Girls Into VC Podcast

This week, we are excited to host Ray’Chel Wilson, CEO of Raise the Bar Investments and ForOurLastNames. Formerly a teacher during the pandemic, Ray’Chel is now a dynamic founder bridging the gap between financial literacy and wealth building. She is the CEO of Raise the Bar Investments, guiding institutions in personal finance and productivity, and of the soon-to-launch ForOurLastNames, a gamifie...

This week, we are excited to host Kaitlyn Albertoli, CEO and Co-founder of Buzz Solutions! Buzz Solutions is a visual asset intelligence platform that helps power utilities manage and analyze the vast amounts of visual data collected through drones, helicopters, and other inspection methods.  After graduating Stanford with a background in finance, Kaitlyn worked as a wealth management analyst at J...

This week, we are excited to host Mary Grove, Managing Partner at Bread and Butter Ventures! Mary leads digital health and enterprise SaaS investing, bringing two decades of leadership in technology, early-stage investing, and building startup ecosystems. Mary’s career began with the Google IPO, and she went on to lead global business development at Google, negotiating product and tech deals world...

This week, we are excited to host Kriti Krishna, Venture Associate at Hearst Lab! Kriti's career began in finance at Fitch Ratings before transitioning into venture capital, where she now invests in early-stage, female-founded startups across the globe. At Hearst Lab, she is dedicated to supporting women entrepreneurs and closing the gender funding gap. Outside of HearstLab, Kriti is a Young Execu...

This week, we are excited to host Courntey Pettway, CEO and co-founder of KidVestors ( kidvestors.co ). KidVestors is a pioneering social impact enterprise providing equitable financial education. Courtney transitioned from working in corporate America to focusing on financial literacy, driven by her own experiences and a commitment to addressing educational disparities. At KidVestors, fueled by h...

Episode Description:  This week, we are excited to host Colleen Konetzke, Principal at Ironspring Ventures! Ironspring Ventures is an early-stage fund focused on making industrials more productive, secure, and sustainable. It invests across manufacturing, construction, transport and logistics, and alternative energy. Colleen holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration in Accounting, Master’s in...

This week, we are excited to host Lata Setty, the First Investor at The How Women Invest Funds ( https://www.howwomeninvest.com/ )! Lata’s diverse background spans from science and patent law to leading digital transformation ventures, and now, to venture capital. At The How Women Invest Fund, she is focused on addressing the gender disparities in VC funding and empowering female founders.  We lov...

This week, we are excited to host Rachel Knepp, Co-Founder of Mozaic! Rachel is an innovator who has transformed the creator economy with Mozaic, the world’s first global payment platform dedicated to automating split payouts. From her early days at Jamber to leading Mozaic’s evolution during the global pandemic, Rachel has set new standards for fairness, efficiency, and innovation in creative col...

This week, we are excited to host Emma Ohanian, Founding Partner of Y&Z Ventures! Y&Z Ventures ( https://www.yzventures.vc/ ) is a Los Angeles based multi-family office investing on behalf of immigrant and first-generation entrepreneurs. As a mergers and acquisitions professional (most recently at Uber, which acquired Postmates, Drizly and more!), Emma's experience uniquely positions h...

We are elated to host Avni Barman, CEO and founder of Gen She, on this week’s episode! GenShe is a media platform building and leading the next generation of female talent. Avni has built a community of 200,000 women across Instagram, TikTok, a newsletter, a podcast, and a job board. With 4+ years in Big Tech as an engineer and product manager, she is now on a mission to unlock the potential of ev...

On this week’s episode, we welcome Joanna Kuang, Senior Vice President of Product Development and Impact at Illumen Capital. She leads Illumen Capital’s unique platform and portfolio support with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. Prior to Illumen Capital, she worked at Third Sector Capital Partners, where she advised and bu...

We hope everyone is staying cool in this heat wave!☀️ This week’s episode features Diana Melencio, General Partner at XRC Ventures. XRC Ventures is a New York City-based venture capital firm and startup accelerator focused on pre-Seed to Series A startups in the retail technology, consumer goods, and consumer healthtech sectors. Diana manages the entire XRC investment process and team and holds ov...

