I am delighted today to speak with Bob Jordan, retired Emmy-Award-winning TV journalist and owner of Jordan & Jordan Communications, Inc. Bob has spent his distinguished career as a journalist reporting on the stories that shaped the news of the day for over 5 decades. But over the last 25 years, he has also taken on the worthy task of helping enterprising multigenerational families capture the stories of their ancestors and pass on their defining values and legacy to their descendants.

For all of us in the private wealth and family office space, it is becoming increasingly apparent how important it is to be nurturing and building the human capital of the families we serve. Ensuring the people within the family, across all its generations, are engaged and flourishing is often more important – and more difficult – than securing and growing the family’s financial capital. As FOX founder, Sara Hamilton, recently wrote, “Families have come to realize over time that preserving the family in the midst of wealth is more difficult than preserving the wealth.”

There are many ways to engage and energize the family’s human capital – family purpose and values, robust governance, formalized learning and education, and regular family meetings are just some of the established and reliable tools sophisticated families employ. Through his creative and profound experiences as a family videographer, Bob highlights the galvanizing and unifying power of one still relatively underused tool – family histories.

Tune in to learn about the many ways and formats families can capture and pass on the stories of their origins and of their ancestors’ formative journeys – from books to videography to heirlooms and artifacts to DNA analysis. Bob shares invaluable insights on how to get started recording family stories and how to select the service providers who can help guide the family through these complex, emotional, and sometimes even difficult discovery and storytelling projects. He offers priceless hard-learned lessons and proven recipes for overcoming the many challenges families face as they embark on the path of recording and passing the stories that comprise their family heritage. Most importantly, Bob illustrates with multiple examples from his long career as a family videographer, that the ultimate reward families enjoy as they successfully capture and convey their family histories is the shared purpose and meaning these stories instill among their family members across generations.