Seminar Series 10: Lecture 1 - Maria Pereira
Reflecting on Money, Love and Virtue
The seminar explored three central concepts – money, love and virtue – and their possible linkage in our lives.
Material needs motivate human action and drive government policy. Without money, these needs cannot be attained. Hence, money is central to our wellbeing. Yet there is another side to money, the nefarious side, which the financial crisis unveiled.
In order for money to be effective in serving the common good, it has to be well employed. Virtue plays a role in the beneficial use of money. It is not imposed by law, but stems from within, from compassion, from sympathy for the other.
The deepest manifestation of virtue is love. It goes beyond compassion. Love is a sharing of the self, resulting in joy, and love reinforces itself, if it is mutually shared. It connects us to the other and permits harmony, a precondition of happiness.
Thus, love enables virtue, which in turn ensures the common good. In order for our economic and financial world to work well, we need not only money, but love and virtue.
About the speaker
Maria Pereira, Investment Specialist, Portugal
Maria promotes transformation in business and finance to a more sustainable and just model. Her collaborations include the International Futures Forum, and in Portugal the Economics and Society Group, which promotes understanding of economic issues in civil society.
In recent years, Maria has worked with the Clinton Climate Initiative of the WJ Clinton Foundation to promote clean energy investment.
Previously, Maria was an independent investment adviser, after serving as Managing Director of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (Private Bankers) in New York and setting up their office in Hong Kong.
She was awarded an MSc Environmental Technology from Imperial College, London, and an MBA Finance from the University of California, Berkeley, cum laude.
Maria Pereira - seminar
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