Bia-Echo Foundation

The Foundation was started in 2019 with $23,148,744 in contributions from Brin. ^{2 1} Its grantmaking work focuses on the “feminist cause”  of extending female reproductive longevity; ³  left-progressive criminal justice policy to “end the era of mass incarceration, eradicate gender, race, or socio-economic class discrimination, bring greater equity to the criminal justice system;”⁴ and addressing climate change and “global climate equality”⁵ with regenerative agriculture. ⁶

Foundation president Nicole Shanahan has committed $100 million to funding these issues in the future¹ and in 2019, the Foundation made a $5,000,000 grant to the left-of-center Silicon Valley Community Foundation. ²

History and Leadership

The Bia-Echo Foundation is the private foundation of Nicole Shanahan, who sits as its president. ¹ She is the wife of Russian-American billionaire and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. ¹ Shanahan supports left-of-center causes and was a major donor supporting Measure J in Los Angeles, California, which partially defunded the police⁷ in favor of mental health and social services. ⁸

Founded in 2019 with a contribution from Brin worth $23,148,744,² the Foundation continues Shanahan’s previous investment work at the Sergey Brin Family Foundation. ⁹

Chloe Cockburn is the director of the Bia-Echo Foundation. Previously she was the criminal justice program officer at the Open Philanthropy Project and the founder of the left-of-center Accountable Justice Action Fund. ¹⁰

Activities and Funding

The Bia-Echo Foundation’s grantmaking activities focus on three different issues: the “feminist cause”³  of increasing female reproductive longevity; left-progressive criminal justice policy to “end the era of mass incarceration, eradicate gender, race, or socio-economic class discrimination, and bring greater equity to the criminal justice system;”⁴ and addressing climate change and “global climate equality”⁵ with regenerative agriculture. ⁶

Shanahan has likened the research of extending a woman’s reproductive lifetime to “the next generation’s birth control” because women would get to choose when to have children with such breakthroughs. ¹¹

Grantmaking and Partnerships

Shanahan has committed the Bia-Echo Foundation to investing $100 million on these issues within the next five years¹ and in 2019, it distributed grants of $5 million to the left-of-center Silicon Valley Community Foundation, $1 million to the Full Circle Fund, $500,000 to the Edward Charles Foundation, $500,000 to Good Films Impact, and $400,000 to Planet Labs. ²

The Bia-Echo Foundation underwrites the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (GCRLE) at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging’s work on the female reproductive lifecycle and female fertility with a $7.4 million-dollar grant¹² and offers grants to nonprofits working on this issue through the Buck Institute. ¹³ It is also in partnership with the Stanford Computational Policy Lab for Criminal Justice to offer grants to organizations advancing the foundation’s view of criminal justice reform. ¹³

Funding

The Foundation was started when Shanahan’s husband, Sergey Brin, contributed $23,148,744 of noncash assets to the organization in 2019. ^{2 1}