Billionaire's daughter knows what you're thinking

Even as a young girl, Elizabeth R. Koch was acutely aware of her family's extreme wealth.

" My beloved parents, they were paranoid about lifting spoiled bits of – you know – and so I heard a lot about that, and I could see how other people responded to us,” he said. she said. "I felt it everywhere," she added. "I didn't realize it was about family. I just see it's me. So I have to be mean."

She decided to dedicate her life to one thing: "Not to be hated", she said.

Ms. Koch, 47, is the daughter of Charles Koch, 87, a billionaire industrialist, climate change boogeyman and far-right political force. approximately $66 billion Ms. Koch is named after her mother, who is Liz The family is close – everyone spent Christmas together in Las Vegas, staying at the Wynn Resort and attending a mentalist show. But Ms. Koch, at least from her account, was driven to the brink of insanity by her surname.

In a 2007 essay for Smith Magazine, she described her as a young adult as "panic attacks and panic attacks and doctors and pharmaceuticals and terrifying my parents and looking at this dark pit nothing you don't do s will never be good enough, you prioritize wasting flesh." A few years later, she lied to classmates at Syracuse University, where she was working on an M.F.A. in fiction, insisting that his name was pronounced "kotch", unrelated to those "cokes", the ones they may have read sinister things about.

Ms. Koch's angst may seem quite understandable to you. Money can be corrosive, especially for the generation that didn't win.

Or you can have the opposite reaction: it must be really, really hard - rolling eyes - to be the heiress to one of the greatest fortunes ever amassed, graduated from an Ivy League university (Princeton) and married to a successful biotech entrepreneur. They recently vacationed in Bali.

When Ms. Koch first appeared on my radar, I was firmly in the second camp.

A publicist named Scott Rowe had called to offer an article about Ms. Koch and her non-profit organization, Improbable Collaborators, which is all about self-investigation. According to its website, the organization is dedicated to creating "provocative experiences that help you face who you think you are". The site adds: "Our experiments use a self-inquiry process that encompasses the principles and practices of Eastern and Western thought, meditation, psychology, and neuroscience - designed to expand your understanding of yourself, others, and the world ."

Oh, bro.

Mr. Rowe kept pushing, telling me that Ms. Koch started the unlikely collaborators in 2021 after coming out of years of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, an eating disorder and a stay in a mental institution.Serious people have joined the unlikely collaborators in leadership roles, including Lisa Gregorian, former president of Warner Bros. Television Group. So far, Improbable Collaborators has donated millions of dollars to various partners and has earmarked at least $100 million for the next few years.

"Your perception is wrong,” Rowe said. "Just come meet her."

Cuddles, Blankets, and Perception Boxes

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