Collaborations

Indigenous-led funds are already advancing some of the most effective climate and community wealth solutions. What would it take to resource them?

JEI Fellows Jen Astone (Cohort 1), founder of Collective Action for Just Finance (CAJF), Kim Pate (Cohort 6), NDN Fund Managing Director, realized that they could explore this together – connecting, making visible, and positioning Indigenous funds to shape the future of capital flows.

Through long-term collaboration, they’re modeling what it looks like to build lasting, trusted relationships that allow leaders to move from working in isolation to building an ecosystem.

The Collaborators

Kim Pate, Managing Director, NDN Fund 

• Indigenous strategist, movement leader, capital innovator
• Advocate for LandBack and broader resource sovereignty
• Longstanding trusted relationships across communities and funds

Jen Astone, Founder of Collective Action for Just Finance (CAJF)

• Field builder, network weaver, champion of integrated capital  
• Creator of impact-first funder collaboratives, including the Transformative 25 (T25) list
• Deep expertise in climate and economic justice
  

Their Story

Jen Astone and Kim Pate’s collaboration didn’t start with a formal plan. It started with a drawing.

At the 2024 Just Economy Institute alumni retreat, Fellows were invited into a visioning exercise: grab some markers and sketch what the future of a just economy could look like. Jen and Kim ended up in the same group.

Kim, drawing on her lineage of Eastern Band Cherokee, Mississippi Choctaw, and Black descent, sketched something expansive: water, mountains, birds, sun.

“She said, I don’t just want land back,” Jen recalled. “I want water back, sky back, culture back.”

In that moment, Kim was inviting Jen into a deeply relational worldview — one grounded not only in vision but also in the practical realities of moving money into Indigenous communities at scale and with specificity.

“I was so taken by Kim’s holistic vision,” Jen said.

At the time, Jen was building Collective Action for Just Finance (CAJF), an initiative designed to highlight and connect impact-first funds and shift how capital flows. One of its core tools is the Transformative 25 (T25) list, which highlights and connects funds already putting these principles into practice — including a growing number of Indigenous-led funds.

Kim, through NDN Fund, was already doing that work on the ground, structuring investments, navigating constraints, and supporting Indigenous communities to build economic power.

They decided they wanted to find a way to work together, and collaboration came into focus in the lead-up to Climate Week NYC.

CAJF was still early — building its presence from the ground up and experimenting with how to convene people. When an opportunity to host an event arose, Jen called Kim.

“We’re going to do an event at Climate Week,” she said. “And we want to spotlight the role of Indigenous-led funds in climate finance.”

Kim and the NDN Collective team stepped in as partners. They helped secure a cooperative space in New York, brought in a Native caterer, supported outreach, and shaped the gathering with intention. What could have been a small event quickly became something much bigger.

Together, they brought nine Indigenous-led funds into the room — all of them recognized as  T25 Funds.

For many of those leaders, it was the first time meeting each other.

“Raising grant dollars alongside investment dollars is very difficult work,” Jen said. “To have Native leaders feel seen — and to realize they weren’t alone — was huge.”

The space itself reflected that intention. It opened with a blessing and land acknowledgment by JEI Fellow Alexander Sterling (Cohort 9), whose people are native to the land on which they gathered. Indigenous leaders were centered at the front, with funders and participants gathered around them in a hollow U shape.

Rather than pitching to investors, Indigenous fund leaders named what they actually needed. They asked direct questions: What are the barriers to investing in Indigenous communities? What would it take to move more capital?

“We’re pulling together Native funds,” Kim said, “and giving ourselves a platform, a vantage point, and bargaining power we haven’t had before.”

After Climate Week on the East Coast came SOCAP on the West Coast. Through a pre-SOCAP gathering, Jen and Kim brought together reparative fund leaders — many connected through the T25 list and JEI — to prepare for engaging more effectively with investors and the broader field. Once again, they created space to challenge isolation and collectively name what needs to shift.

“We can’t subsist on debt alone,” Kim said. “We need grants, or flexible capital.”

Together, they are also helping to shift the narrative — moving from language like “concessionary capital” to “restorative and reparative capital,” and creating tools that help investors understand what that actually means in practice.

