Meet the investor behind billionaire Melinda French Gates' bets on women-led funds and startups

Published Mon, Mar 3 202511:05 AM EST

Hayley Cuccinello @in/hayleycuccinello/@HCuccinello

Key Points

While some asset managers are retreating from impact investing, family offices are leaning into environmentally or socially conscious causes.
Pivotal Ventures, the family office of Melinda French Gates, backs women-led funds and startups that serve women.
Managing director Erin Harkless Moore told CNBC why inclusion doesn't mean lowering the bar and why women-led investing will survive DEI backlash.

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC's Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Melinda French Gates has committed $2 billion to promote women's rights and economic mobility. In 2015, she set up her family office, Pivotal Ventures, to support these causes not only through philanthropy but also through investing in women-led funds and startups that serve women. Those investments are managed by Erin Harkless Moore, who joined Pivotal Ventures in 2020 from investment advisory Cambridge Associates. "We want to prove that investments in women can generate best-in-class returns and performance while advancing social process alongside that," Harkless Moore told CNBC. Pivotal Ventures is in good company. Though some traditional asset managers have been retreating from impact investing amid attacks by Republican lawmakers , family offices haven't shied away. Over the past 10 years, family offices have consistently increased their impact investments, which aim to achieve social or environmental goals while generating a profit. The category amounted to 56% of overall family office deal volume in the first half of 2024, per PwC . Among family offices that make impact investments, renewable energy, climate solutions and social equality are the top three most popular causes, according to a survey by RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth. Harkless Moore said the more recent diversity, equity and inclusion crackdown by the Trump administration has led some to wrongly assume that Pivotal Ventures has changed its stance. Since January, Pivotal Ventures has invested in two startups: Little Otter, a mental health app for families, and Millie, a maternity clinic in Berkeley, California. "We've had meetings where people were like, 'Well, we assumed you weren't investing anymore,'" said Harkless Moore, managing director of investments at Pivotal. "We're open for business. We have capital to deploy." These private investment firms can afford to hold the line as they only answer to their wealthy founders and aren't subject to the same scrutiny as registered investment advisors. Other family offices with impact portfolios include Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, which supports a slew of causes such as women's health through venture investments. Blue Haven Initiative, founded by Hyatt heir Liesel Pritzker Simmons and her husband Ian, backs fund and startups that give low-income populations access to capital. Pivotal Ventures manages the wealth of French Gates, the former wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates . In addition to backing startups, Pivotal Ventures has invested in about 20 funds with some $5 billion in assets under management combined. Harkless Moore started her two-decade career in 2005 as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. After earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, she joined Cambridge Associates in 2012 where she was a managing director and advised family offices and private foundations on their investments. "I wanted to kind of harmonize my personal values, the world I wanted to see, with the investing that I was doing," she said of her decision to join Pivotal Ventures. Harkless Moore acknowledged the commonly held notion that investing in women means worse financial returns — but she disagreed. She cited a PitchBook study that reported that female-founded companies exit faster at a lower burn rate. Pivotal Ventures' criteria for evaluating investments is largely similar to other institutional investors, she said, and seeks to eliminate bias rather than lower the bar. For instance, it doesn't disqualify general partners who aren't heavily invested in their own funds — a common checklist item for some institutional backers. "I want our incentives to be aligned with our fund managers," she said, "but if you don't come from wealth or haven't had a substantial exit and amassed a lot of money, where are you going to find several million dollars to put in your fund?" Pivotal Ventures also prioritizes early-stage investments in order to make it easier for emerging founders and funds to land other investors. This means actively seeking out entrepreneurs rather than relying on inbound pitches. "A lot of times this business is about, 'Oh, you know, I need a warm intro,'" she said. "We try to make ourselves as accessible as possible." Harkless Moore described the anti-DEI rhetoric as challenging and frustrating. However, she said women-led investing is here to stay. "I'm a believer in capitalism and markets," she said. "Even with some of this pushback and rhetoric, capital is still going to flow to the ideas." "I think that's where our strategy, us being consistent, staying the course, being disciplined, not deviating from our thesis, is incredibly important in moments like these," she added.