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Buffett on the world's most undervalued asset
Posted by Joan King Salwen on 02.02.2011Share

Peter Buffett came to school this week, the morning after his performance of conversation and music at the Atlanta Girls' School Day of Learning. If you don't know Buffett, he is a song writer who specializes, among other things, in Native American themes (he wrote the "Dances With Wolves" fire-dance scene, for instance).

He's also the son of legendary investor Warren Buffett, and Peter likes to talk about his dad's almost equally legendary refusal to pass along money to his now-grown children. Instead, the younger Buffetts must create their own pathways, their own lives, their own livelihoods -- "your money or your life," as Peter Buffett says.

The one place Warren Buffett does pass along money to his children is to help them create and endow foundations. Those funds must be used to help the world. So, Peter Buffett and his wife Jennifer run the NoVo Foundation, which supports efforts "to help create a caring and balanced world that operates on the principles of mutual respect, collaboration, and civic participation." The strategy to achieve those goals is to focus on the empowerment and education of women and girls, and to help educate men and boys in their new roles.

That brings to me back to Peter's visit to AGS. At one point during his talk to the girls, he described what made his father the world's greatest investor. "He found companies that were undervalued and invested in them. He then left them alone and watched them grow on their own."

Peter Buffett let that concept sink in for a second, then quickly explained that Novo's philosophy is similar. "We are investing in the world's most undervalued asset -- girls."

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