But the impact of this collaboration goes beyond any single event or initiative. It’s had a multiplier effect.

CAJF creates the connective tissue — bringing funds into relationship, increasing visibility, and opening doors. NDN Fund and other Indigenous-led funds are advancing the work on the ground: redistributing capital, building businesses, and strengthening communities.

Together, that collaboration strengthens the broader ecosystem.

“We’re co-creating a better world,” she added. “The only way to do that is to keep the pressure on the forces that would tear us apart — and keep innovating together.”

That kind of collaboration requires trust and intention. “You have to bring your whole self,” Kim said. “You have to be willing to show up, build relationships, and do the work.”

For Jen, that’s what makes collaboration real. “T25 is fundamentally a collaborative project,” she said. “It wouldn’t exist without the generosity and interest of the JEI community in my many requests for participation.”

“We’re going to go farther, faster together,” she added. “This isn’t about competing over scarce resources — it’s about growing the whole pie.” That means inviting more people into the work, whether through grants, investments, or simply participation. “Everyone has a role to play,” Jen said.

The impact of their collaboration is already visible: twenty Indigenous-led funds connected through T25, stronger relationships across the field, and growing momentum to move capital in community-led, non-extractive ways.

Through CAJF’s governance committee, Kim is also part of a broader network of fund leaders navigating shared challenges: how to mobilize capital in uncertain times, how to structure investments that build local resilience, and how to ensure communities have access to the kinds of capital they actually need.

Jen reflects on the importance of simply inviting people in and giving them an opportunity to say yes or no to working together. “Everyone appreciates being invited,” she said. “We all have a role to play.”

And collaboration, she notes, isn’t something that just happens.“JEI encourages us to collaborate — starting with the structure of the Creative Capital invitation. We’re invited to listen, debrief, and offer collaboration.”

For Kim, that ongoing return to community is essential. “It’s where we keep going back to fill up our cups,” she said. 

Because when relationships deepen, isolation gives way to ecosystem — and that’s where real power begins to flow.

Values-driven investors wanted to redistribute wealth and invest in community — but lacked advisors, infrastructure, and trusted partners to make it real.

Enter Chordata Capital – an anticapitalist wealth management firm, collaborating to move clients’ investments off of Wall Street and into community investments that center racial and economic justice. 

The Collaborators

Tiffany Brown (JEI Cohort 1) — Organizer, financial advisor, movement builder

• Decades of donor & investor organizing
• Deep analysis of racial & economic justice
• Ability to translate movement values into financial strategy
• Commitment to cross-class collaboration
• Builder of learning communities
  

Kate Poole  (JEI Cohort 1) – Wealth redistributor, investor, creative strategist

• Deep experience in local & community investing
• Willingness to take risks and challenge norms
• Strong creative and communication skills
• Long-term practitioner and learner in reparative finance
• Personal and professional experience leveraging inherited resources for collective good

Their Story

When Tiffany Brown and Kate Poole reconnected through the Just Economy Institute’s inaugural fellowship, it felt less like a networking moment and more like a “meant-to-be” reunion. They had met years earlier through Resource Generation, one of the few spaces at the time where wealth, justice, and redistribution could be named out loud. 

What they shared was this deeply held belief: investing itself could be a form of activism, and that finance needed to be rebuilt, not rebranded.

By the time they entered the JEI fellowship, both were at a crossroads. Tiffany had spent years organizing donors and investors, moving between activist spaces that deeply understood the problems and wealth spaces filled with people eager — but unsupported — to choose a different path. Kate, meanwhile, was organizing wealthy peers around investing but felt similarly constrained.

One prompt at a JEI fellowship gathering asked participants to imagine leveraging $100 million to advance a just economy. 

In 2018, that invitation to imagine would materialize into Chordata Capital.

Drawing on Tiffany’s organizing background and advisory experience, combined with Kate’s willingness to leverage inherited wealth and take creative risks, they began designing an investment advisory firm for people who wanted to redistribute wealth. Advisors told them it wasn’t possible. Fiduciary duty, naysayers argued, required maximizing returns. Community investments were too risky. Avoiding corporations was unrealistic.

Tiffany and Kate disagreed. 

