When Catherine Muther left her position as Senior Marketing Officer at Cisco Systems in 1994, she made a commitment to social equity and civil society.

Muther decided to "build on what I learned from building new companies in new industries to creating an entrepreneurial foundation focused on change."  With an initial investment of $2 million of her personal capital, she established the Three Guineas Fund as a public 501(c)(3) organization, and grantmaking foundation.

Muther named the foundation after Virginia Woolf's 1938 book, "Three Guineas," to reflect the Fund's mission and theory of change.  In the essay, Woolf responds to three requests for a guinea— a British gold coin— one for building a women's college, another for promoting women's employment in the professions, and a third to prevent war and protect intellectual liberty.  Woolf lays out a vision of women's education and economic independence as the foundation of social equity and justice.  Muther founded the Three Guineas Fund in the same spirit, to create economic opportunity for girls and women.

Muther believes the best way to attack a social problem is in teams, drawing people together from different spheres, with different perspectives and experience.  "Embrace the complexity with expertise," says Muther.  By bringing people together with a diverse set of skills to build new models, the Three Guineas Fund brings an entrepreneurial spirit to philanthropy. The Fund’s projects and grants reflect this spirit.