In this episode of Be & Think in the House of Trust, Servane meets with Milena Bacalja Perianes, a feminist activist, impact investor, and lifelong advocate for systems change. Growing up as the child of migrants and living across multiple countries, Milena learned early on how to navigate diverse worldviews and bridge cultural divides.

She shares her journey from grassroots activism to the world of finance, where she now works to "eat away at the foundations" of systems that were never designed to serve women, minorities, or marginalised groups.

Instead of confrontation, Milena champions empathy, nuance, and care when engaging with those in positions of power. She believes that true transformation comes through connection and dialogue.

Today, Milena advises major global institutions and investors, helping them weave gender analysis into their investment decisions.

Her mission: to reimagine financial systems so they serve people, planet, justice and care.

In our time together, we explore the delicate tension between working within an extractive, unequal capitalist structure and striving to create lasting positive impact.

Connect with Milena on Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/milena-bacalja-perianes-4833a8b2/

Visit Sagana: https://sagana.com/

Connect with Servane:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/servanemouazan/

Website: https://servanemouazan.co.uk

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Podcast Music Production from Series 04 Ep 45: Milig Mouazan-Strachan

Hello, my name's Servane Mouazan and I'm your host today on Be and Think in the House of Trust and today welcoming Milena Bacalja Perianes, she describes herself as an unapologetic feminist, an average runner, and a want to be writer. But maybe that's an old biography. I don't know. We'll see to that with Milena, we'll travel today to where she puts her professional and personal attention where finance meets feminism, art, community organising and change in everyday life, and how Milena moves with nuance care and courage through all of it. She's also a standup comedian, undercover. That's my judgement . And I recently spent an afternoon with her considering Turner versus Constable. I'm not going to tell you who won, but I got out with more juicy stories than I expected. So settle in and join me in the House of Trust with Hello Milena,

Quite the intro. Thank you.

Thanks for being here. Today you move between impact investing, feminist advocacy, sport, community organising, and I know you love art. It's a lively and multilayered world. Tell me where does this come from? All these interests put together

When you say it, it sounds like it's intentional and it all makes sense and at times I feel like this, oh, how does it look externally? But I think at the heart of things, I'm a personal and professional feminist. I think being a feminist and moving through the world with that identity is really kind of shaped, I think a lot of my professional decisions and things that I do. So I started out when I was younger, very involved in social justice groups. I remember going to protests at a very young age and being very, very active in the community. And then when it came to that point where you're about to graduate and you think, what do you want to do with your life? I knew that I wanted to do something with my life that I felt mattered. I think that means a lot of things to different people.

And so I started out working in the development sector, became very passionate around women and girls issues as well as L-G-B-T-I-Q rights and really worked in that development space and then made the slight transition into finance impact investing, which people think is very strange, but because at the end of the day when you have money, everything is, it's a different equation. So either who controls the money, having access to funding finance, controlling your own assets, all of that really changes the game. And so I really started dipping my toes and taking this very grassroots activist, community-based work and really trying to influence where the most kind of power is hold and made this shift into working in finance. And it's sometimes super strange. So when I first started doing it by friends used to be like, you've really sold out. You're just a capitalist now talking about markets and business and money.

I was like, look, I want to destroy the system, but the system is there and some of us need to get inside of it and start eating it away from the inside. And I was like, I'd spent the first part of my career throwing rocks from outside the building and I was like, I'm going to crawl inside and just eat away at the foundations. And I guess that's how I've ended up in this strange space of being a feminist and an activist at heart the way you described that. But really now working to sort of change systems that I don't think are built for women, for people of colour, L-G-B-T-Q groups for different kinds of minorities.

Where was that

In terms of where did I start?

Where did you throw rocks at? Where was the building?

I'm not naming anything. I'm not naming.

No, I think because what I'm coming from is obviously there is also a sound to your voice, so I guess you've travelled a lot.

Ah, okay.

Okay. So is this contextually interesting, important stories here that we could get out of you? Give me the juice.