“If a client’s goal is to redistribute wealth and invest in the solidarity economy, your responsibility is to support that,” Tiffany said. “You just have to build the infrastructure, skills, and relationships to make it happen.”

The inflection point wasn’t just technical; it was relational. They were members of JEI and other communities of practice that focused on trust-building, cross-class dialogue, and permission to question the foundations of the system itself. Instead of chasing pre-existing models, the JEI cohort focused on asking better questions together. What would investing look like if frontline communities held power? What if finance were a learning space, not a performance?

Chordata Capital launched to meet the quiet but urgent demand of investors ready to move money out of Wall Street and into community-controlled investments. 

At the end of 2025, Chordata managed over $199 million in assets. They’re proud to have made over $90 million in community investments on behalf of their clients; into community-controlled real estate, co-op loan funds, community controlled loan funds, Black and Native led funds, and more. 

“Radical interdependence is at the core of how we built our business. Our deep invitation for everyone is to act as if we truly need each other,” says Tiffany.

Looking ahead, both women emphasize that the real innovation isn’t the firm — it’s the collaboration. “I’m so grateful to be in this work with Tiffany. She took a really big risk partnering with me and building this wild firm,” shares Kate. “It feels so powerful to do this together.”

Chordata Capital is proof of what can emerge when collaboration isn’t an afterthought, but the strategy from day one. 

If you had the opportunity to move hundreds of millions of dollars to Black and brown communities, how would you ensure that not only wealth is redistributed — but also power to shape lasting decisions on community well-being, self-determination, and shared prosperity? 

For Kataly Foundation’s CEO Nwamaka Agbo (JEI cohort 1) and Board Member Chris Olin (JEI cohort 3), the answer lies in the interpersonal: building and maintaining trusting, supportive relationships. 

The Collaborators

Nwamaka Agbo
Restorative economist, movement strategist, community builder

• Creator of the Restorative Economics framework
• Expert in advising philanthropy on racial & economic justice
• Systems thinker bridging theory and practice
• Grounded in healing justice and community-led solutions

Chris Olin
Investor, mindfulness advocate, philanthropic disruptor

• Background in tech & venture capital
• Strategic thinker on governance & infrastructure
• Supporter of bold risk-taking in service of justice
• Partner to wealth holders activating resources

Their Story

In late 2019, what would become the Kataly Foundation began as an exploration: how could Regan Pritzker redistribute $10 million of her wealth in service of a just economy?

At the time, Regan — working closely with collaborators like Crystal Hayling through the Libra Foundation — was already on a journey to align her resources with racial, climate, and economic justice. She and Crystal reached out to Nwamaka Agbo, whose Restorative Economics framework offered both a philosophy and a path forward.

Nwamaka had built the Restorative Economics framework to be clear about her worldview and the kind of transformation she believed was necessary: that self-determination (for political, economic, and cultural power) requires both community ownership and community governance.  

“There was something about the alignment,” she reflected. “A kind of divine timing — where my purpose and [Regan’s] intentions met.”

Then the universe responded by dialing up the possibilities. 

Following an unexpected liquidity event, the scope for Kataly’s Restorative Economies Fund expanded from $10 million… to $300 million. The total allocation that formed Kataly was $445 million overall. What began as a contained effort became an opportunity to co-create something groundshifting. 

Around this time, Chris Olin — Regan’s husband, and long-time partner in stewarding their capital — stepped more fully into conversations about this wealth redistribution. Newer to philanthropy but deeply experienced in financial systems, Chris also immersed himself in emerging critiques and possibilities; reading Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva, learning about economic democracy from Robert Reich, and gaining insights from Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. He also decided to join the third cohort of the Just Economy Institute, after Nwamaka had been a Fellow in the first JEI cohort. 

“I’m kind of like a college freshman who doesn’t know anything[…] Reading all this and thinking — let’s just do it. Let’s build something Edgar [Villanueva] can’t throw shade at,” Chris laughs. 

He notes how in venture capital, “rich people are taking crazy risks all the time” compared to the conservative, risk-averse nature of traditional philanthropy. He was ready to bring some audacity and scale to grantmaking. 

Regan made the decision to move forward, legally and financially, starting the Kataly Foundation. She credits Chris as a critical supporter. “I’m not sure I would have done it as aggressively without his partnership and encouragement,” she shared. 

