For years, boardrooms and investment committees have launched new frameworks, funds and purpose statements in an effort to reform capitalism. Yet inequality is widening and trust in institutions is falling. Something more fundamental is missing.

The question too few leaders dare to ask is disarmingly simple: What do we believe business is for? Beneath balance sheets and business models lie assumptions about human nature, purpose and meaning. Those assumptions are, in essence, spiritual. They quietly drive decisions about where capital flows, whose lives are valued and what forms of harm are considered acceptable collateral damage.​

As an investor, entrepreneur and author of the forthcoming book, Enlightened Bottom Line, I believe the answer is straightforward: business and investing are already moral and spiritual arenas, whether or not we acknowledge it. The only real choice is whether the spiritual forces shaping markets are fear and scarcity or compassion, dignity and interdependence. Treating spirituality as something we practice only on weekends while letting markets run on a narrow, extractive logic misses the deeper connection between our inner lives and the real-world impacts of our economic choices.

No more “business as usual”

Over the past decade, there has been a justified backlash among workers, consumers and citizens against business as usual,with global surveys showing that a majority of people now believe today’s version of capitalism does more harm than good, fueling protests over inequality, climate inaction and corporate power. Impact investing—investing in companies whose goal is not just to maximize financial returns but also to deliver social and environmental benefits—has developed products and funds that quantify climate risks, expose labor abuses in supply chains and channel capital to underserved communities.​

African fintech NALA, a company founded by my Stanford Business School classmate Benji Fernandes (and one that I have invested in), gives people a faster, more transparent way to send money home from all around the world and pay family members’ bills directly, integrating with mobile money services across multiple African countries. In doing so, they challenge a long history of remittance intermediaries extracting value from some of the world’s hardest-working, least protected people.​

By securing regulatory approvals and emphasizing clear, honest pricing, NALA has created a remittance platform that seeks not only efficiency, but dignity and trust for low-income customers who have long been exploited by opaque fees. NALA has rapidly scaled and become profitable, having netted over $15 million in revenue, raised $50 million in venture funding — including a $40 million Series A at a valuation above $200 million — and processed over $1 billion in payment volume in about 18 months.

When impact is limited only to scores and dashboards, it risks becoming a question of how to do just enough good to protect a brand, reduce regulatory risk or unlock a new pool of capital. Leaders then talk about “stakeholders” in the same breath that they treat communities and ecosystems as variables in a spreadsheet. The effect is subtle but corrosive: people sense the dissonance between the language of purpose and the reality of short-termism.​

This is not only an ethical problem; it is a strategic one. In a time of climate disruption, geopolitical fragmentation and technological upheaval, organizations that prioritize extraction over long-term relationships are structurally fragile. They rely on social and ecological systems remaining stable, even as their own practices help to destabilize them. By contrast, embedding spiritual values such as stewardship, humility and reverence for life into strategy is a form of advanced risk management.​

Integrating spirituality into business and investment practices

For many in business and finance, the word “spirituality” may trigger skepticism. It can sound vague, individualistic or at odds with analytical rigor. But the traditions that have sustained communities for centuries treat spirituality not as an abstraction, but as a disciplined practice, manifested in how we perceive reality and how we treat others. These practices can inform how organizations design products, govern themselves and allocate capital.​

Consider Wisdom Ventures, an early-stage venture fund backing “tech-enabled wellbeing.” Its partners invest in companies building digital health platforms, mental health solutions and tools to help people live and work more mindfully. The fund applies classic venture discipline to invest in companies such as Anthropic and Function Health, with a focus on how technology can support human flourishing rather than erode it.​

Another example is the Fetzer Institute, which funds organizations that apply spiritual solutions to social problems and helps institutions become spiritually inclusive. Its grants support staff retreats and training in “faith fluency” on the conviction that inner work and a sense of sacred belonging are prerequisites for durable outer change.​

What distinguishes these efforts is not perfection but coherence. Instead of treating values as an afterthought, they start from the question: If we truly believe that every person carries inherent worth, and that the earth is not expendable, what follows for how we invest, hire, measure and grow?

The call for a more expansive realism

The timing for this conversation is not accidental. Around the globe, younger generations are questioning whether they want to participate in economic systems that ask them to compartmentalize — to be one person at work and another in their communities of meaning. Many are leaving institutions they experience as spiritually hollow, even when those institutions offer material security. Their disillusionment is a warning sign: a system that requires people to sever their moral and spiritual lives from their economic lives is not healthy or sustainable.​

There is a deep hunger for credible alternatives. Leaders and investors who are willing to bring their whole selves into economic life — including their doubts, hopes and spiritual commitments — can help to meet that hunger. Doing so requires courage, because it means asking uncomfortable questions about complicity and privilege. It also requires humility, because no tradition or framework has all the answers, and because the communities most affected by extractive systems must be central authors of any new story.​ It might also mean rethinking ownership structures so that workers and communities share in both risks and rewards.​

The stakes extend far beyond any single initiative. Whether capitalism rediscovers its soul will shape not only balance sheets, but the possibilities for justice, belonging and ecological survival in this century. The choice is not between spirituality and realism. The choice is between a narrow realism that denies the full complexity of human beings, and a more expansive realism that recognizes people as meaning-seeking, relationship-dependent and spiritually alive. The latter is the soil in which an enlightened bottom line can grow.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.