Diverse Founders Initiative
Infusing diversity and inclusion into venture capital.
Untapped opportunity: the power of diversity.
At Samsung NEXT I was part of the team that built the Diverse Founder Initiative (DFI) with the goal of increasing African American and LatinX representation in the Ventures pipeline.
As part of that effort, we engaged with multiple organizations that supported underrepresented entrepreneurial communities.
Startup Festivus
GitHub HQ - San Francisco, CA
Let’s get loud!
Startup Festivus (Bloomberg Beta) - We sponsored their annual “Christmas” party for 3 years in a row to support early stage startups that can't afford a Christmas party for their employees.
Culture House SXSW - Sponsorship to showcase Samsung NEXT as leader in the innovation and investment space in an event targeted towards the entrepreneurial African American community. As part of the sponsorship, we hosted a fireside chat with Baron Davis where he talked about his entrepreneurial ventures and the work that he was doing with Samsung NEXT.
Black Women Talk Tech (BWTT) - Sponsors of their conference for two years in a row. We hosted a booth during the event, spoke in different sessions and hosted the welcome cocktail event. We then expanded our work with them and run a study to collect data around the state of entrepreneurship for black women.
Diversifying the startup pool.
Culture Shift Labs works with tech and Fortune 500 companies, large non-profits, leaders, both traditional and impact investors, cities and philanthropists on driving revenue growth and accelerating innovation through diversity and implementing inclusion best and next practices. I ran a multi-year partnership with them that included sponsoring their annual events (Silicon Valley and New York), creating the DFI summit, and conducting research.
Transparent Collective is an organization that helps underrepresented founders access the resources they need to succeed. We partnered with them to produce a content series highlighting the work of 5 prominent founders and their technologies and supported their demo day as judges and partners.
Culture Shifting Awards
Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel- Menlo Park, CA
