Heading for Change, the $3.5 million climate endowment set up by the late gender-smart investing pioneer Suzanne Biegel, has made its first five investments.

Suzanne Biegel

Investees include AiiM, a woman of colour-owned climate technology fund with a strong gender lens, and Supply Change Capital, a women-led US-focused venture fund focused on sustainable food systems. 

Alliance readers might know that Suzanne – who was a long term, dear friend and colleague of mine – passed away in September after navigating metastatic lung cancer for more than two years. Heading for Change was both the culmination of Suzanne’s groundbreaking work on climate and gender and the final legacy she wanted to leave on the world. These first investments represent an important moment to honour Suzanne’s amazing work.

Gender-smart investing

Heading for Change’s blended, multi-asset portfolio focuses on the role women have to play as essential leaders, innovators, and agents of change in the climate sector. We are making $100,000 investments into ambitious climate-focused fund managers keen to deepen their gender integration for better social and economic outcomes. Any investment returns will cycle back to support other climate and gender-smart solutions. 

‘Suzanne knew the need to mobilise enormous amounts of capital in order to address the climate crisis – three to six times the current amount of funding, according to the latest reports from the IPCC’

The first five investees are important examples of Suzanne’s vision. In addition to AiiM and Supply Change Capital, they include MCE Social Capital’s MESA Fund, an emerging-markets focused fund working to close the $200 billion funding gap in the agriculture sector. Just Capital, a fund focused on decarbonising the world’s highest emitting industries has also received investment, and WaterEquity, an emerging markets-focused debt fund which invests in affordable financing for household-level water and sanitation solutions in low-income communities. 

How women create better climate outcomes

These are funds which don’t just perform well on gender and climate metrics, but which understand gender as a tool that can be used to achieve stronger climate outcomes. The companies that these funds invest in directly and indirectly address issues such as hunger and malnutrition, regenerative agriculture, water and sanitation, good green jobs and a just transition (connecting climate action with positive social change). 

For example, investee Supply Change knows women are crucial in the food and agricultural system and it knows the role that diversity plays in climate innovation. MCE promotes women’s participation through the value and supply chain. AiiM integrates gender analysis into its due diligence process to evaluate the risks to women, as well as the opportunities for economic empowerment of women. 

 Suzanne Biegel’s legacy fund

Suzanne intuitively understood that we wouldn’t solve the climate crisis without using capital in new and unexpected ways to catalyse action. In the final months of her life, she created Heading for Change as a philanthropic endowment bringing together her passion for, and expertise in climate, gender equality and investment as a tool for systemic change.

A member of the COMACO conservation team (supported by the MESA fund)

The endowment was launched in April 2023 with a $1 million contribution from Suzanne and her husband Daniel Maskit. In recent months it has attracted more than 150 additional donor partners – including major institutional players such as the Skoll Foundation, Wallace Global Fund, RS Group, Flourish Trust, Laudes Foundation, and Stardust Fund, along with more than 100 individuals and families. 

Suzanne knew the need to mobilise enormous amounts of capital in order to address the climate crisis – three to six times the current amount of funding, according to the latest reports from the IPCC. And she believed that philanthropists have a key role to play in that transition, mobilising their capital to build markets, and ensure investment is deployed in the ways and places it can be most impactful. 

More gender-smart investing 

Over the coming months, our team will be working to make another fifteen private market fund investments with the money we’ve raised so far. Additional contributions will allow us to grow our endowment and increase the number of investments we can make. 

As philanthropists, we already know the powerful things that can be achieved when we give our money to a cause we believe in. Suzanne believed that impact doesn’t need to be limited to philanthropic giving –  it can be applied across your whole portfolio, including through investment.  

Heading for Change seeks to make that easier for philanthropists, providing a pathway from philanthropic giving to impact investment. 

Samantha Anderson is Change Weaver at Heading for Change