Philanthropy’s Healer Uses Money as Medicine
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Edgar Villanueva
This story is part of the Architects of Impact series, highlighting stories of innovation that demonstrate how our Community is mobilizing to ensure a world that works for all people and the planet.
Edgar Villanueva never set out to be a disruptor, but that’s exactly what he’s become in the world of philanthropy and beyond. A member of the Lumbee tribe and a first-generation wealth holder, Villanueva has built a career and a movement around a singular idea that money can be medicine.
Raised in North Carolina, Edgar’s first glimpse of wealth came not through inheritance, but through his mother’s work as a domestic worker for wealthier families. In his twenties, he landed a job in philanthropy, managing a multimillion-dollar portfolio. However, he quickly noticed how little space there was for lived experience, cultural wisdom, or emotional truth in the realm of money. It didn’t match the values he was raised with.
“Although my mom wasn’t wealthy, she was the first philanthropist I knew,” he reflects. “My culture holds generosity and reciprocity at its core.”
Decolonizing Wealth and Shifting the Paradigm
Edgar channeled that tension into Decolonizing Wealth, a book-turned-movement that dares to ask: What if we used resources to repair harm, not just mitigate it? What if donors listened more, and dictated less? What if our approach to giving centered community, healing, and relationship, not ego and control? His book has since catalyzed hundreds of speaking engagements, birthed the Decolonizing Wealth Project, which recently launched its $1 Trillion Moonshot—a ten-year strategy to reallocate capital toward reparative issues such as economic and climate justice.
Edgar’s message is deeply spiritual, yet also grounded in painful reality. “Money has been used to dominate and divide,” he says. “We have a choice to use it differently—to respond to the trauma of colonization, to heal.” He speaks often of listening to Indigenous wisdom, trusting the gut as much as the business plan, and shifting roles from donor to healer.
“Being a donor is so deeply connected to the dynamics of deciding who gets funded. There’s a lot of power, so it’s important to make sure we’re doing equal parts listening and practicing stepping up and stepping back—that we are trusting those who are most impacted and letting them lead and not get in the way,” he says.
TIME named Edgar to its 2025 TIME100 Climate list for exactly this kind of bridge-building. By placing relational repair at the center of climate and economic justice, he is expanding what leadership in this space can look like. “We’ve all experienced pain and trauma,” he says. “Our suffering is mutual, and our thriving is mutual.”
Spirituality, Healing—and Money
For all the visibility, Villanueva stays grounded by community—especially through Forward Global. “I come as an individual, not as a representative of my work,” he says. “This Community is refreshing. It’s heart-forward. There’s real listening here.” At a time when it’s easy to feel disheartened by injustice and climate crisis, Edgar has found a space of abundance, reflection, and solidarity. As a wealth holder within his own Indigenous community—where that role can feel both rare and fraught—he’s discovered peers who understand the complexity, and who meet him not just with intellect, but with heart.
That space has shaped his next evolution as a philanthropist and a healer. Inspired by his elders, Edgar has come to see money not as a tool of control, but as medicine. “A donor is a person who controls and is transactional. A healer is healing relationships. We are flipping the paradigm by viewing money as a tool for healing,” he says.
In our Community, and through his own practice, Edgar deepened his belief that philanthropy isn’t just about impact metrics or strategy decks. It’s about spirit. “We need to trust our heart and gut, not our heads, in this work,” he says. That clarity has become a compass for the next phase of his journey.
Whether Edgar is advising a donor network, speaking at global conferences, or tending to his own healing practice, he models something rare: a leader who wields influence with tenderness and invites others to do the same. And in doing so, he’s not just forging a new path—he’s reminding us that we do this together for humanity.
