Bay Area Board of Advisors

Jed Emerson
Generation Foundation

Jed Emerson is a Senior Fellow with Generation Foundation, of Generation Investment Management. He has also served as a Senior Fellow with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as a Lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. His area of exploration is the Blended Value Proposition. The BVP states that all human enterprise has within it embedded components of economic, social, natural and cultural capital which, when viewed together, create the foundation upon which life is based. While valuation frameworks are well formed in the area of economic and, increasingly, environmental capital, more work is needed to advance frameworks for assessing and tracking the value generated by social and cultural capital. Emerson's work explores the various intersections between these capital components and the metrics by which their value may be assessed.

Jed has twice been selected by The Nonprofit Times as one of its "50 Most Influential People in the Nonprofit Sector," individuals whose thoughts and work are viewed as influencing the development of the sector over years to come. From 2000 to 2001, he served as the Bloomberg Senior Research Fellow in Philanthropy at Harvard Business School. Jed writes extensively and has presented his work at such conference events as the World Economic Forum and the Council on Foundation.

Jed is co-founder of the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, serving as the fund's executive director and president from 1989 to 2000. The Fund manages social investments in a portfolio of nonprofit organizations employing very low-income and homeless individuals in market-based business ventures. While with REDF, Jed developed and wrote extensively about the application of Social Return on Investment frameworks for valuing non-financial investor returns. Prior to REDF, from 1989 to 1996, Jed served as Director of the Homeless Economic Development Fund of The Roberts Foundation. The HEDF worked with a variety of nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area to expand economic opportunity for homeless people through the creation of small businesses and related strategies.

Prior to joining The Roberts Foundation, Jed served as the Executive Director of the Larkin Street Youth Center (working with homeless and runaway youth in San Francisco), a national consultant to church-based nonprofits, and young adult coordinator of a national volunteer program for the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Jed holds an MSW from the University of Denver and an MBA from St. Mary's.

For additional information on Emerson's research and writings, please go to www.blendedvalue.org or www.blendedblog.org.