Packard Foundation Pledges $480 Million to Ocean Conservation Over the Next Five Years

Over the next five years, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation will be committing US$480 million to an initiative dedicated to ocean conservation.

The foundation made the announcement on April 17 during the closing ceremony of the ninth Our Ocean Conference, held in Athens, Greece.

“Ocean science and conservation are core to the Packard Foundation’s DNA,” wrote Meg Caldwell, interim vice president of environment and science, in an email. “The next phase of the Packard Foundation’s commitment to ocean health, the 10-year (2023-33) Ocean Initiative, aims to protect and restore ocean ecosystems for people and nature, now and in the future.”

The support from the funding will be focused in four countries, Chile, China, the U.S., and Indonesia, which were selected because of their “biological significance, human dependence on ocean ecosystems, and opportunities to affect positive changes,” Caldwell says.

The foundation’s ocean initiative will specifically address three primary threats: climate change, unsustainable overfishing, and habitat loss. These issues not only harm ocean ecosystems, but also the countless people who rely on the ocean for “their livelihoods, nutrition, and cultural heritage, disproportionately impacting Indigenous peoples and coastal communities,” Caldwell says.

Caldwell emphasises the need to include these groups of people in the conversations and actions regarding ocean conservation.

“Weak governance and seafood supply chains that put profit ahead of people compound these threats, allowing human rights abuses and inequities to persist,” she says.

The foundation plans to address these threats by funding work within three systems: civil society, to strengthen “the engagement of ocean-reliant communities” to create more inclusive solutions; seafood supply chains, to end illegal fishing, overfishing, and human rights abuses; and governance, to enact reform that will protect both the ocean and the reliant communities.

The Packard Foundation is also a part of the Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance, which is a philanthropic initiative working to address the climate crisis and its damage to the ocean. ORCA’s mission is “to provide a surge of more than US$250 million dollars in grants over four years to catalyze work across a handful of immediate ocean-climate priorities,” according to their website.

Millennial women’s wealth is outpacing men’s as a new generation inherits and grows their assets at a wider scale than ever before, according to RBC Wealth Management.

In a survey of roughly 2,000 men and women with at least $1 million in investable assets, millennial women respondents had an average of $4.6 million, compared with $3.8 million for women of all age groups and $4.5 million for all men.

Inheritance is one part of the picture, as baby boomers are expected to transfer $124 trillion to the next generation, but so is the progress millennial women have made in the world of business, investment and lucrative professional careers as they close the gap with men.

“Millennial women are catching up, or have outpaced the males as far as their wealth building,” said Angie O’Leary, head of wealth strategies at RBC. “We know that’s coming from a more diversified set of investments, such as entrepreneurship, real estate and of course, investments [in financial markets].”

Millennial women, now in their 30s and 40s, tend to differ from earlier generations of women more than they do from men in terms of their source of wealth. While investments were the largest driver of wealth across all categories, millennial women cited business ownership, innovation, and executive roles far more than Gen X or boomer women.

More than 60% of millennial women cited business ownership and more than 40% mentioned executive roles, but neither exceeded 22% for either Gen Xers and Boomers. Younger women also grew their fortunes from professional sports or arts 39% of the time, compared with just 6% and 1% for Gen Xers and Boomers, respectively.

In terms of inheritance, the gap between generations was smaller. About 37% of men and 35% of women cited family money as a source of wealth overall, breaking down to 44% of millennials, 30% of Gen X and 33% of boomer women.

With women controlling so much wealth, their spending and investments as a group are evolving and extending into areas previously considered stereotypically male such as real estate, cars and watches, O’Leary said. “Women are starting to look a lot like their male counterparts when it comes to investments, real estate, philanthropy,” she said. “That’s a really interesting emerging female economy.”

In real estate, for example, single women made up 20% of home buyers in 2024 up from 11% in 1981, when the National Association of Realtors began tracking the data. By contrast, single men make up 8% of the market and have never exceeded 10%, according to NAR.

While men and women shared largely similar priorities overall in terms of well-being, relationships, legacy and personal drive, younger generations of women were successively more likely to value drive and personal power, and successively less likely to rank relationships and social bonds—though that could also be a function of age and stage of life.

“This generational shift suggests evolving societal norms and responsibilities, where younger women seek personal achievements, while older cohorts value nurturing connections and community stability, affecting their financial and lifestyle choices,” the report said.

Packard Foundation Pledges $480 Million to Ocean Conservation Over the Next Five Years

A survey of people with at least $1 million in investable assets found women in their 30s and 40s look nothing like older generations in terms of assets and priorities