Marlene Engelhorn

During the next two decades, some $84 trillion will pass from older generations to their Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z heirs, the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. Also for the first time in history, many on the receiving end recognize that the same economic system that produced this wealth has simultaneously generated global inequality and climate crises. Enter the extraordinary Marlene Engelhorn, 32, an Austrian heiress to the Boehringer Mannheim fortune. When she inherited the equivalent of more than $27 million, she pledged to give it away—not via an endowed institution that bears her name, but through a representative council of 50 ordinary Austrians, who in turn granted it to 77 charitable organizations. Marlene leads the vanguard of a new philanthropy, focused less on “giving back” and more on the conviction that we, the extremely privileged, must also be willing to give something up. In this way, we can strengthen the democratic capitalism that created both excess wealth and philanthropy in the first place. As such, Marlene embodies an audacious new archetype—and a righteous call for philanthropy in service of justice, not merely generosity.

Walker is president of the Ford Foundation

Correction, October 3

The original version of this story misstated the source of Engelhorn's inheritance. She is an heir to the Boehringer Mannheim fortune, not the BASF fortune.