Audacious Impact: Simone Pero of For Impact Productions On Leading An Audacious, Visionary, Impact-Focused Program
An Interview With Rachel Klein
Be strategic in everything you do. When I founded For Impact Productions, impact producing was a burgeoning field, and there needed to be more understanding of the opportunities in galvanizing film, media, and entertainment audiences to build awareness and action on critical social issues. Today, when we create strategic plans incorporating the passion and vision of the art with pragmatic objectives and calls to action, audacious ideas for social impact galvanize resources and reach.
In an era where social and environmental challenges are increasingly pressing, certain organizations stand out for their bold and innovative approaches to creating meaningful impact. These trailblazing organizations are not just meeting the status quo but are setting new standards for what can be achieved through dedicated, impact-focused programs. What does it take to pioneer such transformative initiatives, and what can others learn from their successes? I had the pleasure of interviewing Simone Pero.
Emmy-nominated producer Simone Pero is the founder of For Impact Productions, a sought-after purpose-driven impact company focused on film, media, and brand storytelling. Pero’s portfolio includes the upcoming movie LILLY, starring Patricia Clarkson, about fair pay icon Lilly Ledbetter, and THE TALE, starring Laura Dern, nominated for 25 awards, including two Emmys and a Golden Globe, and distributed worldwide by HBO Films. Pero is an executive producer of the acclaimed documentary THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING with Geena Davis, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won a Gracie Award and New York Times Critic Pick. She is also a co-executive producer on Yvonne Russo’s forthcoming documentary VIVA VERDI! and associate producer on Russo’s Disney Onyx doc-series VOW OF SILENCE: THE ASSASSINATION OF ANNIE MAE. Named by Cynopsis Media as a Top Woman in Media in Community Building, Pero is an active leader in the media and entertainment industry, serving on the President’s Council of New York Women in Film & Television and as the organization’s former Board President. She is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Television Academy, and the Global Impact Producers Alliance member. Pero is on faculty at the Stony Brook University Killer Films MFA in Film program and serves on the Center for Media and Social Impact Documentary Power Research Institute’s Advisory Group. She is a former corporate executive at MTV and Rainbow Media/Cablevision (now AMC Networks). She has launched her career at the U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, and on the Clinton/Gore ’96 advance team. Simone is a former corporate communications executive at Rainbow Media/Cablevision (now AMC Networks) and MTV. Her career was launched in the Clinton Administration and as a communications consultant for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and leading nonprofits.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share a bit about your background and what has led you to your current role?
For me, the personal- became political very young. Being raised by a never-married-by-choice single mother at a time when such circumstances were primarily considered unconventional, even radical, I had a front-row seat to many of the socio-economic and cultural issues we face in this country today. Undoubtedly, my childhood experiences and a “convention-breaking” parental role model were significant forces in guiding my career compass into the social change arena. With a master’s degree in public affairs and policy and an internship at the United Nations, I made my way to Washington, D.C., to demystify policy-making from the inside. I spent a few years analyzing policy and writing speeches for the U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau. I worked on big things like the Family Medical Leave Act, the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the President’s Advance Team. I had the great opportunity to meet people across the country and around the world. I witnessed firsthand policy impacts on our everyday lives and saw how the human story wielded the power to inspire new ways of thinking and even a willingness to act.
What inspired you to start or join your organization, and what is its core mission?
My career continued to evolve and expand over the years. Surprisingly, I jumped over to the private sector and into corporate executive work for top media and entertainment companies. I pondered, where better to learn how to expose stories and issues to the world massively than in the country’s largest export industry? This is when the game truly changed for me. I fell in love with visual storytelling. A new craft and community was now in my tool chest to change hearts and minds on social issues and policy.
