Cultivate the Soul Podcast: New Episode with Suzanne Bowles

KinMaker Philanthropy with Suzanne Bowles, Founder of Cattail Strategy

In the latest episode of the Cultivate the Soul podcast, Suzanne Bowles, Founder of Cattail Strategy and KinMaker, Indigenous Commons shares about practicing generosity as a pathway back to belonging. By healing what limits our capacity to receive, philanthropists can experience true relational wealth.

Through Cattail’s KinMaker gatherings, guided by Indigenous wisdom-keepers, philanthropists are invited to reconnect with land and the more than human beings that provide our nourishment. These gatherings foster relational ways of being that transform how we approach decision-making, power-sharing, giving, and financial architectures from a place of trust and reciprocal learning.

Know more about Suzanne

Suzanne Bowles is a philanthropy strategist, collaboration designer, and post-capitalist systems architect devoted to helping funders and movements meet this moment of profound transition with integrity, courage, and relational depth. She is the founder and Chief Strategist of Cattail Strategy, a consultancy that supports philanthropic organizations, funding collaboratives, and cultural stewards to scale equitable systems change rooted in relationship, reciprocity, and regeneration. Suzanne is also the co-founder of Indigenous Commons.

Over more than two decades, Suzanne has played a central role in the transition of over $100 million to grassroots, Indigenous-led, and systems change initiatives across the globe. Her work spans economic democracy, climate justice, regenerative economies, and just transitions, supporting a wide range of partners—from values-aligned foundations and philanthropists to frontline movements and multi-sector collaborations. She is a founding contributor to influential initiatives including Indigenous Commons, FEST (Financing Ecosystems for Transformation), Catalyst Now, Common Good Finance, CoFundEco, and the Alliance for Economic Democracy.

Suzanne’s practice is grounded in the belief that lasting systems change begins within—through shifts in relationship, identity, and worldview. She co-creates new frameworks with her clients that integrate strategic rigor with inner and ancestral development. 

A trusted ally to many Global South, Indigenous, and BIPOC movements, Suzanne is known for her long-term commitment, ethical clarity, and ability to bridge worlds—linking philanthropic capital with the wisdom, leadership, and lived experience of those most impacted by extractive systems. Through her KinMaker Return journeys and programs, she invites philanthropists to engage giving as a spiritual, relational, and ancestral one—repairing Western cultures of separation while aligning resources with planetary and future-generation needs.

Suzanne walks this path as both practitioner and learner, guided by conscious generosity and a deep practice of inter-being. In times of collapse and possibility, her work creates space to grieve what is ending, listen deeply to one another, and co-create the conditions for life-affirming systems to emerge.

Listen now on the Cultivate the Soul website on your preferred platform: Omny | Spotify | Apple