When Natashia Tseng’s mother was in palliative care with terminal cancer, she was denied a wheelchair by the health-care system. That defining moment would later fuel Tseng’s desire to give back and help Canadians.
“There shouldn’t be any gaps at all when it comes to supports like this,” she says.
Years later, and after inheriting significant wealth from her father, Tseng is using her resources through Mama’s Mansion to support others who want to give back.
Mama’s Mansion is a private, live-in program designed to transform the lives of women through intensive mentorship, personal development and seed capital for entrepreneurship. These immersive experiences, each with space for 28 women, are designed to elevate mindset, build confidence and develop business capabilities.
The mansion, located in Metro Vancouver, will house participants in private suites where they’ll undergo what Tseng calls a “lifestyle reset.” This includes trauma counselling, healthy meal preparation, positive affirmation programming and business coaching. Each participant will also receive $25,000 to fund their own venture and will receive introductions to angel investors who can scale their ideas further.
“I’m not just giving money away,” says Tseng. “This is transformation. This is empowerment.” For her, helping others is therapeutic healing for her own trauma. “Caring people still exist.”
For Tseng, Mama’s Mansion is a direct response to systemic gaps she’s observed in Canada. “It shouldn’t be this hard to help people,” she says. “It really shouldn’t.”
It also reflects Tseng’s belief that professional outcomes are often inseparable from personal environments. If an ambitious person is temporarily removed from the circumstances that have limited them and instead placed in an environment where daily habits, physical health, presentation, discipline, confidence and business development are accessible and reinforced, she says, transformation becomes possible.
The first round of residential participants will live in the mansion for a year, and then future rounds will rotate on a six-month basis. An additional 50 to 100 women can participate in day programs, expanding access beyond residential capacity.
The bigger vision
At the heart of Mama’s Mansion is the overarching idea that private citizens—particularly those with capital, experience, relationships and influence—can fill the social gaps that government, charity and traditional investment alone cannot.
Mama’s Mansion is part of a larger three-part vision. The other two pillars are the Foundation, which will fund innovative ideas and initiatives across housing, arts, science, social solutions and more; and the Social-Impact Fund, which will deploy approximately $6 to $12 million annually toward innovative businesses, technologies and policy initiatives.
Together, the three pillars form a continuum: Mama’s Mansion develops people, the Foundation identifies and rewards innovation and the Social-Impact Fund puts substantial private capital behind businesses, technologies and initiatives with the potential to scale.
“The starting point is Vancouver,” Tseng says, noting that the location honours the place where her mother and father met. “But I want to make this global.”
Learn more at mamasmansion.ca.