Together, they were pushing against a common pattern: wealthholders staying stuck, unsure and unsupported on how to act boldly.

The early structure of Kataly reflected its collaborative roots. Three distinct program areas emerged, each led by practitioners already deeply embedded in their fields, like Nwamaka with Restorative Economics. Marni Rosen turned to movement leaders Vanessa Daniel and Miya Yoshitani to identify who should join them in leading the Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective, and Donna Bransford shaped the Mindfulness and Healing Justice work with Larry Yang and Kimi Mojica. 

At first, these could have remained three independent projects. Instead, through a shared process, early collaborators made a collective decision. “Everyone elected Nwamaka the boss,” Chris said. “They said — we want you to lead us, and we want to hang out and create this thing together.”

That decision marked a turning point. Kataly became not just a funding initiative, but an engine for catalytic capital experiments to be “disruptive in a productive, ‘good trouble’ sort of way,” as Chris describes it. An attempt to rethink philanthropy from the inside out.

From the beginning, the foundation was designed to redistribute power, not just money, in ways that empowered everyone involved. For example,

• Staff — not the board — would hold decision-making authority around grant strategy and grantmaking. 
• Program leaders would guide funding strategy based on their existing relationships in the field and with grassroots organizations.
• Grantees would be treated as partners, not recipients, through a trust based approach to philanthropy.

Chris played a foundational role in building the internal infrastructure to support this vision. When Joleen Ruffin and Lynne Hoey joined the team, they built on Chris’ initial work and charged a path forward that aligned Kataly’s organizational structure and investment strategy with its values. For Nwamaka, working within this structure became a lived practice. 

“Collaborating with Chris and the board has been a deep practice in redistributing power,” she said. “They listen. They ask questions. They offer perspective — but ultimately, they trust me to decide.”

That trust extended throughout the organization, like staff being encouraged to build authentic relationships with grantee partners and make decisions without second-guessing from above. The result was a model where power flowed more equitably, more relationally.

The impact of Kataly’s work is significant: hundreds of millions of dollars have moved to communities of color in service of collective liberation.

But just as important is what Kataly has demonstrated about how change actually happens.

“It’s the interpersonal that becomes the catalyst,” Nwamaka reflected. “Sometimes it’s friction. Sometimes it’s alignment. But the transformation isn’t just structural — it’s spiritual.”

From the outside, it might be tempting to just replicate Kataly’s model. But the team is clear: the real work isn’t just in the structural decisions — it’s in how people must transform from the inside out, in order to align their actions with their words and values. 

“The way we show up is less mathematical and more art,” Nwamaka said. “It’s about holding the complexity of how people grow and evolve while trying to transform systems.”

That means embracing vulnerability, staying in relationship through tension, and recognizing that collaboration isn’t about reaching “perfection,” but navigating imperfection together.

Because in the end, as Nwamaka and Chris remind us, none of this work happens alone.

And building a just economy requires more than moving money: it requires transforming how we show up for each other in the process.

The majority of us want to experience wealth as a tool for collective well-being rather than a weapon of extraction. Yet few of us are given language, space, or strategy to actualize that desire.

The Financial Activist Playbook (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) — written by JEI Fellow Jasmine Rashid — emerged as both a book and a national activation strategy to help everyday people see themselves as “financial activists” and reclaim capital at the personal, interpersonal, and systemic levels.

Over 17 months, across 12 cities and 35+ events, the tour convened activists, wealth holders, funders, organizers, and institutional leaders to collaboratively advance community wealth; through shared accessible share language, practical tools, inspiring storytelling, and cross-class relationship building.

The Collaborators

Jasmine Rashid (JEI Cohort 5) — Author, organizer, financial activist

JEI fellows and advisors featured in the book: Nwamaka Agbo, Ariel Brooks, Stephone Coward, Deborah Frieze, Kristin Hull, Addy Lord, Michelle Maryns, Huong Nguyen-Yap, Deb Nelson, Aisha Nyandoro, Esther Park, Akaya Windwood 

Book tour hosts and collaborators across Oakland (Lina Shalabi, Stephanie Green, Liza Siegler, Allison Kelly, Dallas (Donovan Ervin), Denver (Cindy Willard), New York (Christine Curella), Chicago (Kheira Issaoui-Mansouri), Portland (David Kenney, Dara Westling, Maddy Clark, Jamese Kwele, Anyeley Hallová), and New England (Justin Alfond, Louisa Schibli, Mika Matsuno, Susanna Penfield, Julia Dundorf, Janice St. Onge) co-designed gatherings rooted in local context.

