For me, philanthropists, impact investors and the whole subject of social responsibility are all linked to the search for talented people who care and who are willing and able to solve important social problems.
It’s important not to confuse impact investing with philanthropy. Impact projects don’t just bring benefit to society: they also create an income which allows them to attract investors.
For me, Ilya Yelpanov’s Esh Derevenskoe (Eat Rural), which helps farmers to realize their output through an online platform and retail points, is a model impact project. As the son of a farmer, Ilya knows about farmers’ needs when it comes to selling their products and also consumers’ need for guaranteed quality, and he deals with both successfully.

For me, philanthropists, impact investors and the whole subject of social responsibility are all linked to the search for talented people who care and who are willing and able to solve important social problems.

It’s important not to confuse impact investing with philanthropy. Impact projects don’t just bring benefit to society: they also create an income which allows them to attract investors.
For me, Ilya Yelpanov’s Esh Derevenskoe (Eat Rural), which helps farmers to realize their output through an online platform and retail points, is a model impact project. As the son of a farmer, Ilya knows about farmers’ needs when it comes to selling their products and also consumers’ need for guaranteed quality, and he deals with both successfully.

I think that both approaches are valid. For our family, the decision to create a family foundation, and particularly to give it our name, wasn’t an obvious one. But at a family meeting, I convinced my parents that a professional structure was needed for an organization engaged in very large-scale charitable activity, which was what we were already doing. If you’re a small non-profit, you need to know who you can approach for funding, what planning horizon to count on and to understand the procedures and the results expected. It’s very important that there’s a real person behind this so that you can trust them and decide if you would want to take a grant from them. And for us, the main driver of the decision was influencing the long-term development of the charitable sector in general and to give our partners the chance to count on us and plan their projects. Of course, this is a big responsibility for me and the team because the foundation bears our family’s name.

I’ll let you into a secret: everyone in my family, including me, regularly gives anonymously. To be honest, it’s quicker and simpler and you do it mainly for the warm feeling it gives you. Anonymous philanthropy is unquestionably needed and in demand, but an ad hoc approach does little to develop non-profits.

We deal with the issues of the older generation, issues connected to the development of small towns and villages, and preventing child abandonment — these are very complex social problems and it’s important to find a new way to address them. It’s common practice to trial new approaches in social work specifically through charitable initiatives.

The theme of a project is less important than the ability to develop people who will go on to become social leaders for their community. One of my favourite programmes at the fund is Cultural Mosaic, which develops social and cultural initiatives in small towns and villages in Russia. It might be reviving a local craft or creating a tourist route, restoring a library or involving school children in creating and promoting local brands.

Just imagine that you live in a small town and you want to start producing souvenirs based on a local craft: you need to know about marketing, the right way to “package” your products, and where to find materials and sales channels. We try to teach this and show the best Russian and international practice so that people can apply their skills alongside this new knowledge and make something of their own that’s even better.

One of the subjects that interests me as an investor is businesses founded by women. On average, it’s women who in one way or another decide how to spend 70% of any family’s budget. But businesses founded by women make up just 2.2% of the total volume of venture financing. It turns out that it’s usually men who come up with products for women, especially new ones.

Developing talented young women gives me faith in the future. I’m inspired by any woman who creates something around herself, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a billion dollars or some unicorn company.
This year, together with the SKOLKOVO business school, Moscow we’ve established a grant for young female entrepreneurs from the Russian regions to study on the Master of Public Strategy MBA programme. I was glad to meet and interact with such bright and extraordinary women; they genuinely inspire me.

The most important example and role model for me has always been my mother. My mum has strongly influenced me and she still does. She was born in a small town in the Stavropol region of Russia, and became a typical Soviet engineer. At a certain point, when my parents had moved abroad, she essentially had to start her life all over again. Mum learned several languages and established a foundation. This skill — being flexible and interested in new things — has always been a model for me, and I think it’s important to pass it on to my children.

I was very lucky to have the example of a woman like that, who was able to combine a loving family with retaining her sense of self. So when people ask me how it’s possible to combine work and family, I don’t know what to say: I think it’s self-evident.

You know, the curse of modern children and particularly those with ambitious parents is the fact that their lives are “choreographed.” There are many young people who at eighteen, nineteen or twenty have done everything right and ticked all the boxes but have no idea what they actually want for themselves or what they’re aiming for. And so I think perhaps it would be better not to tick every box, and for there to be something you don’t do perfectly. You could miss that extra chess lesson and you might find out instead what’s important to you yourself. And for parents, it’s important that you support your children’s wish to be what they want to be and not what you would want to be in their place.

What I had to train myself to do when I was already quite grown-up — perhaps even after I became a mother — was to rely less on my parents’ opinion and to be guided more by my own assessment of a situation, and to find my own path and approach. The easier and closer the relationship between parents and their children, the harder it is for children to work out their own life plan and not live by their parents’ plan.

Children teach us to be genuinely happy and to live in the here and now. After all, when we make those around us happy and genuinely rejoice in other people’s happiness, we become happier ourselves.

Therefore, my aspiration as a philanthropist, an investor and a mother — you could call it my mission — is to develop the people around me so they can realize their potential and make this world a little better.