Women of Impact: Sana Kapadia on pioneering gender-smart climate funds

This article features a donor-advised fund, a worthwhile option for investors looking to donate on International Charity Day (Sept. 5).

Sana Kapadia is a pioneer of gender-smart climate funding.

As chief catalyst at Heading for Change, Sana steers the $1 million endowment launched by Suzanne Biegel and her husband, Daniel Maskit, after Suzanne was diagnosed with stage four metastatic lung cancer in 2021.

Heading for Change aims to equip the next generation of gender- and climate-smart investors. The donor-advised fund (a giving vehicle that’s run by a public charity created to manage donations on behalf of organizations, families, or individuals) is focused on making investments and grants that advance both climate and biodiversity solutions and gender equity.

Sana helps oversee a portfolio centered on catalytic investments aimed at helping build investment vehicles, businesses and institutions to battle the climate crisis and shore up gender equity.

An enduring legacy

Suzanne advised Heading for Change until her death in 2023. It has grown to almost $3.5 million since launching. The fund continues with Suzanne’s vision of addressing the climate crisis through gender-smart solutions.

“I miss her every day because she has really been a force. It’s very rare that you get to work with someone and get to know someone who is just so driven and passionate. Suzanne’s life work, especially the last two decades, were really focused on moving more capital towards women and girls,” Sana told Equities.com in a recent interview.

For decades, Suzanne had dedicated her career to making finance more gender inclusive. As co-founder of GenderSmart (which merged with 2X Collaborative to form 2X Global), Suzanne helped connect gender-smart investors and served as a thought leader on the intersection of gender and climate.

“We will not get to the climate solutions that we need if we’re missing half the population. I believe that we are missing out by not looking at the climate change innovators, the women fund managers, the women entrepreneurs, the women scientists, the women workers, the indigenous women who have the solutions that we need,” Suzanne said, speaking at Confluence Philanthropy’s 2023 Advisors Forum & Climate Solutions Summit in March 2023.

Suzanne was posthumously awarded the 2024 Joan Bavaria Award at the U.S. Sustainable Investment Forum in June for her work to catalyze gender-smart capital while addressing the climate crisis.

Developing a blueprint

Sana brought two decades of experience in impact investing and gender finance to her new role at Heading for Change. Born in the United Arab Emirates, she earned her bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting in Canada and her master’s degree in development economics in the Netherlands.

She had worked closely with Suzanne for several years, and until recently was director of strategy at 2X Global, and is now a senior strategic advisor there.

Sana is now leading the execution of the remaining investments and grants at Heading for Change, in line with the organizer’s plan to commit all capital by March 2025.

“These are funds that are focused on climate and advancing climate outcomes, while also deeply thinking about how a gender lens can be integrated, explicitly and implicitly in their process, their strategy and outcomes so as to have a sort of more seismic, systemic shift at scale,” Sana said.

But Sana said there’s more work to be done. Her mind is on scaling up, from how to take the gender-smart climate funds blueprint Heading for Change has developed and share it with other markets, to how to tap into greater funding.

“How do we catalyze more capital, not just into Heading for Change and into the funds but also broadly? How do we move from the millions to the billions – not just in quantum but also quality?” Sana said. The Paris Agreement is a great example of a funding gap, she explained, given trillions of more dollars are needed to help meet the international treaty’s climate goals.

Where Heading for Change invests

Sana explained that the nexus of gender and climate at Heading for Change brings an array of global opportunities to the forefront.

“It’s a nascent space that’s emerging. You have a lot of investors who’ve been integrating a gender lens now for more than a decade and even longer. And then, of course, climate finance has also been around for a really long time,” she said.

Recent Heading for Change investments include Unconventional Ventures, a Nordics-based seed stage venture fund investing in diverse and underrepresented founders of climate businesses.

In the U.S., Heading for Change has recently partnered with Invest for Better, a nonprofit providing training and community to help women become investors.

“So it’s a really active way for us to help move more capital but also increase capacity and capability,” Sana said.

Read more on Women of Impact: Kelly Ann Winget on her alternative investment fund and gender bias | Santia Deck and a revolution in impact investing | more articles in this series here.