Meet billionaire Clara Wu Tsai, who built the Liberty into a $600 million team and now plans to fund guaranteed income for new moms

Clara Wu Tsai has a lot on her plate.

She’s vice chair of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment , the company behind the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Liberty, and Barclays Center, and she serves as the Liberty’s governor.

She’s also a film producer: most recently on Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard , which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September.

She co-owns the National Lacrosse League’s San Diego Seals and is a trustee at Stanford, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and Lincoln Center.

But for one of Wu Tsai’s projects in Brooklyn, the return can’t be measured in dollars alone.

In August 2020, amid racial justice protests on the plaza outside Barclays Center, Wu Tsai and her husband, Alibaba cofounder Joe Tsai, pledged $50 million over 10 years to social justice and economic mobility initiatives, prioritizing Brooklyn.

The result was the Social Justice Fund , which Wu Tsai directs.

Six years in, its stated mission is to support economic mobility across the borough by funding programs that address gaps in education, health, and wealth.

Its latest plan may be its most ambitious.

Some of the fund’s money is earmarked for a guaranteed income program for new mothers in Brownsville, a neighborhood where poverty has long outpaced the citywide rate, the New York Times reported this month.

Guaranteed income, which means regular, no-strings cash payments to a targeted group, is different from universal basic income, which would go to everyone.

New York City has already experimented with the model, including a City Council pilot for expectant mothers run by the nonprofit Bridge Project.

The fund hasn’t publicly detailed the Brownsville program’s size or start date.

Where the $50 million is going The fund’s investments take many forms, according to its five-year Impact Summary .