UNITED
Purpose & Leadership Meet Capital
A permanent home for purpose, leadership and capital.
UNITED is a Swiss-based global platform for the mobilisation and stewardship of all forms of capital — for the benefit of humanity and the Earth. A place where people with vision find the leadership, capital and partnerships they need to change the world.
Never before have so many resources existed alongside such profound challenges.
Humanity has entered one of the most consequential periods in its history. Artificial intelligence is transforming society at unprecedented speed. Global wealth creation has reached historic levels. Environmental challenges — the future of water among the most urgent of all — grow more pressing by the year.
Yet institutions, governments, businesses and communities are struggling to respond to growing complexity and fragmentation. As a consequence, people and planet are suffering.
The need is no longer for isolated and competing initiatives, nor for the accumulation of capital in ever fewer hands. The civilisations that flourished for centuries understood something we have largely forgotten: lasting prosperity is not built by holding resources, but by keeping them moving. They built the systems that kept water, knowledge, trust and wealth flowing — and treated the care of those systems as their highest work.
The need today is the same. UNITED has been created for this moment.
The world does not lack solutions, capital or innovation.
Every capability that transformation requires already exists. What has been missing is the connective layer that lets them work as one.
Understanding
Intelligence
Foresight
Wisdom
Alignment
Resources
Scale
We have spent a century building roads, cables and pipes.
Trust is the infrastructure nobody funded.
UNITED exists to build it
Lasting prosperity is not built by holding resources.
It is built by keeping them flowing.
Flow and Leadership
Two threads run through everything UNITED builds.
Flow
Capital creates life when it moves and loses its power when it stands still. Flow is the principle beneath every part of what follows — the ten forms of capital, the funds, the Hubs that gather and release, the governance through which the whole circulates. Nothing UNITED holds is meant to stand still.
Leadership
Capital does not organise itself. It is opened, tended and directed by people. UNITED forms and supports the leaders who can hold a vision and build the structures that carry it — and where leadership rises to meet the moment, capital follows.
To unite and set flowing all forms of capital for the benefit of humanity and the Earth.
Through collaboration, innovation, responsible leadership and strategic investment, UNITED empowers individuals, organisations, communities and nations to create measurable and lasting positive impact.
We envision a world where humanity and nature flourish together. A world where resources flow efficiently and responsibly, where every human and community has the opportunity to thrive, and where the collective wisdom and creativity of humanity are mobilised to protect and regenerate our shared planet.
We believe the future belongs not to isolated efforts, but to connected ecosystems of purpose, leadership and capital working together for the common good.
Meaningful change requires more than money alone.
Lasting impact emerges when all forms of capital work together — when each one flows to where it creates the greatest value for people and planet. UNITED mobilises and connects ten.
Grants, investment and endowment moving to where it does most good.
Research, insight and hard-won knowledge, held in common.
Skill, time, courage and the will to act.
Tools and infrastructure built to serve rather than extract.
Trust and relationship — the channel every other capital travels down.
Imagination, design and the ability to see what is not yet there.
Heritage, story and meaning that make protection worth the effort.
Community, reciprocity and belonging.
Water, soil, forest and climate — the original infrastructure.
Purpose, wisdom and the deep why beneath the work.
Community circulates first — trust, care, connection.
Then capital, in all its forms, begins to flow.
Every member is both a contributor and a beneficiary.
Each fund complements and strengthens the others. Each initiative supports the wider mission. Each institution contributes to collective success. Every participant remains sovereign. Every participant becomes connected.
No initiative stands alone. Within UNITED, all are home.
Nine domains. One ecosystem.
Change happens in places, not in categories. Each domain holds the funds working within it. Each fund is founder-led and sovereign. Each is strengthened by the whole.
A community that governs its own water governs its own future.
Water Fund
The first flow, on which every other depends. Universal access to water infrastructure, protection of freshwater ecosystems, and sustainable water management.
Peace starts at home.
Harmony Project
Created by Sanela Lee
Community-led work supporting children and families through connection, healing and belonging.
