Using Your Wealth to Make a Better World

 

Jonah Wittkamper wants to start a conversation about wealth—and help rising generation family leaders find their life purpose in the process. 

 

“I think many people think that the meaning of life is to simply accumulate as much material wealth as you can,” says Wittkamper, Co-Founder and Global Director of Nexus, a global network of more than 2000 next generation wealth leaders. “I want to create a conversation and suggest that the narrative surrounding wealth should move away from materialism and other trappings of wealth, and more towards humility and responsibility. I think this lies in the values people set for themselves and in the decisions people make when they determine what they want to do with their lives.”

 

For members of the rising generation in families of wealth, Wittkamper says, people often feel pressured to play traditional roles—that they have to become a doctor or a lawyer or something else that the establishment wants them to do. “But,” says Wittkamper, “I think that society, and these families, will be healthier when they grow up in an environment that encourages them to find what they are happiest about.”

 

Take, for example, the story of Liesel Pritzker, who has worked with Wittkamper’s Nexus network. While “searching for something greater” in her life, Wittkamper says, Pritzker went to Ghana and discovered a way to help innovate the country’s education system by offering loans to a wide sector of private schools for low-income communities. The initiative was a success and helped give birth to an education reform movement in Ghana. Pritzker not only learned a great deal in the process, says Wittkamper, but she found her life’s purpose and is now an evangelist for impact investing.

 

“I believe that, in the best of all possible worlds, people want to feel like citizens when they go to work in the morning,” says Wittkamper. He continues: 

 

“They want to participate in something—whether it’s a company, or a non-profit, or a government institution—that works for all instead of creating divisions. And the truth is whatever industry you are working in, you can find ways to improve other people’s lives. The Millennial generation has realized that we can do something in response to poverty and biodiversity loss and other systemic problems that the world has—and it feels good to do something. So when I work with these young people, I am trying to make available the resources that help them realize their good citizenship. And once someone has settled on that thing they love, we identify good partners to work with them so that they can all use their gifts together to do something good for the world.”

 

Jonah Wittkamper elaborated on this topic—and, hopefully, started some interesting conversations—in his compelling session “Finding Your Life Purpose” at the 2015 FOX Fall Forum. To take a closer look at this and other highlights from the Forum, please click here (Note: Page accessible to FOX members only).