It wasn’t long after that my entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and it became clear to me that there was a spot in the marketplace and a dire need in our society for new approaches to tackling social issues. Through my breadth of experiences in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, I decided to launch For Impact Productions. Twenty years later, the work has been established as one of the top advisory and consultancy for philanthropy, hybrid financing models, and social impact campaigns for creators and the arts. Our expertise is needed more than ever in the growing field of social impact work worldwide.
Our core as a company is an unwavering focus to architect a better world through film, art, and brand storytelling. We work with art and artists in all mediums to elevate their projects proactively and deliberately, contributing to positive social impact. Our clients have shown extraordinary examples of how artistic expression can move people from apathy to empathy to social action.
Could you tell us about your journey in the industry and any significant experiences that have shaped your approach to impact-focused programs?
When we started For Impact Productions, we wanted to help policymakers understand essential societal issues, mainly through the documentary art form. From topics related to independent living options for people with disabilities spotlighted in the first film I produced, the award-winning film BODY & SOUL: DIANA & KATHY, to bringing greater awareness to a broken healthcare system in ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, our work had government officials talking and relating to their constituents’ experiences in new, more pragmatic and humanistic ways.
Our focus later expanded into issue-driven fiction films, where real-life, contemporary issues were expressed through the characters’ emotional language and metaphor in narrative cinema storytelling. With this medium, we tapped deeper into hearts and minds and saw an even greater opportunity for profound resonance and relatability in audiences. Our approach to social impact work continues to evolve, and today, we include all types of platforms and creators poised to move people and make a positive difference.
Can you describe your company’s mission? Does your organization solve societal problems? If so, tell us how. What customer problems are you solving?
Undeniably, our world and ways of living and relating are evolving at lightning speed, with our challenges more complex than ever. In our organization, we see art as a messenger to the world, referring to issues and experiences of the times. Art and artists of all kinds hold powerful magic wands to help humanity move forward through societal problems, allowing us to make sense. What we find most compelling is that art can communicate and illustrate the grayness, complexity, and nuance in social problems… an imperative for solutions and problem-solving.
Our mission at For Impact Productions is to foster this purpose for art and creative works by creating a ripple effect of social and cultural impact. We help artists and creators get their work made and launched so they can help and positively impact others with their art. By providing strategy, impact campaign planning, and outside-the-box tools for funding and support, artists and creators are better equipped to play their part in solving societal problems. From a macro perspective, we consider society and societal challenges as our customers; this tunnel vision drives our work every day.
To date, we’ve worked on raising the bar on a myriad of issues, from cancer prevention to gender discrimination to thematic cultural conversations on abuse, trauma, and memory. With our most recent project, VIVA VERDI! — highlighting successful eldercare models and LILLY, starring Patricia Clarkson about the historic fight for equal pay, and the Hulu docu-series VOW OF SILENCE: The Assassination of Annie Mae about murdered and missing Indigenous women, the list of societal problems artists can impact is limitless.
Do you have a big hairy audacious goal for your organization and its impact on the planet?
You bet I do! My vision for For Impact Productions is to expand our clientele to creators and artists of all mediums in countries around the world. Beginning in 2025, our work will scale to equip even more artists with impact-producing strategies and tools to serve more people. We will launch new offerings such as webinars, online courses, and workshops and continue our core advisory practice. Our work harnessing the power of artistic endeavors and creative content will also expand to corporations seeking new ways to solve societal challenges in their workplaces, customers, and communities. Over the longer term, we plan to establish a new charitable funding entity as a conduit to our mission.
Given the pressing needs our society and systems are experiencing, the increased tightening of available funding resources, and industry shifts, I feel an urgency to this audacious goal like never before.
Can you describe one of the most audacious impact-focused programs your organization has pioneered? What was the inspiration behind it?
One of our most profound and audacious impact-producing experiences was through the launch and rollout of a groundbreaking global outreach campaign for filmmaker Jennifer Fox’s narrative feature called THE TALE, starring Laura Dern. With a Sundance Film Festival premiere, numerous industry awards including Golden Globe and Emmy Nominations, worldwide distribution with HBO Films, and a global awareness campaign, we were able to not only achieve the trifecta of success — artistic, commercial, and social impacts, but we also helped to deepen an understanding of the child sexual abuse global epidemic.