Summit of Summits
Led by Masaki Sugimoto
An annual gathering of global leaders exploring conscious leadership and collective stewardship, hosted in Japan.
Visit site →More family wealth is lost to conflict than to markets, and the conflict outlasts the money.
If you own your health data, you own your health.
Women already lead. What has been missing is the capital that recognises that.
Intelligence has become a commodity. The ground it stands on has not.
AI for Good Fund
Harnessing artificial intelligence and emerging technologies ethically and responsibly for humanity and the planet.
Digital Twin Fund
An open digital twin platform harnessing AI to democratise urban planning, giving cities and communities the tools to model and de-risk their own futures.
Change our cities and we change our world.
United Cities
Created by Kari Aina Eik
Resilient, inclusive and regenerative cities through capacity building, cooperation and knowledge sharing.
People commit to what they have experienced first hand.
A young person taken to the edge of the world returns with a different sense of what is possible.
Antarctic Fund
Led by Hege Victoria Dybedalsbakk
Supporting young people and their unique potential through sport, tours and expeditions.
Every participant remains sovereign.
Every participant becomes connected.
Reservoirs for the network.
Each Hub is a retreat and leadership centre in its own right — gathering leadership, wisdom, relationships and capital between gatherings, and releasing them wherever the network needs them most.
Global headquarters. Governance, strategy, partnerships and coordination.
Ålesund, on the Storfjord. Sustainability, environmental leadership, innovation and regenerative development.
Sedona. Indigenous wisdom, entrepreneurship, desert ecology and future-oriented leadership.
Cultural heritage, spiritual leadership, innovation and cooperation across Africa and the Middle East.
Technology, wisdom traditions, mindful stewardship and long-term thinking.
Lake Naivasha. Anchoring UNITED’s work across Africa — community leadership, ecological stewardship and regenerative economies.
Additional Hubs will be established globally to ensure balanced representation and local empowerment.
Leadership within UNITED is stewardship.
It is measured not by what it commands, but by the health of the whole. Every review of our work begins with the questions that matter most: are communities stronger, are ecosystems healthier, is capital reaching those who need it?
Kari Aina Eik
Founder of UNITED. Former Managing Director of United Cities and United Cities Fund, Kari has helped hundreds of cities worldwide secure the funding to realise the Sustainable Development Goals. She leads UNITED’s mission, partnerships and the mobilisation of capital across the ecosystem.
Alexander Inchbald
Co-founder of UNITED. Author of #Masterpiece and architect of the six-element pathway through which founder-led funds are formed. Alexander chairs the Leadership Group — the assembly of all fund leaders — and heads the development of the Global Unity Hubs.
Governance Leadership
The Executive Board serves as the principal governing body, chaired by a global finance leader. Twelve members, including the Chair.
Executive Leadership
The Office of the CEO advances the mission, develops partnerships, mobilises capital and nurtures the growth of the ecosystem.
Wisdom Leadership
The Advisory Leadership Group brings counsel, experience and perspective from across the network and beyond it.
Swiss integrity. Collective action. Intergenerational responsibility.
UNITED is women-led.
The challenges of our time require a new kind of leadership: women-led, globally connected, and supported by visionary men and partners who share the same purpose.
Leadership that connects rather than divides.
Leadership that combines courage with compassion.
Leadership that brings together knowledge, innovation, capital and humanity.
Ten women are being invited to become Founding Women of UNITED. The Founding Women Circle provides the early foundation, wisdom and support that carries a vision into a lasting global platform.
An ecosystem where technology serves humanity, capital serves purpose, and communities flourish.
History is rarely shaped by large crowds at the beginning.
It is shaped by a small number of individuals who recognise a new possibility before it becomes obvious to the world.
The Founding Circle will provide the capital required to establish the foundation, activate the first ten pillar funds, launch the Global Unity Hubs, and build the operating architecture for a new global ecosystem of collaboration and impact.
Members of the Founding Circle are not merely supporters. They are co-creators of a new model for mobilising capital, leadership and collective action in service of humanity and the Earth — a legacy that extends beyond individual projects, organisations or generations.
The invitation is simple.
Help open the flow.