About Me — Mariko

Money is not mysterious

I built a $2.5B money management firm from scratch, flying my freak flag high. It had a weird name, a non-Wall Street culture, and a quirky communication style. For years, we crushed it.

In 1995, when I founded Daruma, only a handful of women of color owned their firms. I had to noodle out running a business, while duking it out with Mr. Market daily and raising a family. It wasn’t easy.

In 2014, I pitched investment ideas before 5,000 people at Lincoln Center. I was a speaker at the Ira Sohn conference, a charitable fundraiser that is a marquee event in the investing world. Daruma was at its peak.

I was also suffering from burnout, about to get divorced, and on the brink of menopause. In 2019 I closed my business. I learned a lot from that too.

I now help people develop a healthy relationship with money. Whether it’s mentoring the launch of their business, helping them get their finances in order, or run their businesses better.

I grew up in the middle of my parents’ small businesses in the French Caribbean and Hawai‘i. I have analyzed thousands of companies and interviewed hundreds of company managements over my 30-year…