Heather McCulloch is senior fellow at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program (Aspen FSP) and a national thought leader on gender economic equity. She is currently supporting Aspen FSP’s Future of Wealth portfolio with a focus on expanding access to ownership of commercial and mixed-use real estate in under-invested communities. From 2022-24 she founded and led the Women in the Economy (WE) project at Aspen FSP, a research and action project to inform the design of a gender-equitable economy based on the insights, wisdom, and lived experience of working women across the U.S.
Heather has more than two decades of experience working as an advocate and thought leader to close the racial and gender wealth gaps and build an equitable economy. She is the founder and principal of Asset Building Strategies, a consulting firm that supports nonprofit, philanthropic, public, and private-sector leaders to advance policies and strategies to build the financial security of low-income/low-wealth families. She founded and led Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap (CWWG), a multiracial/ethnic, cross-sector network of leaders working together to transform public policies and systems to advance gender economic equity; served as lead consultant to the creation of the Mission Asset Fund; and was a founding staff member of PolicyLink.
Her insights have been covered in major news publications including CNN Business, Fast Company, The Hill, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, NPR Marketplace, Slate, USA Today and 19th News. She earned an MSc. in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Economy of Industrial Societies, with highest honors, from the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught at U.C. Berkeley as a visiting professor, and recently joined the gender equity advisory council of California Partners Project, a nonprofit co-founded by California First Partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
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