It Matters Who Manages Capital
By Ruth Shaber, MD, Founder and President, Tara Health Foundation
The flow of capital reflects what we, as people, value.
I could talk with Erika Seth Davies, CEO of Rhia Ventures, all day.
You’ve heard us talk about opportunities for philanthropy to align endowments with grantmaking and the ways Rhia’s unique structure reorients our relationship to capital to better resource movements. Through all the finance and philanthropy wonkiness, our conversations keep coming back to the humans in the midst of all this capital—the people owning it, managing it, and using it to build a more just and equitable world.
Our conversation in Episode 14 of Make Shift Happen drives that point home. White men, despite representing 30% of the US population, are in charge of 98% of assets under management in the US. That’s over $80 trillion. Erika calls out the implications of this imbalance during our most recent conversation:
“The women’s health space is a perfect example of overlooked markets because of who is managing the money… [white guys]—their perspective is not one of the issues, the considerations, the concerns of our health, but we’re half the population.”
Who we are shapes how we confer both value and risk. So, when the majority of American assets are managed from a relatively limited perspective (given the vast diversity of the country), we miss out on resourcing important and valuable work. Erika speaks to this exactly:
“… The women’s health funds that have been started over the last few years have all been started by women. We’re the ones creating, not just the solutions, but creating pathways to those solutions being funded for our own health.”
I mention a few concrete things we in philanthropy can do to build on this momentum: recruit asset managers from new places, tap different standards for diligence such as Due Diligence 2.0, and, for those of us who own capital, share about the real benefits and value we’ve seen in hiring diverse asset managers.
But beyond all of these actions is a mindset. Our markets aren’t disembodied entities—they’re made up of people building solutions and making decisions about what they and others will value. When more of us are part of those solutions and decisions, we can create the markets, and ultimately, an economy, that meets all our needs.
Rhia Ventures works at the intersection of racial equity, women’s health, and capital to drive systems change, innovation, and financial and social returns. As Tara Health’s first anchor organization, Rhia Ventures has stewarded our private investment strategy since 2018 in alignment with our commitment to 100% mission alignment.
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