphia was facing as a result of the social and economic effects of COVID-19. And there was a community focus around storytelling to spotlight Philadelphia Heroes. This is the part that intrigued me on a personal level.
We The People Stage is all about storytelling and I felt compelled to help this cause be as successful as possible. It was finally able to get on the phone with one of the main event planners, Heather, only about 1.5 weeks prior to the start of the first day of the forum. That didn’t give us much time to strategize and execute the new plan but I told her what I felt would be the best course of action, Heather loved the ideas and decided to bring me on board as a Network Partner.
I told my associate and We The People’s Director of Photography, Liam, about the new development and asked if he would have the bandwidth to work on the deliverables with such short turn around. Liam is a champ and is very flexible so he said yes. It’s worth noting that one of the unfortunate side effects of social distancing meant that one of his primary sources of income- wedding videos and photos- was now impossible which left very available.
The themes, topics and overall focus on the Philadelphia Heroes and New Normal Forum is really quite interesting as it’s connected to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals which every country around the world has committed to with the exception of five. I won’t get into the majorly important conversations that we delved into during the actual conference in this post. I just wanted to share that a chance conversation over french fries at story telling event led to my We The People Stage’s largest event to date with over 1,000 attendees in our virtual event and a lot of great, new friends.
If you take anything from this post let it be that telling your story and connecting with others may lead to nothing more than great tasting french fries at World Cafe Live and savory creative nuggets for your imagination to chew on. Or it could lead to a whole new opportunity that you would have never thought to explore otherwise.
Best game of hearts,
QuentinThePoet