The Wealth Design Studio is a group of designers redesigning and reimagining the psychologies and structures of private wealth. We are situated in the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) at the University of Waterloo, and we are building further homes in other parts of the world.
The Context
Private wealth is, in principle, among the most agile capital in the world. It can move across the full capital continuum, hold for decades, take first-loss positions, and respond to the actual shape of complex problems.
In practice, almost all of it is held inside an infrastructure built for a different purpose — to defend wealth from the world rather than place it in relationship with the world.
The relational, psychological, legal, fiduciary, advisory, and investment structures around private wealth were designed for protection. We are now asking the same capital to serve transformation.
That gap — between what private wealth could do and what the structures around it currently permit — is the territory we work in.
Our Approach
Strategic design as translation
We are strategic designers. What design uniquely offers is the work of translating between intention and form: taking complex human needs, systemic dynamics, and strategic ambitions and giving them shape as processes, tools, experiences, and structures that can be tested, refined, and enacted — especially where existing forms no longer fit emerging intentions.
Our practice draws on a wide range of design methodologies, brought into direct work with wealth holders, wealth managers, family offices, and other custodians of wealth.
What the Studio Does
The studio is where this work lives: a space where private wealth gets reimagined, futures get rehearsed, alternative pathways become visible, and the next generation of innovative finance tools and funding models — capable of holding diverse time horizons, risks, rewards, and agendas — can take shape.
We work globally, alongside wealth holders, foundations, advisors, researchers, and practitioner networks reimagining what private wealth is for, and how it works.
Why WISIR? Why Academia?
WISIR is a natural home for this work. Founded by Frances Westley in 2009 and now led by Dr. Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed, it is one of the leading global centers for the study and practice of social innovation, with strength in cross-scale transformation, complex systems, and the social innovation lab tradition.
Systemic and strategic design and social innovation share the same core question — how new patterns get seeded, tested, and embedded in complex systems. We also work in a close partnership with the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI), of which WISIR is a sub-center.
Working in close relationships with research and academia matters to us. Our team brings backgrounds in design, psychology, and anthropology — drawing on the social sciences as well as design practice — and our work has been inspired by the small but growing number of academics taking private wealth seriously as a site of inquiry. Being situated within academic institutions gives our practice the discipline of evidence and the longer view, places our prototypes alongside scholars and practitioners learning across contexts, and keeps the knowledge generated through our work in open circulation rather than held inside private engagements.
The Founding Team
The Wealth Design Studio was initiated by Cassie Robinson, alongside a wider founding team to be announced shortly.
Having spent seven years working inside philanthropic institutions — including playing a pivotal role in designing and establishing the Emerging Futures programme at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, co-founding the Wealth Hackers Initiative, co-creating a field-building practice at Partners for a New Economy, and heading up Innovation, Policy and Practice at The National Lottery Community Fund — she now focuses on the deeper codes of the Great Wealth Transfer.
Drawing on her background in psychology and her practices in systems innovation, futures and foresight, and transition design, she works with individual wealth holders, family offices, and those inside the wealth management world. Her most recent certifications relevant to this work include a Responsible Investment Association (RIA) certification in Regenerative Investing and a Trauma of Money™ (TOM) Professional Certification.
Get in Touch
We welcome conversations with those interested in reimagining the role of private wealth in a changing world.
For enquiries about the Wealth Design Studio — including collaborations, research partnerships, and working with us directly — please reach out to Cassie Robinson. cassie@wealthdesignstudio.org