Our impact-producing work included raising unprecedented philanthropic support for fiction films and executing wide-reaching outreach to present the film and its issues worldwide. We collaborated with leading nonprofits to help affect the statute of limitations laws, contributed to psychoanalytic training content, spurred a cross-sector brain trust, and presented at the United Nations. We led a University screening tour and built a resource-rich interactive website on topics from mental health and grooming of children to men as positive role models and changing the stigma around sexual abuse.
Although unexpected, the film’s launch timing coincided with the rise of the #metoo climate, and the press coverage went far beyond traditional entertainment and film mentions to full-feature articles about the issues and themes. This media exposure was extraordinary, and as we traveled with the film worldwide, audiences’ reactions and willingness to speak their truths were gobsmacking. Through a piece of art, in this case, a film, we had conversations that made it less fearful to express a shared experience and made lasting impacts.
The impact of that film continues more than five years after our initial campaign launch with in-depth press coverage on the film’s issues, including this 2024 New York Times expose.
What were your biggest challenges while developing and implementing this program, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenges we faced were funding the project’s impact campaign and keeping up with the onslaught of interest we received from communities and countries across the globe. While we had the great fortune to have HBO’s platform by our side, our small indie film team was stretched.
To forge ahead, we went back into fundraising mode, writing grants and reaching out to philanthropists fiercely committed to THE TALE’s mission. By this time, we were well equipped to translate the film art form into public policy, education, and social impact advocacy, which made a compelling case for our socially minded funders. We also engaged more robustly with partner organizations and issue experts who could speak on the film’s behalf and help meet the needs of audiences requiring support and resources.
Tell us how customers have received your program. What struggles have you had generating customer interest? Please share what successes you’ve had with customers.
At the launch of For Impact Productions, film funding, particularly for independent narrative films, was mainly in the form of equity investment, other film-related programs like state/regional tax credits, and a sole mindset of financial return on investment. On the other hand, grants and charitable contributions are a mainstay in the documentary film arena, where financial support is predominately tied to the project’s mission.
While these two business models remain largely the same in the film arena, we at For Impact Productions apply the mission-oriented approach to all we do. We assign value based on social impact for prospective funders, partners, supporters, and distributors while acknowledging the role of profits.
Our job is to build the case for what art can accomplish in awareness building, education, audience reach, and moving needles. With projects like THE TALE and our newest film, LILLY, we focused on the social return on investment (SROI). We brought in philanthropists, impact investors, corporate cause sponsorships, and foundational grants. These modes of support have been game changers for projects that may have never been able to be realized in the world using the standard investment approaches and paradigms. Much of our success is rooted in building support from those who share a vision of a world enlightened by the power of art and cinema.
How do you measure your programs’ customer success, business success, and impact? Can you share any specific metrics or outcomes?
From my perspective, social impact is rooted in transformation. Whether cultural, social, policy or human transformation, measuring these outcomes comes in qualitative and quantitative forms. For example, for our film clients, we create a metrics sheet of indicators such as the number and quality of film festival acceptances, press coverage, screening attendance, cultural conversation shifts, establishment of training curriculums, policy changes, programmatic funding, and practitioner shifts.
While it’s not straightforward to capture the number of people who have seen the projects we’ve worked on, we modestly estimate that more than 50 million people worldwide have viewed the films we’ve worked on. Many of them have come in contact with our accompanying social impact campaign efforts. The numbers continue to rise as the films reach new audiences, and the ripple effect of how these films have perhaps transformed someone’s life is immeasurable.
How do you ensure that your programs are sustainable and scalable over the long term?
