Host Monique Aiken has the headlines and Known Holding’s Valerie Red-Horse Mohl joins David Bank to talk about moving capital at scale to elevate communities of color.
Despite all efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion, little has meaningfully changed about how, where and to whom capital flows. Known Holdings is out to break the logjam once and for all.
“Our goal is to shift capital through all of the ways of wealth creation” says Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, who cofounded Known in 2021 with Nathalie Molina Niño, Jim Casselberry and Ushir Shah. “We manage assets, we deploy assets, and we shift capital to focus on eliminating the racial wealth gap.”
Known is the rare Black, Indigenous, Latina and Asian American-owned asset management firm. It has quietly attracted assets from impact investors looking to shift capital for greater impact. “We have big ambitions to really shift capital in significant ways,” Red-Horse Mohl tells ImpactAlpha’s David Bank on this week’s podcast.
The ambitions can be seen in one of the firm’s first moves: the acquisition of Living Cities $100 million Catalyst Fund III, which invests in women and fund managers of color. Living Cities’ Demetric Duckett (see, “New decision-makers for the new majority”) has joined Known as a managing director. Expect more deals like this as Known consolidates talent and financial assets looking to shift capital for greater impact.
“Our thesis is to invest in the best and the brightest. It’s also a thesis around positive impact in their strategies,” says Red-Horse Mohl, who at the East Bay Community Foundation moved most of the organization’s assets to managers of color. “It’s exciting to be able to do it in a much bigger way as we scale with Known.”
