Dr. Dawn Carpenter

Dr. Dawn Carpenter is a recognized expert in finance and investment, having advised and underwritten over $3 billion in capital for some of the nation's most impactful social purpose corporations. Her career is a unique bridge between the high-stakes world of investment banking and the profound ethical questions of theology and social justice.

About

Dr. Dawn M. Carpenter is an ethicist, filmmaker, and podcast producer whose work explores the social and moral value of economic life through storytelling, scholarship, and public media. Trained as a financial ethicist, she brings an uncommon intellectual lens to documentary film and audio storytelling, examining how work, capital, and institutions shape human flourishing.

Carpenter is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast What Does It Profit?, a narrative series that investigates the ethical dimensions of economic life through the lived experiences of workers, entrepreneurs, and communities. Now completing its sixth season and in pre-production for Season 7, the show blends documentary storytelling with moral inquiry, asking what our economic systems are ultimately for and who they are meant to serve. What Does It Profit? has received multiple Gold and Silver honors from the W3 Awards for excellence in podcasting.

Her work in film has also received international recognition. Carpenter is the director and producer of Interwoven, a documentary exploring solidarity economy initiatives in Morganton, North Carolina, and the possibilities for community-based economic renewal. The film has received fifteen international film festival awards, including a Silver Anthem Award recognizing purpose-driven storytelling and social impact filmmaking.

Carpenter is currently directing and producing 35 Years, a documentary project examining the widening longevity gap in the United States and the stark differences in life expectancy across communities. Using Chicago as both narrative setting and living laboratory, the project explores how inequality shapes the most fundamental measure of human well-being: time itself. The film is currently in development alongside related podcast and research initiatives.

Across her work in podcasting and film, Carpenter brings a distinctive approach that integrates ethical analysis, narrative journalism, and public pedagogy. Her creative practice reflects a belief that storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to illuminate the moral questions embedded in economic life. Rather than treating media simply as content, she approaches film and audio as vehicles for civic dialogue about work, wealth, responsibility, and human dignity.

In addition to her creative work, Carpenter is a financial ethicist at the Milken Institute’s Center for the Future of Aging, where she leads research on financial longevity and the intersection of health, wealth, and economic systems across the life course. Her interdisciplinary perspective draws on academic training in ethics, economics, and leadership, including a doctorate and three additional graduate degrees.

A longtime educator and mentor, Carpenter has also guided more than one hundred students and early-career professionals in research, storytelling, and ethical leadership.

Through film, podcasting, and scholarship, Carpenter’s work seeks to elevate public understanding of the ethical foundations of economic life and to use storytelling as a tool for inquiry, reflection, and social imagination.