Since 2015, Giorgiana has been actively steering her family office capital toward values-aligned and impact-driven investments. Rather than viewing wealth as a passive asset to preserve, she approaches capital as an active responsibility; one that shapes societies through how it is accumulated, invested, and governed.

In this interview, she reflects on the mindset shifts required to move from traditional investment optimisation to outcome-oriented decision-making. She shares how PFC integrates impact across investments, philanthropy, and engagement; how governance and incentives are aligned with long-term objectives; and why real impact investing requires confronting structural drivers rather than funding solutions alone.

You come from a background of inherited wealth, yet you openly challenge how wealth is accumulated and distributed. Was there a defining moment that shifted how you see capital and responsibility?

I would not say there was one single moment. It was more a gradual realisation that capital is not neutral. The way wealth is accumulated, invested, and taxed shapes societies just as much as political decisions do.

Nonetheless, there was an 'aha' moment when I understood that investing for impact — considering the positive outcomes our capital could generate in the world across all investments — was actually possible. 

That discovery fundamentally shifted my relationship to wealth. It transformed it from something passive that I had inherited into something active that I could steward. From that moment, wealth felt less like an asset to preserve and more like a responsibility to deploy thoughtfully, with the ambition of contributing to a more just and sustainable future.

Since 2015, you have actively redirected your family office capital toward values-aligned and impact-driven investments. What has been the hardest mindset shift required, either personally or institutionally?

The hardest shift was taking ownership and having the conviction to do things differently. It required moving both my own thinking — and gradually the family's — from a traditional investment mindset focused almost exclusively on financial optimisation to an impact-oriented one that asks a different question: what outcomes does this capital enable in the world?

That shift requires new lenses, new data, and sometimes accepting that opportunities which previously looked attractive may no longer align with the impact we want to achieve.

Institutionally, within the family office team, the challenge is largely cultural. Investment professionals need to integrate impact thinking into their decision-making rather than treating it as an add-on. That transition takes time because it touches incentives, language, how success is defined, and ultimately mindsets.

Many family offices say they want to invest for impact, but few are willing to confront the systems that created inequality in the first place. What does 'real' impact investing demand that most investors still avoid?

Real investing for impact requires confronting the structural drivers of harm, not only funding solutions. In many ways, we sit exactly where many investors feel comfortable: financing sectors like renewable energy or healthcare innovation. But where we try to go further at PFC is in pushing our due diligence beyond the surface — asking whether an investment can genuinely generate meaningful impact, not just sit in a 'good' sector.

At the same time, we recognise that investments alone rarely change systems. For that reason, we have also developed a growing philanthropy practive focused on systems change — supporting organisations working on policy, accountability, and structural reform. Without engaging with these deeper dynamics, impact risks remaining a niche allocation rather than becoming a meaningful lever for systemic change.

You have publicly advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy, even as a wealth holder yourself. How do you reconcile this stance with traditional family office goals around capital preservation and control?

I see taxation as part of a healthy social contract rather than a threat to wealth stewardship.

Family offices operate within societies whose infrastructure, institutions, and legal systems make capital accumulation possible. Supporting fair and effective taxation is therefore consistent with responsible long-term wealth stewardship.

In the long run, societies with strong institutions, trust in governance, and functioning public systems create more stable environments for both businesses and investors. From that perspective, advocating for fair taxation is not contradictory to capital preservation — it can be seen as contributing to the conditions that sustain it.

As Head of Impact and Philanthropy at PFC Family Office, how do you measure success when outcomes are long-term, complex, and often hard to quantify?

Measurement is essential, but it must be approached with humility.

At PFC we use a portfolio-level impact score and a theory-of-change framework to guide capital allocation and track progress. These tools help structure decision-making and ensure accountability across investments, philanthropy, and engagement activities. We have also, for several years now, linked elements of compensation to impact performance in order to better align incentives with our objectives.

