Experiential learning for family offices: A custom card game and simulation for impact investors

The context

TBN Americas exists to bridge the finance gap between impact investors and entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean.

TBN were launching the Catalytic Capital Academy, an initiative to advance impact investing among regional family offices. The Academy kicked off with the first ever Catalytic Capital Summit, hosted by Francisco Marroquín University (UFM) - bringing together family office executives from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.

Participants were multi-generational wealth holders, impact investors, fund managers. And they needed more than keynotes and panels. They needed experiences that would surface the real tensions families navigate when aligning wealth with values.

The brief: design sessions that would engage a skeptical, high-achieving crowd. Make abstract concepts tangible. Create space for difficult conversations about succession, risk, and legacy.

The opportunity

This audience wouldn't tolerate anything gimmicky. Type A personalities, successful business leaders, people who check email through most sessions. A game could easily crash. An hour-long simulation could feel like a waste of their time.

But the topics demanded more than information transfer. Impact investing decisions are shaped by family dynamics, generational tensions, unspoken values. You can't lecture people into understanding those forces. They have to feel them.

We saw an opportunity to design two distinct experiences: one that would help participants understand their own family systems through a fictional lens, and another that would give them access to how an actual impact investor thinks through real dilemmas.

What we built together

Initiative 1 - Family Matters: A card game about wealth, values, and generations

We created a 75-minute card-based experience centered on the fictional Rosales family, a Latin American family office navigating transition. The matriarch stepping back. The third generation stepping in. Old money meeting new ideas about impact.

World building to overcome skepticism

We knew a game on its own would trigger skepticism. So rather than announce "we're playing a game," we opened cold. A 60-second video introducing the Rosales family, voiced in the style of old corporate documentaries, using assets that matched the game's visual identity. Participants didn't know what was coming. The surprise created a moment of childlike wonder in a room full of executives.

Game mechanics and session design

Three ten-minute rounds, each with clear objectives. Competition and collaboration baked in, because the room was competitive but the work required teamwork. Physical materials in manila envelopes created ritual and tactile engagement. People were opening, distributing, spreading cards around tables.

We brought in external judges including Monica from TBN, who had deep credibility with the group. When the judges took their role seriously, the teams matched that energy. The serious fun calibration worked.

What emerged

Participants weren't playing a game. They were rehearsing decisions they might actually have to make. One team articulated how political crises require portfolio repositioning. Another justified counterintuitive innovation investments during downturns. The characters triggered pattern matching: "I know someone just like that." That's when you know the design is working.

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Initiative 2 - Lucha Innovation Lab: Business simulation for investment decisions

The second experience was a 90-minute scenario simulation. Participants stepped into the role of Nacho Arenas, co-founder of Lucha, a real catalytic capital fund based in Lima. His calendar is overbooked. Five pressing decisions are waiting. Teams can only address three.

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Real dilemmas, real stakes

We built scenarios from actual situations Nacho had faced: a struggling founder asking for support, three early-stage founders competing for limited capital, a co-investment opportunity with a brilliant but difficult founder, team burnout signals, a keynote that needed the right framing.

Each scenario included voice notes, Slack threads, founder personality cards. Rich context that could be skimmed or studied deeply. The design allowed for one-minute decisions or thirty-minute deep dives. Both were valid.

The reveal: Access to expert thinking

The magic moment came when Nacho himself appeared to share what he actually chose and why. Not just answers, but access to his reasoning, his trade-offs, the context that shaped his decisions. You can't learn that from a podcast. You have to feel the decision pressure first, then hear how someone with real stakes thought through it.

We had a moment of terror before the session when Nacho sat silently for what felt like an hour, reading the materials we'd built. We thought we'd gotten it completely wrong. Then he said: "I think it's this one, but it's hard because..." That's when we knew we'd hit the right level of complexity. If even the founder struggles, the design is working.

What shifted

The skeptical, Type A crowd opted in. People who normally check email through sessions were leaning in, debating, laughing. Even the end-of-day slot, post-lunch, after two back-to-back keynotes, maintained full engagement.

More importantly, the conversations that emerged were genuinely strategic. Participants weren't giving surface-level responses. They were wrestling with real tensions around risk, values, and legacy. The fictional frame gave them permission to say what they really thought about impact investing, generational dynamics, and the programs on offer.

For us, this project represented something we'd been building toward: the integration of game design, narrative world-building, and serious content for an audience that wouldn't tolerate anything less than excellent. Transformative, engaging, and just a little bit magical.

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