I have an accent. I'm not from around here. So I was born and raised in Australia, but my mother's Spanish, my father's Croatian, so the child of migrants, I left Australia when I was 21 and then have sort of lived all over the world. So I've lived in about 10 different countries and now based in the uk. So I find it interesting. I was the child of migrants who then became a migrant herself and then is now married to a migrant in another country. So this idea, I don't like to use the term global citizen, I think it's a little bit naf. Yeah. But that sense of who are you, where do you come from is sort of very complicated because I always felt like an outsider in Australia really because of my name, the way I looked, my family, we spoke a different language at home, but then I moved through the world and people say, oh, you're an Australian. And after a couple of drinks, I definitely sound more like an Australian, but I am a dual citizen, you know what I mean? I'm married to a British Chinese person. So it's just identity is complicated and fluid. But I mean that feels quite natural to me in I guess the circles that I move into.

So migrant times, migrants time, migrants, time migration gives a fantastic equation from a migrant to another migrant. You always that history continuing to influence how you work today specifically in your field of influencer.

It's such a good question. I was just talking to someone this week about this is I'm always used to never knowing what the rules are or I'm always used to there not being a norm, I guess maybe is a better way of putting it. So what I mean by that is in most interactions I walk into, I don't ever expect the person on the other end to see the world, to experience the world or think about the world that I do because I've always been in these situations where I'm othered or I am the other or they're the other. So we all have common ground as humans, but I guess I just don't assume that my values move everywhere I go. And I say that and I have very strong values and a sense of self. And I had this conversation because obviously the world is an absolute shit show right now.

And I was talking to a friend, she was kind of really stuck in this way of, but there's just right and wrong. And I was like, I think the problem is that we think everyone thinks that there's right and wrong and everyone thinks they're right is right and they're wrong is wrong. Having that conversation made me realise is because I'm always in a situation where I just assume everybody's different and feels differently. I think you come to the conversation differently. Maybe there's less judgement or just less understanding that the person on the other end, just because they don't think or see this world the same way as me isn't bad. It's just, it's different. I think that's kind of the really critical piece. And then I've had to adapt more so the ability to just be in every situation and then as soon as things change happens to adjust. And I just thought that was normal. And I think now as I'm older and in my professional career is all I'm used to is instability or difference, which now as a professional, it's like that's what makes you really good at being flexible in other kinds of worky terms, like cross-cultural engagements and these sorts of things. But actually I think that's a result of personally how I've grown up and how I live. That means as a professional skillset, it

Comes to life, those things you used to put on your cv, like detailed orientated, cross-cultural communication skills, just words that mean nothing or creativity and innovation. I think now as an adult I understand them a little bit more as real skills in a workplace and I definitely see them in other people or I really notice when they're lacking.

So you mentioned that these core values that go and travel with you that not knowing necessarily or not being certain of what the norms are in front of you and that power of uncertainty and curiosity to discovering more. What other threat connect all these worlds of finance, gender activism for you and how does that threat feeds you?

I do think as human beings we are more or less good. I think we can make bad decisions and there's different layers of people making more good decisions than more bad decisions. So I do think at the heart of a lot of all of the decisions I have made in terms of work choices, personal choices, travel and all these sorts of things come from, I think we're all good or at least hoping that we're good.

And it sounds so ridiculous, but I just want to make the world a better place and I'm very pragmatic of knowing that I'm not of any significant importance to the world and the likelihood I'm not going to change the world. But I do know I just want to spend my days trying to make the world a better place and not be contributing to what is a lot of harm or harsh realities that are out there. So I think that's really a common thread of just try to be good. I think we fail a lot and that's okay. That's not the problem. I think when we all stop trying right now, the political landscape is absolutely terrifying. We are living in economically and I think we're all leaning out, we're all just like, I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to think about it. It's just difficult and uncomfortable and I think we have to lean in right now and we'll be trying a little harder. It's not because we can resolve every political crisis, but I think as our average citizens or humans, our disengaging and becoming kind of disaffected and disillusioned and just choosing to sit there and watch Netflix or scan on our phones is part of the problem. We're not really holding ourselves, our communities or our leaders to account for any of it.