This week’s episode features our second founder, Maria Medrano, CEO and Co-Founder of Inspirame! She stands as a trailblazing Latina jefa ("boss") and has a strong commitment to breaking the cycle of generational poverty through educational empowerment. Prior to Inspirame, she had an illustrious 20-year career in human resources and diversity leadership at tech giants like Cisco Systems,...

After a short hiatus, we are back and hitting the ground running! And a HUGE congratulations to the graduating Class of 2024 - you did it! We begin the second segment of Season 2 with our first founder, Dana Le! Dana is the CEO & Founder of Wander Health, a startup that connects people to a trusted global network of English-speaking concierge doctors. Prior to this, she built an international...

Welcome back! Today’s episode highlights Corinne Bortniker, Principal at Radiate Capital and Director at Cohen Circle. She began her career in investment banking at Cowen Inc. and Wells Fargo Securities with a focus on healthcare, tech, media, and telecommunications. Now, she invests in health and financial services businesses that provide solutions to critical global issues alongside compelling f...

A new month brings a new podcast guest! On this episode, we host Sara Barek, founding team member of Oceans. Founded in 2018, Oceans is a venture capital firm based in New York and invests in pre-seed & seed stage companies with tech at the core and a focus on future of work. They are especially focused on helping founders create a great team to bring their game-changing ideas to life.  Prior...

As we continue celebrating Women’s History Month, we welcome Dr. Risa Stack on the Girls Into VC podcast! Dr. Stack is a Partner at The Production Board, leading their life sciences initiatives, incubating, investing, and partnering with proven founders to build businesses leveraging new technologies in healthcare. Her impressive background ranges from holding a PhD in Immunology at the University...

Happy Women's History Month! Before introducing this week's guest, we want to take a moment to honor all the women before us and today who have improved our society and lives. We would not be where we are today without them! We begin our celebrations by welcoming Zoe Brewer on the Girls Into VC podcast!  Zoe is an investor at Stripes, a VC/Growth Equity Firm based in New York City investin...

As February comes to an end, we welcome Ellonda L. Williams on the Girls Into VC podcast! Ellonda started her career in early education before moving to Drexel University, where she served several roles pushing diversity initiatives among faculty and students. Now, she is the Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) at B Lab, a non-profit organization that has a global vision...

Season 2, Episode 4 Happy Valentine’s Day! We hope you are able to celebrate your love with your special ones today <3 Our fourth episode features Taylor Jean-Jacques, investment professional on the technology investment team at General Atlantic. Prior to joining General Atlantic, she was a technology investment banker at J.P. Morgan and software engineer at Facebook and Instagram. She is a gra...

Season 2, Episode 3 Our next episode features Claude de Jocas, Vice President on Volition Capital’s Internet and Consumer investment team who was named GrowthCap's Top Women Leaders in Growth Investing for the second year in a row in 2023. She began on the startup side with L2 Inc, which was later acquired by Gartner, and worked with major brands like Nike and Estee Lauder. In 2019, she joined...

Season 2, Episode 2 We begin Season 2 by welcoming Molly Fowler on the Girls Into VC podcast! Molly is the founding general partner of the newly independent Dorm Room Fund, the nation's original student venture fund. She is proud to work alongside the DRF team of student investors at the best entrepreneurship campuses in the country. Together, they back the strongest student founders at their...

Season 2, Episode 1 Hi everyone, and welcome back to Season 2 of the Girls Into VC podcast! My name is Kritika Jain, and I will be hosting this season of the podcast featuring more female venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and innovators. Before kicking off the new season, I wanted to share a bit about myself, how I discovered venture capital, and the importance of having a community and diversit...

On this podcast Girls Into VC welcomes Adela Jamal and Sebastian Barriga to talk about their journeys from working at startups and in finance, to partnering together after receiving their MBAs from MIT to build a venture capital firm investing in applied AI! Adela Jamal and Sebastian Barriga have MBAs from MIT and are a co-founding Milemark Capital , an early-stage venture capital firm investing i...

On this podcast Girls Into VC welcomes Maryam Haque to talk about her experiences in research and transitioning to the National Venture Capital Association and building Venture Forward! Maryam serves as Executive Director of Venture Forward , NVCA’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit supporting organization focused on shaping the future of venture capital. Before transitioning to launch and lead Venture Forward,...