Walmart Heir Olivia Walton Pledges $100 Million to Cut U.S. Maternal Mortality in Half
Olivia Walton, CEO of Ingeborg Investments and a Walmart heir, is dedicating $100 million over five years through her nonprofit Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America to halve the U.S. maternal mortality rate, drawing on her own difficult postpartum experience in Arkansas.
Olivia Walton, a Walmart heir and CEO of Ingeborg Investments, is committing $100 million over the next five years to halve the U.S. maternal mortality rate, a crisis she says she experienced firsthand despite her family's vast resources.
Walton founded the nonprofit Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America in April, and announced the pledge onstage at Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women conference in Santa Barbara, California, during a conversation with leadership editor Claire Zillman. The initiative is deeply personal: when Walton had her middle child in 2020, she said she did not receive the postpartum care she needed from facilities in her home state of Arkansas.
«It's personal,» Walton said. «I went through it myself, and I saw that even with all my resources, with my family, with my education, it was still really hard.»
Looking at the broader picture, Walton recognized that other women in Arkansas were suffering far worse. The state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, roughly double the national average, she noted. «Women are dying in Arkansas from complications from giving birth at the same rate they are in Cuba,» Walton said. «And don't forget — never forget — that for Black and brown women, the mortality rate is three times higher. We have the medicine, we have the science. What we need is the political will. We need the awareness.»
Walton and her husband, Tom Walton, are now channeling that awareness into a bipartisan campaign. Through Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America, they say they are using every tool available, from storytelling and advocacy to coalition-building and catalytic grant-making. Arkansas and Kansas will each receive $10 million from the foundation to improve maternal health in those states.
The effort comes at a precarious moment. Walton warned that the crisis could worsen in the coming year because of Medicaid cuts and changes in the way the American Medical Association bills patients. Still, she expressed hope that people across the political spectrum can find common ground on maternal health care, saying, «Everybody wants healthy families.»
Walton was clear that the $100 million pledge alone cannot sustain progress. She stressed the need to strengthen the maternal health workforce by adding more midwives and doulas, and she called on employers to improve their pregnancy and postpartum benefits. Large, self-insured companies that upgrade their perinatal benefits see costs come down and outcomes improve, she said.
«Expand your benefits,» Walton urged. «Take better care of moms, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's usually the smart thing to do for your business.»
The announcement places a member of one of America's wealthiest families — Walmart's founding family, with an estimated fortune of $500 billion — at the center of a national debate over maternal care access, health equity and the role of private philanthropy in addressing public health failures. Walton's message combined her personal experience with a broader call for systemic change, arguing that the tools to save mothers' lives already exist and that what is missing is the will to deploy them.
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