Nia’s 2022 Fall Reading List
As Fall arrives, kids head back to school, and the weather cools, we love the opportunity to cozy up and catch up on our reading.
In that spirit, we at Nia are excited to share our Fall Reading List for 2022. We’re even more delighted that our investment approach has been featured in the books we’re sharing this year.
Congratulations to each of the authors and activists on this list. Together with these change makers, we’re celebrating a growing interest in gender lens investing, aligning assets with social justice values, solving global problems, best practices for equity and inclusion, and steering our markets towards a more just and sustainable society.
We believe our community of investors will enjoy learning more about these essential topics and new practices in 2022 and beyond. So, join us in lifelong learning and let’s continue to create the world we want to see.
Happy reading!
Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
By Edgar Villanueva
Three cheers for Edgar for naming the elephants in the philanthropy and investing rooms. Decolonizing Wealth is a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance. Award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva draws from the traditions from the Native way to prescribe the medicine for restoring balance and healing our divides. Calling out what is wrong with our current systems and offering suggestions to move toward greater wholeness and equity in our financial institutions, we applaud Edgar for making these bold and necessary recommendations.
Moving Money for Impact: A Guide to Gender Lens Investing
By Tuti Scott
Available as a Free Download with Link
Moving Money for Impact: A Guide to Gender Lens Investing is a guide for philanthropists and investors of all genders who seek to make money moves that matter through gender lens investing. Impact investing is simply incomplete without a gender justice analysis. Use this guide to learn what’s been missing from the conversation about social impact investing for too long. Explore how you can dramatically expand your field of possibilities as a social change leader and investor by viewing your investments through an intentional gender lens.
Activate Your Money: Invest to Grow Your Wealth and Build a Better World
By Janine Firpo
I am so very proud of Janine for her tenacity and vision to empower women with their investing. With this book, Janine offers a guide for women to align their assets with both their financial goals as well as their social and environmental visions for the world.
Activate Your Money: Invest to Grow Your Wealth and Build a Better World goes beyond basic financial literacy to provide the details each of us needs to become a confident investor. Combining stories of women’s personal finance journeys along with practical and actionable investment strategies, this book provides the knowledge needed to take control of our money and make great returns by investing in the communities, people, and companies that match our values.
Global Handbook of Impact Investing: Solving Global Problems Via Smarter Capital Markets Towards A More Sustainable Society
By Elsa De Morais Sarmento & R. Paul Herman
I am proud to be one of the many expert authors chosen for this thorough handbook. Truly a Covid project, and labor of love, the editors Paul and Elsa worked with each of us to share new insights on the many different approaches to impact investing. I wrote the chapter Investing with a Gender Lens: Uncovering Alpha Previously Overlooked, sharing theory, definitions as well as practical applications and ways to get started moving capital for gender equity and increased returns.
The Global Handbook of Impact Investing: Solving Global Problems Via Smarter Capital Markets Towards A More Sustainable Society is an insightful guide to the growing world-wide movement of Impact Investing. Impact investors seek to realize lasting, beneficial improvements in society by allocating capital to sources of impactful and sustainable profit.
This Handbook is a how-to guide for institutional investors, including family offices, foundations, endowments, governments, and international organizations, as well as academics, students, and everyday investors globally. The Handbook´s wide-ranging contributions from around the world make a powerful case for positive impact and profit to fund substantive, lasting solutions that solve critical problems across the world. Discover how to invest your capital to achieve a powerful, lasting impact on the world.
Inclusion, Inc: How to Design Intersectional Equity into the Workplace
By Sara Sanford
We at Nia are incredibly honored to be included in Sara’s book of best practices for businesses looking to provide equitable workplaces. We first met Sara when she was certifying businesses as Gender Smart. We were excited to be the first Gender Smart certified company in the U.S. After working with many businesses on adopting policies and practices that lead to equitable workplaces, Sara wrote this book sharing the how behind the certifications. Truly a must -read for anyone working on improving Diversity Equity and Inclusion efforts.
Design systemic equity and diversity into your organization
Inclusion, Inc: How to Design Intersectional Equity into the Workplace moves beyond having tough conversations to deliver an innovative and proven approach to organizational diversity. Eschewing the “mindset-first” approach taken by many diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, author and Gender Smart and Gender Equity Now (GEN) founder Sara Sanford focuses on countering the systemic barriers that abet inequity by adjusting “cultural levers” to facilitate organization-wide change.
The XX Edge
By Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber
In The XX Edge, Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber envision a new paradigm of gender-focused investing where more women are placed in decision-making roles and able to optimize their skills across all capital markets—leading to higher returns for individual investors and greater economic growth.
There’s a simple but often overlooked investment strategy to earning higher returns—include women as financial decision-makers within your organization or team. That’s The XX Edge.
Seasoned executives and investors Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber demonstrate the new paradigm where women are at the center of investing as agents and actors—not just as beneficiaries.
Kindle Edition
by Nell Derick Debevoise
Going First: Your Invitation to Find the Courage to Lead Purposefully and Inspire Action is a call to action to CEOs, as well as other executives, investors, and aspiring leaders, who want to have more impact, build their businesses, and leave a legacy. The book provides frameworks, tools, and inspiring examples of ways to connect our work to a larger sense of purpose. It dispels the myths and misconceptions about this approach to work as a force for good, using academic research and practical experience.
