RZ Studio
Capital coordination,
rebuilt from the ground up.
CONTEXT
Degenerative Volatility
We are living into an era of degenerative volatility where shocks arrive faster than institutions can adapt and baselines for transformative change—ecological, social, economic, epistemic—are eroding.
Read more… [coming soon]
WHY
Place-based Resilience
We believe that partners who have spent years building civic legitimacy and proximity to real risk dynamics, in place, are the highest-leverage point for effectively allocating to resilience in the face of degenerative volatility.
HOW
Grafting & Cross-Pollination
Our hunch is that temporarily joining capabilities at critical point of development to provoke and build; and to diffuse new capacities within a small cohort and beyond is one of the most meaningful contributions we can make.
Read more… [coming soon]
WHAT
Embedded Architecture
Together with our partners, we are proposing, testing, and replicating the operating infrastructure — the legal, economic and governance structures that make durable capital allocation into foundational systems possible.
Read more… [coming soon]
As a studio, we have access to and can contribute to the co-journeying with bioregional teams in a variety of ways.
Co-Creation
Rolling up our sleeves, surfacing the right questions, co-crafting a vision, co-structuring the approach, co-building first prototypes, documenting learnings and process.
Networks
Enabling access to pioneering thinkers and doers across our broad and deep networks, ranging from experts to talent to power holders to resource mobilisers and many others.
Inquiry Capital
Committing an outcomes- responsible amount of inquiry capital to fund the local team’s capacity to lean into the shared inquiry, freeing up existing capacity or bringing in new expertise.
Shared Intelligence
Facilitating cross- learning and sharing of insights between studio partners as well as documenting patterns in abstract form to be re- contextualised elsewhere.
Allocation Capital
Conditionally committing an additional, significant amount of capital, acting as an anchor allocation into new, embedded capital architecture as well as ongoing access to upstream funders.
At RZ, we are on a mission to radically re-code the Dark Matter of Capital Allocation.
Together with our place-based partners, we inquire and build into questions such as but not limited to:
- How do we make sense of and better understand planetary risks cascading into the reality of bioregions?
- If we assume that enterprises won’t solve it all, what is the new economic unit to organise and resource this work? What do multi-capital accounting models look like for these economic units?
- How do we create agreement and commitment structures across mass-multi-party collaborations (many-to-many agreements) to inform capital allocation?
- How might we construct and allocate to systemic portfolios across whole bioregions?
- What legal innovation is required to allocate resources to and within bioregions?
- What do ‘returns’ look like in a new place-based allocation paradigm?
- What do ‘blended capital stacks’ look like in this new paradigm?
- What institutional intelligence & adaptive governance need to be built to support it?
- What might wealth stewardship & intergenerational custodianship of resources look like in this work?
Jen Hooke
Lawyer by training | Re-builder and mentor at heart
Jen is a lawyer by training, and has spent the last ten years building and leading a philanthropic organisation and working in a family office. Prior to this, Jen worked on the technical tax and legal holding structures for wealth. Working across investment and philanthropy has highlighted the need for new allocation pathways, shifts in the role of the allocator and more opportunities for civic asset builders to work at the systems-level. Jen now works on relational infrastructure and governance for system interventions. RZ is at the foreground of this work: supporting the next generation of capital allocators who can bring bold visions, strategic skill and relational experience to cultivate flows of capital that meet the demands of the moment.
Leon Seefeld
Manager by training |
Bioregional Finance designer at heart
Leon is co-leading Dark Matter Capital Systems and managing the project portfolio of the lab. Thematically, he is leading Bioregional Finance in DmCS. Previously, Leon has been working in social innovation and sustainability consulting for several years, among other things, leading his own consultancy firm for regenerative business model innovation and advising on the B Corp certification. He also worked on large-scale landscape restoration projects through weaving multi-stakeholder processes and social labs. Leon holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Business Management and a Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability.
Indy Johar
Architect by training | Visionary and provocateur
at heart
Indy is an architect by training and a maker by practice, he is a Senior Innovation Associate with the Young Foundation. He, amongst other organisations – co-founded Impact Hub Birmingham and Open Systems Lab, was a member of the RSA’s Inclusive Growth Commission and a good growth advisor to the Mayor of London. He is a explorative practitioner in the means of system change & the dark matter design of civic infrastructure finance, outcomes, and governance. Indy is a Director of 00 and Dark Matter Laboratories.
Anna Hutchinson
Migration expert by training | Psychology of money expert at heart
Anna brings diverse experience working within community advocacy, international human rights organisations, public-market investing, early stage fintech, and systemic investing. Most recently, she supported the TWIST: Investing for Systems Change community of practice. Within the Dark Matter Labs Capital Systems team, she leads our work to build regenerative financial architectures by mobilising, supporting and connecting polycapital owners and allocators. Anna holds a BA in Middle East Studies and History, a MSc in Global Migration, and a professional certification in the Trauma of Money.
Thao Nguyen
Systems thinker by training | Venture builder at heart
Thao has been on a quest to practice the middle path, both as an individual’s way of living and as a lens to explore the world, eventually finding herself committed to the higher purpose of learning to unite seemingly opposite forces. With a background in entrepreneurship, venture capital, and sustainability, this translates into her conviction of combining doing well (material growth) with doing good (spiritual growth), taking shape as a mission of reinventing markets and capitalism to serve life.
RZ origination letter
