Businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs is using her fortune to produce and finance documentary filmmaking. According to Bloomberg, the world’s sixth-richest woman is backing a documentary studio along with director-producer Davis Guggenheim (“Waiting for Superman”). The startup, Concordia Studio, was co-founded by Powell Jobs’ philanthropic firm Emerson Collective.
Concordia has already produced the doc “Kailash,” which won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance this year. Powell Jobs exec produced the portrait of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi and his fight to rescue children from human trafficking.
As the source notes, Powell Jobs also has stakes in production and talent management company Anonymous Content (“Winter’s Bone,” “13 Reasons Why”) and diversity-minded media company Macro (“Mudbound,” “Fences”).
Founded and headed by Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective is devoted to “removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential.” Emerson’s areas of interest include education, immigration reform, the environment, and health. The organization has been especially vocal about the importance of supporting Dreamers, or undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and attended school there, and stopping the forced separation of immigrant families.