Chordata Capital
Investment with a Backbone
5 Year Impact Report
Letter from
Tiffany & Kate
Dear Community,
Chordata is 5 years old this year, and we kind of can’t believe we’re here. This work has felt like a beautiful wish we put out to the universe, and every goal we’ve set, we’ve met and exceeded. We want to offer thanks from the bottom of our hearts to our community of investment partners, clients, friends and allies who have joined us along the way.
When we started Chordata in 2018, we had been looking around at the field of socially responsible investing and seeing that the values espoused were not lining up with the actual investment portfolios. Simultaneously, through Resource Generation and other communities of radical wealthy people, we were hearing again and again that people wanted to stop investing in corporations and stop growing the racial wealth divide by making money off of money. What baffled us was the absence of investment advisors who were willing to take radical wealthy folks at face value.
We decided we’d have to build the vehicle we were longing for, so we rolled up our sleeves (or really, we donned our cutest animal-print business attire). We entered into the gruesome landscape of finance with one goal: to create a firm that would make investments alongside communities, not extract wealth from them. With Chordata we can say to people: “You want to get off Wall Street? Let’s actually do it.” Chordata doesn’t invest in multinational corporations, point blank. It feels incredible that we are now accompanying upwards of 35 people on this journey, and that that number just keeps growing.
We’re proud of so much from the past 5 years. We’re incredibly proud of all the money we’re directing to the institutions we work with. We have over $135M in assets under management that we are transitioning into community investments, and we’ve already moved $64M into solidarity economy investments. Chordata has been a dedicated seed funder for many pivotal organizations building the solidarity economy and has played a key role in building this vibrant movement. We’re proud of doing this work in a cross-race cross-class partnership, and our value of working across difference has deeply shaped every aspect of our work and success.
At this juncture, growth is inevitable. We know more and more people will join us, and we are committed to meeting that demand. Given that, how it is that we grow feels critical. When we think about Chordata’s success, what feels even more real than the money moved is the community we’re building, the connections we’re able to facilitate between people, and the health of our own cross-class, cross-race relationship. We’re excited to take the leap into what this looks like in the next five years, and there’s so much we’re looking forward to. Check out Kate’s comic at the end for more!
We know that investing in corporations has done unfathomable harm to people and the planet, and our invitation is to enter into an age of repair. Let’s invest like we believe that people should have access to the capital they need to live with dignity. Let’s invest like we want to live on this planet for the foreseeable future. That’s why we started Chordata: to invite people to invest as if we truly need each other.
With Love and Solidarity,
Tiffany and Kate
Chordata’s
Approach to investing
Chordata Capital is an anticapitalist wealth management firm with a commitment to supporting 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.
“Since founding Chordata Capital, Kate and Tiffany have emerged as preeminent investment advisors directing restorative capital towards the US solidarity economy. To be an “anti-capitalist wealth manager” requires boldness, creativity and insight that Tiffany and Kate bring in droves, along with a healthy irreverence, a lot of laughter and a grounding love for our communities.”
– Aaron Tanaka, Executive Director of Center for Economic Democracy
Our Impact
We have over 135M in assets under management that we are actively transitioning into community investments, and we’ve already moved 64M into solidarity economy investments. Of the investments we’ve made on behalf of clients:
85%
of our investments are led by people of color or by a multi-racial team
58%
of our investments are led by women
7%
of our investment dollars are in individual companies
100%
of our investments are committed to racial justice
30%
of our investment dollars are in cooperative loan funds
Our Investments
Investment Highlights
Growing Together
Chordata’s work is deeply shaped by our relationships with our investments and by the powerful people and communities they represent. We’re proud to highlight four stories of our investments, the incredible work they are doing, and how Chordata’s work has evolved alongside them.
On a spiritual level, our work is in service of repairing the fractures we’ve all weathered at a cellular level. We understand that racism is not only oppressing and killing people with brown skin, but that it is also eroding people with white skin. When George Floyd was murdered in 2020, we saw a new wave of people wake up to the fact that there’s so much violence against people of color, that people are poor, that we’re not doing well out here. If we come through these fragile moments in which so many people are facing what is really hard and we don’t choose to do something different, if we don’t embody care of BIPOC as if white life doesn’t also depend on it, we are missing the big picture. We need to engage like we understand what’s really happening. This isn’t just repair for the sake of helping people of color. This is also about repair for the sake of helping people with white skin heal from the trauma in relation to the violence we’ve all participated in as a society.”
– Tiffany Brown
“Chordata has set the standard and has made it so that we’re able to illustrate what right relationship looks like, especially when you have a dynamic between white wealth holders and moving money to BIPOC communities. How joyful it could be when people are doing their work and when they show up in that way. You all have primed your folks, and we’ve had the opportunity to come and sit and vibe, and meet the cohorts and connect on a human level. And it’s just made the work so beautiful. Because it is healing work.”
– Nina Robinson, Fund Director at RUNWAY
Our Community of Investors
This is the Age of Repair
Chordata emerged from the bridging of two worlds. We have walked in activist spaces and clearly understood the problems that we face as a society and as a planet. And we have walked in radical donor organizing spaces and have met so many wealth holders who are hungry to choose a different path. We’ve heard the calls from both sides for redistribution, reparations, and repair, and we have largely seen those calls go unanswered. We feel called to respond to this universal prayer, and we see our work as bridging these communities. We see this as the Age of Repair: the age in which we start to act in a way that takes into account everything we’ve learned. Together with wealth holders and with financial activists, we are choosing something different than what we have inherited.
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.
“I was seeking advisors that understood that wealth inequality is wrong, and there is a way out of it through community-based financing. I love that Tiffany and Kate believe investors are partners in a long-term effort to equitably redistribute resources. Chordata’s loan funds give the transition economy a fighting chance against the juggernaut of capitalism. I hope more and more wealthy folks join the movement to make money work for the majority and break the bond with colonial, extractive capitalism”
~ Ross Chapman, Chordata Client
What’s Next for Chordata?
We’re dreaming into the future, and we’re seeing a clear need for Chordata’s offerings.We are proud to say that growth is inevitable for our work. We know that building trust across class and race is essential to transforming our economy, and convenings have been a key way that we create a bridge between investors and leaders in the solidarity economy. And we are seeing that taking big risks in moving money like our major early investments in Ujima and Seed Commons, has allowed them to blossom into powerhouse organizations shifting power across the country.
Thanks for journeying through the past 5 years with us!
Special Thanks
- Our strategic advisors Aaron Tanaka, Nwamaka Agbo, Jessica Norwood, and Jessica Rosenberg
- Organizations that shaped us and continue to be guiding forces in this work including Be Present, Resource Generation, and New Economy Coalition
- Deb Nelson, Marian Moore, Lillie Allen and Esther Park, for offering us mentorship
- Felipe Arratia, our colleague at Natural Investments who has supported us with due diligence, research, and navigating emergent needs in our direct investing
- Christopher Peck, our compliance officer at Natural Investments, for reviewing this report and his enthusiastic support of our biz
- And everyone we are working alongside to repair this economy
The persons doing business as Chordata Capital are Investment Advisory Representatives of Natural Investments, LLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor firm. Chordata Capital is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments, LLC . See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.