Their Story

Jasmine grew up in New York hyperaware of the quiet architecture of economic segregation — who had access to resources and opportunities, who didn’t, and the invisible role financial systems played in shaping both. Her academic and professional work deepened her understanding of racial capitalism, divestment strategies, and impact investing — and gave her access to rooms where consequential decisions about money and justice were being made.

But she felt a disconnect.

The language of finance was inaccessible to everyday people. Concepts of activism and collective participation could feel intimidating. Where was the bridge?

In 2022, the Just Economy Institute’s fifth cohort became the container where her instinct about financial activist popular education sharpened.

“I wasn’t a finance expert or an academic — I was just a girl in her mid-twenties trying to navigate extractive capitalism and build something better with my friends. Who was I to write a book about financial activism?” she remembers.

Her JEI cohort reflected back something different: that her positionality — grounded in lived experience, organizing, and cross-class dialogue — was precisely what made the project viable. And that she didn’t have to do it alone.

When Jasmine presented her creative capital project at Paicines Ranch, fellows helped pressure-test ideas, suggest interviewees, and share examples of financial activism. From those early signals of support, she spent hundreds of hours interviewing organizers, investors, and practitioners — synthesizing examples across the book’s eight strategies:

• Talking about money
• Banking on ourselves
• Flexing buying power
• Giving and receiving
• Showing up for one another
• Shifting budgets
• Investing
• Handling business
  

“Rather than ‘build it and they will come,’ I took the approach of ‘build it with others from the very start,’” she shared. “My trusting, supportive relationships were absolutely critical to the book’s coming into existence, let alone reaching thousands of readers worldwide.”

Rather than a traditional book promotion tour, Jasmine knew she wanted to use the book to activate the financial activist ecosystem. In each city, she began with a simple question: Who are my trusted partners here, and what would be most useful for this community context?

The JEI network was the first she called. Fellows and ecosystem partners helped convene the three groups she most wanted to see in deeper collaboration:

1. movement activists
2. wealth holders
3. (everyday people navigating financial systems

Events were intentionally co-designed as “temporary worlds — portals into the Just Economies we deserve.” Formats included Financial Activism 101 workshops, offers-and-needs markets, money story sharing, and Just Economy Bingo, where participants exchanged commitments and local resources.

In Portland, for example, the Oregon Impact Roundtable (led by JEI fellows David Kenney and Dara Westling) hosted Jasmine for two live TV appearances, a free public book talk at Powell’s Bookstore (in conversation with JEI Fellow Anyeley Hallová), and a gathering at Meyer Memorial Trust featuring local financial activists working across mutual aid, participatory budgeting, and grantmaking. The event blended education, dialogue, and play — creating space for new relationships to form.

Across cities, organizers prioritized sliding-scale access, free books, independent bookstores, BIPOC-owned catering, and values-aligned vendors — ensuring that economic practice matched the message.

Participants were invited to commit to one concrete action to shift the flow of money before each event ended. Commitments ranged from supporting local cooperative businesses to initiating intergenerational conversations about investments.

Jasmine watched as people working toward similar visions of economic justice — sometimes in the same city — met for the first time.

Over 17 months, the campaign:

• Produced and co-hosted 35+ cross-sector events
• Secured national media coverage (NPR, Forbes, Teen Vogue, LinkedIn News)
• Expanded public discourse on wealth, climate, and collective liberation
• Strengthened relationships across the JEI ecosystem and beyond

Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrated that narrative is infrastructure. When everyday people are invited into conversations often reserved for institutions — and when gatherings are designed for the whole human, including access needs, culture, and emotional safety — power begins to redistribute.

The book became a shared language within a growing ecosystem of financial activists committed to reclaiming wealth and collective well-being. Like JEI itself, the strategy was never about a singular expert. It’s about building, in collaboration and experimentation, the world we want to inhabit.