Strategic Philanthropy Around the World: Moonshot Philanthropy by James Chen

 

At the Milken Institute Global Conference 2023, James Chen, Chairman of The Chen Yen-Sen Family Foundation, used Jan Ellison Baszucki as an example of a “moonshot philanthropist” because of her drive to elevate metabolic psychiatry for the treatment of bipolar disorder. Chen describes moonshot philanthropy as “a risk-taking paradigm, deploying principal, high-risk capital–the superpower of the ultra-high-net-worth community. Focused on a single issue, the moonshot philanthropist builds domain expertise by learning from the outcomes of funding unconventional, disruptive solutions, and by seeking asymmetric reward to risk opportunities.”