Marissa Sackler

Marissa, is well-known on the charity arts circuit in London and New York. A self-declared ‘social entrepreneur’, she and her mother set up a trendy ‘incubator’ called BeeSpace which offers free office space to charity start-ups in New York; among the ‘tenants’ is the Malala Fund, set up to champion education for young women in the developing world. She, too, keeps a low profile. Born in London, she attended boarding school in Wiltshire and spent holidays at her family’s homes in Gstaad and Antibes. She considered a career in the foreign service while studying at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., but instead went to work as a photographer and consultant for Charity: Water, which helps source clean drinking water in the developing world. An avid collector of work by emerging contemporary artists, Sackler is a trustee of the DIA Art Foundation and of her family’s foundation. And while Beespace was started with her personal funds, she intends for it to be self-supporting, not function as her private charity. Incubees have to find their own donors—but because they are given two-year residencies, they have time to build out their programs rather than simply try to stay afloat.