Women founders and venture capitalists have made strides over the past decade. The impacts of COVID-19 threaten to stagnate or reverse the progress made. It is also a chance to expand opportunities and get more women into venture, which is critical to the success of the broader startup ecosystem.
Join us for fireside conversations with notable investors and women who are actively working to accelerate gender balance and equality in venture capital. Join the growing community of women in venture, and help build the future.
This is a virtual event. Zoom will be provided in the registration confirmation email.
Part One: In an open letter to the VC community, All Raise CEO Pam Kostka posed an intriguing question, pointing to the “embarrassingly paltry” amount of funding that went to female-founded companies in the past two years despite record-high investment.
“If this represents the bets venture is placing on female founders during a boom time,” she wrote, “what’s going to happen during a recession?”
Pam Kostka is the CEO of All Raise, a startup nonprofit on a mission to accelerate the success of female founders and funders to build a more prosperous, equitable future. Pam is a seasoned CEO with over 25 years of experience as a startup operator. Her specialties are defining go-to-market strategies and implementing operational processes that allow startups to effectively scale to successful exits. Most recently, she was CEO of Loop, a local community mobile app. Previously, she served as CEO of Bluebox Security, interim CEO and CMO at VirtuOz, SVP of Marketing and Sales for Sabrix, and CEO and Co-founder of Visiline, Inc. She has also held executive and senior marketing roles at software companies such as Arena Solutions, Connect, and Extensity.
Pam earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, summa cum laude, from College of the Holy Cross, and her MBA from Harvard Business School. A lifelong cyclist, runner, and outdoor adventure seeker, she enjoys Bay Area trails with her husband, Yuri, and daughter, Rae.
Kate Brodock is Founding Partner of the W Fund and CEO of Women 2.0, one of largest global brands focused on gender and inclusion in startups. She’s been active in the tech startup ecosystem for 15+ years, and has played a central leadership role in representation in the sector, having led a global organization of 60+ chapters focused on women in entrepreneurship as its President. She’s also an EIR at LaunchNY, and a long-time mentor for Techstars.
Kate has spoken at and been featured in 100s of places, including SXSWi, Web Summit, Collision Conference, Fast Company, Techcrunch, MSNBC, IBM, and Al Jazeera America.
She has a BA from the University of Rochester, an MBA from Emory University and an MA from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
She’s a very non-professional (but adventurous!) athlete and musician, loves a good meal with bubbly, craft beer and friends, and lives with her husband, a startup-web-developer-turned-beer-guy on a hops farm in Upstate, NY and their two boys.
Allyson is Founding Partner at W Fund. She has been named one of the “Most Influential Women in Tech” by Fast Company. As the founder of Women Who Tech, she launched one of the largest global programs, the Women Startup Challenge, in partnership with Craig Newmark and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
Allyson is a VC scout for Indie VC, the Co-Founder of Rad Campaign, sits on the Board of Directors for the Women League of Voters and is a jury member for the Webby Awards, and has helped nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropists build websites, apps, and national campaigns to power fundraising and grassroots movements. Previously she was on the Advisory Board for the Anita Borg Institute and NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference Planning Committee. She is passionate about the intersection of social change with online technologies and social communities, a topic she deeply explores in her nonprofit bestselling book Social Change Anytime Everywhere.
Sima J. Gandhi is an expert on emerging technologies within heavily regulated spaces, having led product, strategy, partnerships, and GTM teams. She currently advises and invests in financial services and healthcare companies including Modern Fertility, Anchorage, and Reap, and sits on the board of DriWay Technologies, an environmental tech company valued at $100M+.
Sima spent five years on the Plaid leadership team, scaling it to a global company with ~500 people and playing an instrumental role in the $5.3B acquisition to Visa, one of the largest fintech exits in the industry.
Prior to Plaid, Sima worked at American Express, managed regulatory agency and White House relationships at the US Treasury Department, led tax policy initiatives for the Center for American Progress, and practiced tax law at Simpson Thatcher.
Helen Min leads marketing and communications at AngelList. She also advises and invests in fintech and developer tools/API startups including Kite, CapWay, Puzzl, and Argyle. She spent the last 12 years leading marketing teams at Plaid, Quora, Dropbox, and Facebook. Prior to working in tech, Helen worked in the advertising industry managing automotive and technology clients for Venables Bell & Partners and Young & Rubicam.
Helen holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, and an MS and BS in Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently lives in San Francisco with her son.