And That's scary.

I just want to bring a bit of context and for people who want to find the recipe for leaning in, you've advised the World Bank, the UNICEF Venture Fund, you worked with many impact funds and ecosystem builders around the world to embed analysis into investment decisions. So don't just trying,

If I downplay it right, I'm like, oh, I'm just a girl.

Go.

I spent a lot of time on teams and Zoom, so am I really doing anything? But yeah, I've been really blessed to get to work with amazing organisations and get to do things that are incredible.

So my question here is because you described the situation we're in, and for many people it was bad before it made much more noise, but we're saying a lot of rollbacks in equality policies, raising authoritarian currents, it feels like we're just waiting somehow for women and underrepresented people to be really exhausted to stop everything. So what would be the encouragement, the invitation, the pragmatic steps that you would share to people for that lean in? Just do your thing. What is the thing when they're not as specialist as you?

I think it depends on what level you're talking, right? So as individuals in our daily lives, it is right now the big things happening kind of feel removed from your daily life, but how actively you show up and call out things like racism and misogyny, honestly, writing letters, calling your local mps, engaging, supporting community groups at an individual level. There are the basic things that we can be doing in

Every day, and then that maybe the next step from just being a good human in your community is maybe then being like, okay, I'm going to push back against some of the places that I can in terms of holding leaders to account or using if you have the funds to donate and support courses. So I think that's at an individual level. The second two levels are as an activist, how do we come together in forms of community and grassroots activism and social campaigning and really shifting and ensuring that we protect human rights and social norms. There's a really huge pushback against transgender rights here in the UK and it's absolutely appalling. So there's work we as activists can do to come together, particularly women's rights activists supporting transgender movements. And then there's the real professional work, which I think is interesting because I work so often with the financial sector.

So we're talking about investors, institutions, and corporates. And in the second bucket, when I'm working in an activist space, you talk about a human rights and people-centered approach, and that's the core of what I believe in. But when I'm talking to investors talking about human rights isn't something that they can action, it's not like in their language. And so what I spend a lot of time talking about is this idea of the business case, understanding risk management, understanding the security of their investments in their companies. And right now a lot of the questions that we are having, I guess behind doors or even just those of us who work in impact investing and gender lens investing is does gender lens investing, is it still going to continue in climate investing when there's such a pushback against gender, DEI and climate? And I guess my kind of core thought here is did we believe the business case or not to this, right?

We all know that there is a right space approach and the world is better when we are addressing climate issues, when we're including minorities. We're in investing in places where no one wants to invest. But the question is, is when we've spent the last 10 years saying that it's a better investment, that it's a risk adverse investment, you'll have better returns. All of these fundamental financial reasons, honestly, was that bullshit or is it true? And there's a lot of deep research that shows that these kinds of investments really have turns. There's a large number of them have outperformance investing into female founders or diverse businesses can outperform businesses where there's inequality. And so for me, it's actually about ensuring, okay, you might have these changes in the political narratives, but it was the research, right? And do we kind of hold true? And I think when it comes to influencing investors and getting them to understand why adding a gender lens, adding a climate lens environmental lens is valuable. What I have found personally most compelling is when you talk about things like risk management, when you talk about company security and growth and scale and making that link between impact and what are core business metrics, and I think that still holds true. So I think there is this element right now of professionally in the financial spaces, what are the narratives that we're continuing to hold to and maybe not allowing all of the political or the macroeconomics to sort of just swing everything so far away from the incredible progress that we've made.

There's something nagging me here because we're trying to change people's lives and context and conditions for life with instruments that are profoundly mechanised and engineered and sometimes extractive and all the things we know. So how do you reconcile that here day to day?