We are big proponents of social intelligence as a critical piece to the sustainability and scalability of social impact programs. We focus on staying abreast of cultural conversations, political climates, and media coverage. Engaging in partnerships with influencers and advocacy organization movers and shakers is also in the mix to keep our fingers on the pulse. If we learn to understand others and their experiences and pivot with the times, our ability to leverage the power of art to solve problems will expand and grow.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Bring An Audacious Idea to Fruition”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
1 . Be strategic in everything you do.
When I founded For Impact Productions, impact producing was a burgeoning field, and there needed to be more understanding of the opportunities in galvanizing film, media, and entertainment audiences to build awareness and action on critical social issues. Today, when we create strategic plans incorporating the passion and vision of the art with pragmatic objectives and calls to action, audacious ideas for social impact galvanize resources and reach.
2 . Partnerships are your golden ticket.
Finding and aligning with like-minded organizations can catapult you and your project in terms of reach, exposure, and credibility. At the beginning of each audacious social impact project we launch, our first stop is to suss-out and engage with organizations and experts in the field. These partners not only have the potential to support the issues raised in your project, but they can also be an incredible distribution vehicle through their chapters, memberships, and stature. For our movie LILLY, we have partnered with leaders in the field of pay equity, such as the National Women’s Law Center and Equal Pay Today, which greatly expand our footprint on gender equality and empowerment.
3. Show your authenticity.
When translating your art into a vehicle for social impact, it is essential to communicate clear, authentic ties for your audiences, funders, and the advocacy community you seek to serve. In THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, we found great alignment between our filmmakers’ vision and the film’s message of gender equality in Hollywood with corporate partners like David Yurman, who were keen to help facilitate this equality mindset into the fashion industry.
4. Learn to pivot… with grace and flexibility.
During the pandemic, we took on three new projects. While things were shutting down, it was hard, as we felt little certainty about artistic projects. Galvanizing resources in a climate of fear and uncertainty was challenging, but we carried on. We bolstered our case for the import of art, especially during these precarious times, while we saw audiences adapt to watching movies online and engaging with online advocacy. Gratefully, four years later, all of these projects have successfully come to fruition.
5. Create an ecosystem of support.
Social impact can’t be achieved in a vacuum, and it is not a solo sport. You will need support and cheerleaders in all forms, not only for your project in the form of resources but also to encourage you as an individual along the way… Times will get tough, as they inevitably do on audacious-driven projects. You may want to give up bringing big ideas forth to change the world. But do not give up. The world needs your voice.
What piece of advice would you give to other organizations looking to pioneer their own impact-focused programs?
In my opinion, being a good steward is simply good business.
Right now, we are in a significant moment in history. Social impact is being integrated into all sectors and arenas, and conventional paradigms are being transformed to see the importance of social engagement. With artists and creators leading the way, we offer the opportunity to create social impact and value beyond financial metrics. We at For Impact Productions see this as an imperative for our future.
Can you share a story of someone who has inspired you in your journey?
In my everyday life, I am inspired by the graduate students I teach at the Stony Brook University Killer Films MFA in Film & TV Writing program. These student artists bring perspectives from around the country and worldwide, from Nepal to Ukraine, Brooklyn to China, and Michigan to Puerto Rico. They give me much hope, and I am privileged to help them prepare their projects and dreams for great impact. The one person who has truly inspired me on a public stage is Oprah Winfrey. She is a walking social impact powerhouse. It’s been awe-inspiring to see her transformation in the public eye from humble beginnings to master relator to audiences from all walks of life to using her platform and voice to raise global awareness on nearly every social issue. Her North Star of education, inspiration, and empowerment, especially for women and children, is evident throughout the growth of her media empire, and her mark on the world is solidified. She exquisitely understands the power of her medium to effect change. What an inspiration!
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
Website www.forimpactproductions.com, on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/simonep, and on Instagram, @SimoneForimpact.
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
Audacious Impact: Simone Pero of For Impact Productions On Leading An Audacious, Visionary… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.