Walmart heir Olivia Walton didn't get the postpartum care she needed. Now, she's investing $100M to halve the U.S. maternal mortality rate in 5 years

Olivia Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, is committing a portion of her family's extensive wealth to address the pressing maternal health crisis in the United States. As the CEO of Ingeborg Investments, she established the nonprofit Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America in April, with a goal of allocating $100 million over the next five years to significantly reduce the nation's maternal mortality rate.

This initiative is of great personal significance to Walton. As a mother of three young children, she encountered critical shortcomings in maternal care during her own experiences, even with the resources afforded by her family's estimated $500 billion fortune.

"It's personal," Walton remarked during her appearance with leadership editor and summit co-chair Claire Zillman at Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women conference in Santa Barbara, California, on Monday. "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."

When Walton gave birth to her second child in 2020, she expressed that she did not receive the "postpartum care she needed" from healthcare facilities in her home state of Arkansas. Upon further reflection, she realized that many other women in her state were facing similar challenges. Walton highlighted that Arkansas suffers from one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation, approximately double the national average.

"Women are dying in Arkansas from complications from giving birth at the same rate they are in Cuba. And let's not forget—never forget—that for Black and brown women, the mortality rate is three times higher," Walton stated. "We have the medicine, we have the science. What we need is the political will. We need the awareness."

With the aim of translating awareness into action, she and her husband, Tom Walton, are launching their bipartisan nonprofit campaign. Through Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America, they intend to utilize "every tool in the toolbox" to inspire change, which includes storytelling, advocacy, coalition-building, and catalytic grant-making. Both Arkansas and Kansas will receive $10 million from the foundation to enhance their maternal health services. The situation could deteriorate over the next year due to upcoming Medicaid cuts and alterations in how the American Medical Association bills patients, Walton noted. Nevertheless, she remains optimistic that individuals across the political spectrum can agree on one fundamental principle regarding maternal health care: "Everybody wants healthy families."

However, she emphasizes that a $100 million commitment alone is insufficient to maintain progress. Walton highlighted the need to strengthen the maternal health workforce by incorporating more midwives and doulas. Beyond recruiting additional professionals into the field, she urged employers to enhance their support for pregnancy and postpartum benefits. Citing evidence that large, self-insured companies that improve their perinatal benefits experience reduced costs and better outcomes, Walton stated,

"Expand your benefits. Take better care of moms, not merely because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s generally the smart thing to do for your business."