It's really hard. So the financial system, so capitalism is real and it is a system that was built and is an exploitative system. And financial systems today in many ways don't necessarily aren't built inherently to facilitate equity or equality. I think those a hardcore financial background we'll talk about, well, these systems are just neutral systems. There's just structures and mechanisms and instruments and money moves,

But the reality is that there's a lot of inequality either in how they're built or how they don't necessarily represent exactly how markets now are functioning or kind of changes. And so how do I reconcile that disconnect between there is a problem in the system? I think Joy Anderson from the Criterion Institute talks about this quite a lot, and she talks about using the system and changing the system. I think that's really important for those of us, and I say us, I guess I am now part of a financial community, but for those who see themselves outside of financial systems looking in is you need to be able to understand and when can you use the system. And I think that's what a lot of people who work in gender lens investing, climate finance and impact investing are trying to do is use the current system to facilitate the movement of capital to underrepresented groups to impact opportunities.

You can also structure capital differently, and then there is the need to change certain things in the system that don't work. So I think it is about understanding these two levers and which ones are you working with? So quite a bit of my work is around innovative finance. And so innovative finance is around designing new financial mechanisms. And I've been really lucky quite a few times over the last, I don't know, five to 10 years, where actually what we do is we look at a particular market or problem and then try to figure out how finance, how the money can move. So for example, you take a really nascent industry such as women's health or EmTech, which is one of my passion areas, very underfunded, very undervalued. You take, you say, okay, we're going to look at Sub-Saharan Africa and EmTech, and then what do the businesses or what are the opportunities and how can we structure the finance differently to suit those? So it feels like a lot of work in finance is often getting founders investment ready and helping them incubate and accelerate based on how the system works. But there's a lot more work now around how do you better match the capital and the businesses and how do you kind of get both sides investment ready, particularly investing into Africa for example,

Is that we need more patient capital. You need to have a different understanding of risk return. Think about structuring because the market looks different, but there’s different potential that's there. But using a system that was based on European growth from a hundred years ago and what that's looked like doesn't reflect what many of those different markets in Africa look like. So

Sounds even cruel.

Yeah, it's right. Yeah, it's neocolonialism, neo imperialism. Right.

So you've spoken in another context about embedding care and nuance as you've mentioned some of it now into capital flows. When you want to redesign the system,

Just me sitting here, redesigning, finance,

Redesigning, but or throw stones in the system building, when you have people in front of you around the table, how do you raise the topic of empathy, wellbeing, relational trust? How do you stop people into their obstruction flow of words and say, wait, come back to me.

The first time I had to walk into a room where it was all investors, and honestly, the room was predominantly men and white men all in blue suits. I now understand that people in finance love wearing blue, and I was young and I was very nervous, but I was told they were really open and interested in gender lens investing. And the first, I had a three day workshop with them, and the first half of the day went terrible, was so difficult. You could tell everybody had their backs up, things were not moving. And I was like, God, this can't continue. We can't even talk about the issues exactly like that. People had their backs up and there was that kind of obstructionist attitude. And I remember coming back from lunch and just being like, okay, we better have an honest conversation. I was like, I don't think the morning's gone very well.

How does everyone feel? It was kind of a bit of a grumble and a murmur, and I was like, look, I'm not coming here to tell you what to do or what to think. You guys are all experts in everything that you do. We've got three days together, and what I want to do is just throw in new kinds ideas and push you guys to be a little bit uncomfortable and you're probably going to walk away and do the same thing. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not here to tell you right from wrong. What I want to do is let's expose different kinds of ideas or opinions because all of you have the same background. I've seen your bios, and it was true, they all had an MBA from an Ivy League school. They had five years in corporate finance, and I was like, I'm different.

