[Podcast] Beyond Money First: Vicki Saunders on Community-Driven Capital and the Next Economic System

Vicki offers a glimpse of what's possible when we design financial systems around relationships and collective wellbeing rather than individual wealth accumulation.

Author

Hilary Callaghan
June 18, 2025

In this episode of Chasing Financial Equality, Kane Jackson speaks with Vicki Saunders, founder of Coralus (formerly SheEO), who has quietly revolutionised how we think about funding. Growing up on a Canadian farm where failure was just part of learning, Vicki has built something extraordinary: a financial model that has circulated over $19 million to 190 ventures through zero percent interest loans and achieved a 95% repayment rate.

Vicki's story begins with dreams formed during collective barn raisings and crystallises in a moment of freedom when the Berlin Wall fell. From those foundations, she's created what she calls a response to a "400-year turning point" - the end of economic systems that extract value rather than create it.

In the conversation, Vicki shares:

  • How Coralus uses radical generosity instead of traditional venture capital metrics

  • Why she funds ventures led by women, non-binary individuals, and marginalised communities

  • Her belief that we're witnessing the collapse of systems that serve only a few

  • The shift from scarcity thinking to designing from abundance and community gifts

  • Coralus's new direction of paying founders directly for creating social impact

Vicki has figured out something profound: when you remove the pressure of extractive returns and surround people with genuine support, remarkable things happen. Her approach proves that business can be a force for healing rather than extraction, and that the networks we build around ventures matter as much as the money we put into them.

At a time when traditional funding models feel increasingly disconnected from real human needs, Vicki offers a glimpse of what's possible when we design financial systems around relationships and collective wellbeing rather than individual wealth accumulation.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Watch on YouTube and join the conversation on LinkedIn.

In case you missed it