Imalia believes that small acts of kindness and generosity combine to create lasting positive change.
About the Founders
Carole-Anne Priest is a lawyer, director, CEO, entrepreneur and innovator. Helen Wiseman is an entrepreneur, non-executive director, social justice advocate and mentor. Both are active leaders in the not-for-profit sector, serving on a number of community boards. Carole-Anne is a Director and Trustee of Sydney Community Foundation and Chair of Liverpool Neighbourhood Connections’ management committee – SCF’s ProjectWOW! partner in Warwick Farm in South Western Sydney. Helen has just finished 3 x 3 year terms as an SCF Director and Trustee and now Chairs Sydney Women’s Fund Advisory Council.
When Carole-Anne Priest met Helen Wiseman at a Sydney Community Foundation BBQ in 2011, Imalia was born. “I want to start a new kind of bank: one that entertains the possibility of doing things differently, a bank that says yes and put us, the customer, first”, stated Carole-Anne, out of the blue.
Startled at such a big audacious dream, Helen immediately leaned in and said quietly, “So tell me more.”
Why we started a sub-fund with Sydney Community Foundation
Imalia believes that small acts of kindness and generosity combine to create lasting positive change. The Imalia Fund embodies this ripple effect and is at the heart of our brand. We established The Imalia Fund, as a sub-fund of Sydney Community Foundation’s Sydney Women’s Fund to help women and children who experience disadvantage by empowering them financially.
As Directors and Trustees of Sydney Community Foundation we believe in the power of community foundations to engage communities to support local causes. As Founding Directors of Imalia, we feel very strongly that we all should give back to our community in some way. We are inspired by social innovation – the on-the-ground ideas that emerge that can make a big impact for the people the idea is intended to serve. Sydney Community Foundation is a hub for attracting these ideas and then being able to invest in them in ways that make a lasting difference. At Imalia, we love the idea of community and the connectedness we all share.
We invest in kindness and we invite others to join our circle of giving.
What do we do?
Imalia is a new kind of financial services and insurance business whose purpose is to create ripple effect – a circle of empowerment that goes beyond the financial. We want to engage people in a way no other financial provider has done before. In designing our products, we put our customer’s life at the centre, together with the lives of their loved ones (both human and furry), and their community life. But we intend to go much further. As an ethical business, the Imalia Fund provides a vehicle for our connected customers and employees to support women who are are experiencing disadvantage. Through these connections we believe we can build the Imalia Fund significantly and along the way help provide opportunities for social enterprise, pathways to employment, micro-finance loans, mentoring schemes and peer-to-peer investment opportunities to women across greater Sydney.