So my job here is just to maybe think about things differently. And then I said, the words don't even know if I should say on the podcast was, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me if you care about women. I was like, your personal opinions do not matter if you don't care about women and you love that men have more power and decisions and you want to keep making, that's great. I go, I just want you guys. I want to have a conversation the next three days, we were honest and let's talk about, it's a closed conversation. And then all of a sudden they stopped and there was a silence and I was like, oh no, I'm going to get fired. I'm going to get fired. And someone goes, I mean, I actually kind of do care about women. And someone else was like, yeah, I mean there's actually, I've been looking at this company and 80% of the women in the supply chain are all women. And I've been wondering a little bit around the workplace conditions and all of a sudden it opened it up. And what I realised that first conversation happened is I walk into a lot of rooms where there are men. It's not a men problem, but I think when you walk into a room, there's a feeling in a lot of situations of you're going to be told you're wrong and be made to feel bad about your position.

And I think that's a lot of the conversations now where men are afraid that they're the problem. And I think opening up that space, as you said to empathy and caring, whether you use that language or not, I think it's about creating a space where it's like, it's not you versus me. It's not right or wrong. It's around how do we just start having uncomfortable conversations and how do we start asking the questions that no one wants to ask or say the thing you want to say, but you are worried about being told that's not okay. And I think that functions very well in the work that I'm doing where I'm a gender and impact person in a room with hardcore financial or investment officer. And I realise now I'm learning and becoming a financial person, though I feel uncomfortable with it, but I also think that holds true socially when issues come up and everybody shuts down and being like, that's wrong.

You are a racist. You are a misogynist. You don't like this. And we are very quick to name everything now and the immediate thing happens that everybody shuts down. So empathy and care to me right now in some ways I think is about being a little bit more open to people not getting it right and not assuming the worst of them in those kinds of interactions. Now, I know a lot of us are constantly dealing with a lot of challenging hard conversations, having the same conversations with people who are problematic, but you don't convert anybody. You don't open up anybody's mindset when you come at them with that kind of approach. So I think that's what care and empathy has started to look like. I also know I don't have all the answers and I don't get everything right as well. So I kind of go in with that attitude of I'm not always going to get it right, so I'm not going to assume just because, I mean some of the things that I've heard of being like, oh, it's just that my wife's better at home, or are women really? Do they really know how to run a business? You hear these sorts of things and obviously on the inside I die a little, but you kind of put on the smile. It's like, well, let's unpack that a little bit more. And it does change their willingness to kind of step in.

So a bit more open and attuned to stories and to the human side of people.

Yeah.

Wonderful. We are coming to the end of our little chat in the House of Trust and thank you Mena for sharing this. And I know there's so much more to say about how you connect art and your sports, your movement practise and everything, and how that keeps you alive and kicking and funny. But for now, but I leave that for my other podcast colleagues who can maybe continue the conversation with you. So how do we best connect with you? Me?

Well, obviously LinkedIn is always, I think, the easiest, right? Also because you can see a face and connect people. So if anybody wants to find me on LinkedIn, whether it's to talk about gender lens investing, whether it's more the feminist research and the activist side, or if you love, as I said, sport culture, art, we didn't touch upon it, but very much interested in that feminist women's wellness and health space, drop me a line. I'm really open to connecting to any kinds of new opportunities or just supporting people wherever they are, if they're trying to enter any of the sectors that I work in or where someone's got a really exciting idea and they're looking for a buddy. I'm really open this year to sort of just supporting and moving in new directions. And I was going to say, exposing myself and realise that's the wrong, I'm not looking to expose myself to

No, stay undercover!

Kind of expanding experiences and horizons. So if someone's got an idea and they're like, I just want to brainstorm with somebody, feel free to drop me a line. I'm really open.

Well, thank you so much for your laughter, but also your care, your softness, your trust, and your determination to carry this out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you me. Thank you everyone for listening and for being with us today and for taking notes. Maybe The podcast is available everywhere on all the channels that do podcasts, which is a great thing. If you need more resources, information, or thinking prompts, hop onto my website, servanemouazan.co.uk. You can also subscribe to, the newsletter is packed with events and learning opportunities, and it's all available in the show notes. I see you soon. Take care of yourselves. Bye Bye.