Where Purpose
Becomes Profit
EmberGrow invests in overlooked founders building ventures that matter – capitalizing on the most significant market inefficiencies in Venture Capital.
EmberGrow
The Numbers That Count
$4.4T
The untapped market in underrepresented founders — sitting largely unclaimed by venture capital.
(Morgan Stanley, 2026)
20%
How much more revenue diverse founding teams generate than their conventional counterparts.
(BCG, 2025)
2.3%
Share of all venture capital that reaches women-led startups, notwithstanding their outperformance of all-male teams.
(HBR, 2025)
$6T
Projected size of the global positive impact investing market by the early 2030s.
(GIIN, 2026)
A Market Waiting
to be Unlocked
Venture Capital has a well-documented allocation problem.Women-led and diverse founding teams receive just 2%-3% of all venture capital investment — while the remaining 97% flows to a remarkably narrow band of founders who share the same zip codes, pedigrees, and investor networks.According to Morgan Stanley, the market opportunity concentrated in that underfunded population exceeds $1 trillion.BCG found that diverse-led startups generate 20% more revenue than their conventional counterparts. And the global positive impact market — where underrepresented founders are building at a disproportionate rate — is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2030.
These are not merely social arguments; they are arguments for better and smarter capital allocation.
The founders being passed over are not less qualified. They are less connected. And the investors who recognize that distinction early are the ones who will capture the returns that everyone else is leaving behind.
Capital, Legacy, and the Next Generation
We are in the midst of the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history.$124 trillion is now changing hands — from the current custodians of wealth to the generation that will define what happens next.But that's just the headline.A 20-year study by the Williams Group of 3,200 families found that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and 90% by the third.
The Damage Rarely Stops
at the Balance Sheet
Families fracture. Relationships unravel. Adult children are left to navigate a world that has little sympathy for inherited wealth — or those who lose it.It doesn't have to happen that way.EmberGrow was built for Family Offices whose responsibilities stretch across generations, not just quarters.We offer what most investment vehicles cannot: wealth built with discipline, designed to serve multiple generations, and grounded in the values that created it.For families worried that inattention or generosity will erode what took decades to build, EmberGrow offers a real alternative.
Positive Impact Investing
This is not philanthropy in disguise. It is milestone-gated, evidence-based, return-oriented investing that is designed to align with what both generations already believe.Families shouldn't have to choose between the portfolio and their conscience.Our Limited Partners may join as advisors, mentors, and co-investors — working alongside rising-generation family members in ways no governance retreat or family constitution can replicate.The work is real. The founders are real. And watching someone the traditional system overlooked succeed has a way of bringing families closer — while opening doors to opportunities most investors never see.
EmberGrow was built on a simpler premise: that talent is not correlated with pedigree, that impact and alpha are not in tension, and that the tools now exist to find both — systematically, repeatably, and at scale.
Dr. JT Kostman
Dr. JT Kostman is a psychologist, AI scientist, and entrepreneur whose career spans the full arc of modern institutional life – from the intelligence community and the Pentagon to the C-suites of Fortune 50 companies and the investment offices of some of the world's most sophisticated families and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
He holds a PhD in Psychology, postdoctoral training in artificial intelligence and mathematics, National Science Foundation fellowships, and high-level security clearances. His corporate career includes roles as Chief Data Scientist at Samsung and Chief Data Officer and Executive Committee member at Time Inc., where he led large-scale AI-driven transformations, helped close more than 50 acquisitions, and built systems still in operational use worldwide. He has provided senior advisory counsel to the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, and the Obama Administration.
Dr. Kostman has taught MS/MBA students to lead through crisis, chaos, and change, and has mentored emerging entrepreneurs across six continents – from Silicon Valley to Sydney, from Soweto to the South Bronx.
Today, Dr. Kostman is the Founding General Partner of EmberGrow Ventures, a Positive Impact Venture Studio backing brilliant, unconventional founders – without the right zip codes, alma maters, or networks—who are building companies that generate both financial returns and meaningful social impact. He serves as an advisor to Alchemist Accelerator and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the City University of New York. He is also the author of the forthcoming book: The Future of Family Offices: Capital, Legacy, and the New Architecture of Impact.
Tom Siegert, CPA
Tom Siegert is a seasoned finance executive and the founder of Ridge CFO Partners, LLC, a Basking Ridge, NJ–based firm that delivers fractional and strategic finance leadership to founder-led companies, boards, and advisors.
He brings more than four decades of experience across finance, risk management, and operations—including service as Chief Financial Officer of IEEE, a global organization with over $600M in revenue. Over the course of his career, he has overseen complex, multi-line P&Ls, treasury operations, and balance sheet stewardship; led multi-year transformation initiatives and major systems implementations; and worked closely with boards, audit committees, and senior leadership teams at every stage of organizational change.
His industry depth spans nonprofits, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, and marketing services, built through senior roles at IEEE, Wyeth, and the Interpublic Group of Companies, alongside banking and treasury leadership earlier in his career. Across every sector, the approach has been the same: operator first, structure always, no unnecessary complexity.
Tom is a licensed CPA in New Jersey and a Fellow of the New Jersey Society of CPAs. He holds an MBA in Finance from Pace University and a BA in Economics from Boston College, and taught the next generation of finance professionals as an Adjunct Instructor of Accounting and Finance at Villanova University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. He also serves in governance roles as an Executive Committee Member and Trustee of the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium and a Finance Committee Member and Trustee for Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen.
Schedule a Conversation
Most families do not lose wealth because of poor investment performance. They lose it because the people building, inheriting, and stewarding that wealth are operating from different assumptions about what the wealth is for.Dr. JT Kostman works with families, family offices, founders, and wealth advisors to make those assumptions explicit — and to build the psychological, relational, and governance structures that allow wealth to survive across generations.These conversations typically include intergenerational values alignment, family mission and legacy design, succession readiness and next-generation preparation, and the deeper questions of identity, responsibility, and stewardship that rarely appear on an investment committee agenda — but almost always determine the outcome.To explore whether this perspective may be useful for your family, schedule a brief, no-cost introductory conversation below. The only goal of that first call is to understand your situation, determine whether there is a genuine fit, and identify the most sensible next step.
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