Quantifying Social Impact: My Experience at the Intersection of Media and Impact

By: Aanchal Kawatra

An international student in the US, I came to Berkeley Haas with a goal to join the Media and Entertainment Industry. With a background in Media and a passion for Non-profit work, I wondered what a role at the intersection of these two industries would look like. And Ro*co Films International was just that!

Ro*co is a leading distributor of documentaries with content focusing on global social and environmental challenges.

It was a delight working with the wonderful team which has 90–95% women and really opened my eyes to what that could look like. A 20 year old strong company, Annie Roney started this with the core idea to use Media as a platform to raise awareness and sensitize audiences about issues that are critical. Working under her fearless leadership, the team now has a world wide reach and partnerships with filmmakers, VOD platforms like Netflix and educational communities. Ro*co works with filmmakers and media buyers to curate and license content that could engender game changing impact.

I worked with the Managing Director — International, Cristine Platt Dewey and the MD — Education, Allie Silvestri to develop a foundation pitch kit and communications strategy to help raise funds for impact campaigns for social issue documentaries. My work led me to conduct several primary interviews with funders — the foundations, to understand their value proposition when funding a documentary, with filmmakers to understand their thought process of making a film with a relatively niche audience, with impact producers who act as the relationship managers to ensure the distribution of the film. This was not only an exciting but also a great learning experience for me and helped develop key insights for each part of the film’s journey.

I worked on two specific documentaries — Human Nature and Bedlam, both stories eye opening and exposing complex issues our world faces today! Human Nature (a must watch!) shows us a breakthrough discovery which has the power to cure fatal diseases but also has some shocking and severe negative consequences on mankind and what this could mean for evolution.

On the other end, Bedlam brings to life of mentally ill citizens and sensitizes us on the amount we need to do for this.

Interviews, combined with research helped guide my work and led me to analyse how impact can be measured? Hitting on this key question was the pivotal point in the internship which gave new avenues to my work and opened doors for Ro*co’s communication strategy. An in-depth research helped understand the trending digital tools to measure social impact among audiences and how they can help enhance the communication and impact significantly.

The experience has been nothing short of wonderful and greatly helpful in understanding the Film Industry from a Distribution standpoint!