Integrating activism, giving and investing; investing in the Solidarity Economy; racial and economic justice; working with inheritors
Tiffany and Kate co-founded Chordata Capital: Investment with a Backbone to partner with wealthy investors to integrate their giving, investing, and organizing to shift wealth and power and build an economy that works for everyone.
We believe the most strategic role for wealthy investors in transforming our economy is divesting from Wall Street and shifting their money into community-controlled investments that center racial and economic justice.
Services | Portfolio Management (minimum $5 million), the Chordata Cohort
Location | We serve clients nationwide, Tiffany is based in Sonoma County, CA and Kate is based in Philadelphia, PA.
Website | www.chordatacapital.com
Chordata Capital is an anticapitalist wealth management firm with a commitment to support clients in redistributing rather than continuing to accumulate wealth. We believe the most strategic role for wealthy investors in transforming our economy is divesting from Wall Street and shifting their money into community-controlled investments that center racial and economic justice.
We work with individuals and families who:- Are ready to shift over $3 million to community investments in racial and economic justice, and are not dependent on market rate returns to support their expenses
- Are committed to wealth redistribution rather than wealth accumulation
- Want to shift their money from Wall Street into direct investments that build economic power in Black, Indigenous, and other historically oppressed communities
- Are excited about investing in emergent solidarity economy projects that are higher risk and require a longer term commitment
We prioritize a collective rather than individual approach, moving financial advising relationships out of isolation and into community in order to transform the entrenched, unjust financial practices of our current system. We have a model portfolio of community investments that center racial justice, and also support high risk experimental investments in the Solidarity Economy. Working collectively breaks down patterns of isolation, perfectionism, and individualism, while building shared analysis and practices. We know we’re stronger together.
Whether in our investment advising or our cohort program, we work with investors to decode their investments, reflect on their histories, transform familial financial patterns, and collaborate with innovative financial activists on emergent investment strategies. We create opportunities to explore the practices of being in tough, vulnerable conversations about shifting wealth and power, and making big changes to our investment strategies.
Our 9-month long Chordata Cohort program supports people with inherited wealth in digging into the history of wealth accumulation, exploring the landscape of community-controlled loan funds and holistic investments that support Black sovereignty and economic self-determination, and working towards reparations and repair. You can learn more about our cohort here and join a waitlist here.
Our core commitment as a firm is to racial and economic justice.
Our commitment means we share personal commitments to the redistribution of wealth and power at the level of our individual lives, our firm, and the work we’re doing in the field of financial advising. We know poor people are experts on poverty, black activists are experts on anti-black racism, and any attempt to solve a social problem must be shaped and guided by those affected by it. We believe the strategies and transformation that emerge from relationships across class and across race are the strongest and most viable ways to begin to repair our economy.
We believe we have to bring our whole selves into this work–our bodies, our hearts, our experiences and our vision. This means pausing conversations in the hard places and taking time to breathe. It means we will continue to strengthen and share our personal practices that ground and center us. Our intention is to communicate clearly, and to peel back layers of financial jargon to reveal what’s really happening in people’s investment portfolios. We’re committed to slowing down for questions and feelings as we discuss moving money. We create space in this work for listening to body and intuition. We make room for laughter, joy, movement, and personal transformation in service of our collective well-being.
How we found each other
Kate and Tiffany first met in 2013! Kate was attending a conference Tiffany was leading with Resource Generation, an organization that organizes wealthy young people to become leaders in the movement for a more equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power. After a decade of working with Be Present, an organization focused on internal and interpersonal transformation, Tiffany was skilled at bringing her perspective as a Black, mixed race woman from a working-class background to her work for systemic change. Kate was just beginning her own journey of reckoning with her wealth, beginning to organize with other inheritors to invest in racial justice and community-controlled loan funds. Our paths crossed again, when we were both selected as fellows in the inaugural year of RSF Social Finance Integrated Capital Fellowship in 2017, by then Tiffany was working in finance. As we worked together, our eyes opened to the powerful possibility of our partnership.
Through our work with each other and with our clients, we have observed that the most viable strategies and the deepest transformations emerge from relationships across race and class. These boundary-crossing relationships can also be the most challenging—but to disengage out of fear or discomfort is to miss out on opportunities for systemic change.
It has been exhilarating to build out a partnership structure to embody our values. How do our politics affect how we split revenue? How do we handle meetings if the attention was just landing on Kate, the white inheritor, and not honoring the collaborative nature of our work? As Tiffany wrote in our founding documents:
We have a shared commitment to multiracial, cross-class leadership. The racial wealth divide, racism, and classism have created a chasm in our country. As we fracture along these lines of identity, we disconnect from the reality that it will take a diversity of perspectives to restore balance. We need each other and are stronger together.
Tiffany Brown
Tiffany worked in the non-profit sector for over a decade before transitioning into her work in finance. Her career has ranged from being Co-Director at YES!, Board member at Common Fire Foundation, founding advisor to Kindle Project Foundation, to directing national leadership retreats at Resource Generation, and serving on the Finance Committee for Haymarket People’s Fund. She currently serves on the board of Kitchen Table Advisors and Pie Ranch.
Her entry into social justice work was through learning about race and racism in the US, and interning with the SE Regional NAACP’s Prison Project in Atlanta, GA. During her brief stint in Atlanta, Tiffany was introduced to the work of Be Present, which helped to refine the philosophical underpinnings for how she approaches justice work. Racism is dehumanizing for everyone, and we must find ways to work towards collective liberation.
Tiffany loves hosting dinner parties, dancing and homemaking. She enjoys karaoke with friends, where she can allow her inner performer to run wild.
Kate Poole
started her work in the New Economy space at Schumacher Center for New Economics after graduating from Princeton University in 2009, where she wrote her thesis on the intersection of spiritual beliefs and economic action. She went on to work with Michael Shuman from 2010-2014, researching local investing for his books Local Dollars, Local Sense and The Local Economy Solution. She co-founded Regenerative Finance in 2014 to organize other young people with wealth to shift control of capital to communities most affected by racial, economic and environmental injustices.She is a member of Resource Generation, a nonprofit organizing young people with wealth to redistribute land, wealth and power, and she has served on the board of directors of the Schumacher Center for New Economics since 2017.
Kate loves dance and feminist performance art, and enjoys creating comics about Buddhist economics, Jewish economics, and racial justice and reparations. Kate lives in Philadelphia, PA, with her partner who is also named Kate.
