Kim Wright-Violich
Chief of Strategy & Executive Chair, BlueMark
Kim Wright-Violich leads Tideline’s strategy, finance and operations. She also oversees investor relations and governance for Tideline’s subsidiary, BlueMark. Kim brings her experience as a CEO, growing financial service businesses that incorporate impact investing and philanthropy, to her work at Tideline and BlueMark.
Prior to Tideline, from 2000 to 2012, Kim was the CEO of Schwab Charitable, a stand-alone nonprofit corporation founded by Charles Schwab & Co. to provide turnkey charitable asset management and philanthropic services to investors. In her time as CEO, Kim oversaw Schwab Charitable’s growth from a start-up to the second-largest donor advised fund in the United States, with $3.5 billion in assets and over $5 billion in contributions, serving over 25,000 investors and their wealth advisors.
Under Kim’s leadership Schwab Charitable pioneered impact investing in a donor advised fund. Schwab Charitable partnered with the Grameen Foundation to launch the Double Give Microfinance Guarantee initiative, a program that allowed donors to dedicate a portion of the funds in their accounts to guarantee loans to micro-entrepreneurs around the globe. Schwab Charitable was also a pioneer in permitting independent investment advisors to manage investments in client accounts, allowing the freedom and flexibility to invest DAF assets in alternative asset classes and impact investments. Launching this expanded investment flexibility required Schwab Charitable to also develop risk and performance monitoring methodology and tools to oversee the investment of the charitable assets.
A recognized influential voice in the industry, she is widely published and quoted, including in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNBC, Bloomberg, Investment News, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Chronicle of Philanthropy and Trusts & Estates Magazine. Kim helped direct an effort among a consortium of national donor-advised funds to inform regulation defining and governing DAFs, including providing advice on the related provisions of the Pension Protection Act. Kim has taught and lectured on impact investing and strategic philanthropy at Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley and guest lectures on governance at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2009, Wealth Management magazine named Kim one of the 50 most influential women in the US in wealth management, and she has served as a director of several nonprofit boards, including Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, the Center of Social Sector Leadership at Haas Business School, University of California at Berkeley. Currently she serves as a director on the Board of Impact Assets and Whittier Trust Company.
Kim earned a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University and an executive SEP from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, post-graduate work at the Mass Media Institute at Stanford, as well as coursework in governance at Harvard Business School. She lives on the beach in Marin County to provide an incentive for her three recently-out-of-college children to visit often.