PROFILE
NATASHA MULLER Next Gen Impact Investor and Mental Health Advocate
A radical collaborator seeking radical impact. Half-Swiss, halfColombian, raised in Japan and Hong Kong, Natasha Muller was born into a textile and manufacturing empire, she was just 17 years old when her father died by suicide, inheriting great wealth and responsiblity. Here she shares some insights on her priorities and what drives her. By Yvonne Beri
Natasha learned many of her values and her early lessons about building and scaling sustainable systems organically through her family business. But her childhood was rocked by tragedy when her father, who suffered from bipolar disorder and depression, died by suicide when Natasha was just 17. Inheriting at a young age is deeply traumatic, complex and difficult, and is an issue that tightly bonds those who have experienced it. Having had experience in her family office and by chance coming across a sustainable investment into renewable energy through family deals, Natasha has since blazed her own path, splitting her assets from her family and for the past ten years focusing fully on impact. As part of an active, frustrated ‘next generation’ community who want urgently to use their wealth to address the global societal and environmental problems that they see, Natasha is unusual in that she already has access to her capital and is using it to mould the existing systems to the priorities of a new generation. Natasha is the Founder of NM Impact and Kokoro, which runs the Future Mental Health Collective, a global peer-to-peer network for private investors and philanthropists supporting mental health. She is
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also a UNICEF NextGen Global Principal, a trustee for United for Global Mental Health and Philanthropy Impact, and is on various advisory committees and boards, including The Valuable 500, the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth at the University of Zurich, the Empower initiative with Harvard Medical School and Maanch. What are some of the areas you are invested in? While I am sector agnostic and invest across all stages and asset classes, I have a bias toward the following three UN Sustainable Goals – climate, food and health. My first major private equity investment over ten years ago was into a solar park and I have since continued to try to accelerate the energy transition however I can. A more recent investment in the energy space was an innovative company, which provides drones and end to end services to inspect the blades of wind turbines. Linked to my work on climate is a fascination with food systems and how we can improve nutrition while saving resources and emissions. It has been a great way to back foodtech entrepreneurs who are innovating in this space.
And health – well, we’re nothing without being physically and mentally healthy. A favourite investment in this space are those that provide employee mental health programmes, from wellness support through to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and in-person treatment. Technology features strongly throughout my portfolio. I am always looking for opportunities created by AI and the digitization of systems. And lastly, I am acutely aware of the need to tackle systemic inequalities within finance and to try to right some serious wrongs. I consciously apply a gender and diversity lens to my investing, and I am constantly astounded by my own blind spots in this space, even as a Latinx woman myself. I want to challenge our collective understanding of how to fight the layers of discrimination entrenched by systems that have existed for hundreds of years. By seeing individuals for who they are, we stand to benefit from a full, incredible array of human talent – talent that others still may miss... How do you blend your investment strategy with your philanthropy and activism? I think historically, asset owners have bifurcated their capital into two worlds: traditional