At the same time, not everything that matters can be captured in a metric. Systems change often unfolds over long time horizons and through indirect pathways. For that reason we combine quantitative indicators with qualitative assessment and continuous learning. Success is therefore not only about hitting a number — it is about whether our capital contributes meaningfully to positive outcomes and whether our approach evolves as we learn.

Through the 2030 Social Impact Special Prize, you work closely with early-stage founders advancing the SDGs. What patterns do you see among the most credible impact-driven entrepreneurs today?

The initiative has recently evolved and is now run by Ashoka and Avanzi, with a renewed focus on system change and the Mediterranean region.

One lesson from the 2030 Social Impact experience is that the ventures that managed to scale most successfully often had a strong technology component. Technology can make social enterprises more compatible with venture capital by enabling scalability and operational efficiency.

When that element is absent, the investment path should often look different. Not every impactful organisation should be pushed into a venture capital model, as this can distort both the business model and the intended impact. In those cases, other forms of capital — such as patient capital, blended finance, or philanthropic support — may be more appropriate.

Ultimately, the strongest entrepreneurs combine mission clarity with operational discipline. Impact ambition alone is not enough; durable change requires models capable of scaling and adapting over time.

Impact investing is often framed as a trade-off between values and returns. From your experience, where is this narrative flawed, and where is it actually true?

The narrative is flawed when it assumes that integrating impact necessarily reduces financial performance. In many sectors — such as energy transition, health innovation, or sustainable infrastructure — impact and financial opportunity are increasingly aligned.

At PFC, our experience reflects this nuance. The IRR of our responsible ('do-no-harm') assets has delivered lower returns than most sustainable strategies that optimise for ESG integration. And it is still early to draw firm conclusions about the long-term IRR of our impact portfolio. That said, based on early exits, performance has been encouraging and, if anything, outperforming rather than underperforming initial expectations.

However, the narrative is not entirely wrong either. There are situations where the most impactful solutions may not offer the highest financial return, particularly in early-stage or system-level interventions. These are precisely the investments where capital is most needed — and where we need investors willing to consciously accept a degree of financial trade-off in pursuit of meaningful systemic change.

The real question is therefore not whether trade-offs exist, but how consciously investors are willing to navigate them.

How can family offices move beyond treating philanthropy and investment as separate domains, and instead deploy them as complementary tools for achieving long-term impact?

At PFC, philanthropy, investments, and engagement are viewed as complementary tools that can operate at different points along the same theory of change.

Working across this spectrum of capital helps us better understand where financial capital can accelerate solutions and where non-financial support — such as advocacy or ecosystem building — is required to create the conditions for change.

Our structure reinforces this approach. PFC is a benefit corporation, which means that pursuing positive impact is not simply an aspiration but part of our legal duty. This creates a binding framework that aligns our governance and decision-making with long-term societal objectives.

We have also chosen not to separate philanthropy into a traditional foundation. Instead, philanthropy sits within the family office as a shareholder, meaning that in accounting terms it appears as a cost rather than a parallel structure. This reflects a deliberate choice: philanthropy is not treated as an external activity but as an integral part of how capital is stewarded.

The objective is not to blur the distinction between philanthropy and investment, but to ensure they are intentionally aligned and mutually reinforcing in the pursuit of long-term impact.

Looking ahead, what uncomfortable conversations do you believe family offices must start having now if they want to remain relevant and responsible over the next decade?

For me, these are actually two separate conversations.

The first is about remaining relevant. This may require family offices to rethink investment strategies, partnerships, and possibly even governance structures in order to adapt to a rapidly changing economic and geopolitical landscape.

The second — and the one I would particularly invite your readers to engage with — is about remaining responsible. Ultimately, this comes down to a simple question: is capital used only to preserve wealth, or also to contribute to the resilience and fairness of the societies in which that wealth exists? Having that conversation means confronting the systemic implications of capital and the role investors want to play in shaping the future economy.