Stewarding New Futures – Coralus

Winner takes all. Everything must be monetized. Infinite growth is the goal. Scale or go bust. Business is a zero-sum game. Profit is the purpose. 

“There was always this realization that we can do better than this.”

Vicki Saunders refused to accept the world as it was.

Growing up on a farm and in a family of builders, she looked at what man had created – a world of immense inequity, social injustices, environmental destruction, the unabated pursuit of power – and saw what most chose not to: a flawed design. 

“I’d look out the window and think, We’ve designed all of this. Our financial systems. Our economic systems. Our institutions. And so much of it just didn’t make sense.”

A deeper knowing surfaced as Vicki navigated rooms filled with businessmen posturing for the attention of venture capitalists and politicians jockeying for the best position. She realized that the future of the world would continue to be written in these spaces, authored by people with the same beliefs that had shaped the current world. Unless, that is, someone did something radically different. 

And so, in 2015, Vicki built a new space. A space of contribution and community. 

Of enoughness and emergence. Of expansion and experimentation. A space where the collective power of many hearts and minds could help birth a better world into being.  

SheEO was a trustfall. An invitation to women and non-binary folks to flow capital in unconventional ways, give generously, ask for what they needed, and co-create the SheEO ecosystem itself.

Activators contributed to a community pool of financial capital, while women and non-binary leaders in the business of systems change and addressing the world’s biggest challenges applied to receive a 0% loan with flexible repayment terms. Then the entire community voted on which Ventures received funding support. 

“One of the most radical things we ever did happened in the very first year. The ventures decided together how to allocate the capital among themselves, replacing centralized authority with relationship and mutual accountability… The point wasn’t just distributing capital. It was redistributing authority. Again and again we kept asking, ‘Who else can hold this power?'”

Once word began to spread, people from across Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world began flocking to SheEO, ready to embrace the unknown and support each other’s dreams. And Vicki finally found a place of belonging. 

“One of the greatest gifts was realizing that the community I thought I was creating was actually creating me. For much of my life I felt too different. Coralus became the opposite of that experience. Instead of questioning my dream, people asked, ‘How can we help?’… I came to learn that the conditions we create for others become the conditions we live inside ourselves. ”

As SheEO grew in size and impact, Vicki had to lighten the load she was carrying as the founder of this new container for flowing capital. 

“For years I carried the weight of believing everything had to work perfectly so people wouldn’t lose faith in a different way of organizing. Eventually I learned that failure wasn’t the opposite of the work—it was part of the work.

Perhaps the deepest shift has been from believing leadership means carrying the answers to believing leadership means creating conditions where answers can emerge from trust and community.”

It became clear to Vicki early on that SheEO wasn’t just flowing capital differently; it was unearthing a deep well of collective courage within the ecosystem.

“What we were really building was people’s capacity to stay in relationship with uncertainty and possibility. Once people experienced their own agency, they began asking ‘What else could we do differently?’ That changed everything.”

And while many individuals in the community, Ventures and Activators alike, were doing the hard work of facing their shadows and embracing their light, SheEO was doing the same.

“We continually adapted to the moment. Racial justice work after George Floyd’s murder. Deeper Indigenous learning. Changing our name from SheEO to Coralus because the mission mattered more than the brand. Directing Australian funding to Indigenous founders after the Voice referendum. And, eventually, pausing the entire organization to rethink our work when success itself was no longer sufficient.” 

Trust before transaction. Relationship before resources. Patient capital. Long time horizons. Distributed leadership. Radical generosity. Permission to experiment. Storytelling. Gathering. Playing. Witnessing. Staying tuned to the field of possibilities. 

As Coralus prepares to reopen its doors after a year-long reset, these are the principles and practices that continue to guide its way of being and doing. At its core, it invites women and non-binary folks to embrace uncertainty and give what they can without expectation of an ROI. 

“One assumption I never let go of was that people fundamentally want to contribute. Over the past decade I’ve seen overwhelming evidence that, when invited into meaningful work, people are extraordinarily generous.”

Reflecting back on the community she began building 12 years ago, Vicki sees that it was always much more than just a different way to flow capital.  

“I don’t think Coralus was ever really about funding entrepreneurs. It was about creating the conditions where different futures could find one another. Strengthen one another. Become real. The ventures were never the whole story. They were evidence that different futures are possible and that, collectively, we can steward those futures into reality.”