Angela Lee is a Professor of Venture Capital Practice at Columbia Business School.  She teaches Venture Capital (Foundations of VC, VC Seminar) and Leadership (The Leader’s Voice) courses.  She brings 20 years of innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship experience to the classroom.  She started her career in product management and then moved into strategy consulting at McKinsey.  Angela is passionate about entrepreneurship and has started several companies in the education sector.  She is a startup investor and the founder of 37 Angels, an investing network that has evaluated 15000 startups, invested in 60, and activates new investors through a startup investment bootcamp.

Angela has spoken at the White House and NASA and is a sought-after expert on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC and Fox Business.  She was recognized by Inc. as one of 17 Inspiring Women to Watch in 2017, by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of 6 Innovative Women to Watch in 2015, and by Craine’s as a Notable Women in Tech in 2019.  Angela received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley and her MBA from Columbia Business School.   

Alexa is the co-founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital.

Prior to Inspired Capital, Alexa founded LearnVest in 2008 with the goal of helping people make progress on their money. After raising nearly $75 million in venture capital, LearnVest was acquired by Northwestern Mutual in May 2015 in one of the biggest fintech acquisitions of the decade. Following the acquisition, von Tobel joined the management team of Northwestern Mutual as the company’s first-ever Chief Digital Officer. She later assumed the role of Chief Innovation Officer through which she oversaw Northwestern Mutual’s venture arm.

Alexa, who holds a Certified Financial Planner™ designation, is the New York Times-Bestselling Author of Financially Fearless and Financially Forward. She is also the host of The Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel, a weekly podcast with Inc. that highlights top entrepreneurs.

Alexa is a member of the 2016 Class of Henry Crown Fellows and an inaugural member of President Obama’s Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship. She has been honored with numerous recognitions including: a Forbes Magazine cover story, Fortune’s 40 Under 40, Fortune's Most Powerful Women, Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30, and World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader.

Originally from Florida, Alexa attended Harvard College and Harvard Business School before settling in New York City where she currently resides with her husband, Cliff, and three children, Toby, Cashel, and Rosey.

Cheryl is passionate about the intersection of finance, technology, and social impact. She is the Head of Venture Growth and Partnerships at Republic, a one-stop-shop for founders to raise capital from both accredited and non-accredited investors. She is focused on introducing underrepresented founders to these alternative funding sources in order to help their startups thrive. In addition, she works on partnerships with other venture capital and ecosystem builders while supporting the growing Republic portfolio of 150+ companies. She is also a scout for Lightspeed and investment partner at the Community Fund.

Previously she worked as an analyst in a Connecticut-based private equity firm with an emphasis on minority and women entrepreneurs. She started her career in Investment Banking at Barclays, working in the Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance. She holds a BA in Economics with honors from Harvard University.

Samara is Founding Partner of a institutionally-backed pre-seed stage fund, Chingona Ventures, focusing on investing in technology and technology-enabled companies all over the U.S.

Prior to this she was an early stage investor at MATH Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund investing in technology start-ups with differentiated approaches to customer acquisition. In this capacity, she lead new investment review, diligence and
execution. Prior to venture capital, Samara worked at Goldman Sachs, where she was continually ranked top 5 in selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting on business practices.

She started her career in the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodity (FICC) group where she lead multiple technology enhancing projects across global exchanges. Samara is actively involved in the Chicago tech community and passionate about helping underrepresented groups get into STEM education, venture capital and entrepreneurship. She co-founded the Latinx Founders Collective organization to bring together Latinx founders, investors, and community leaders to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Samara earned an Industrial and Operations Engineering degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago with her husband Ben and one-year old son Santi.

“A word geek.”

That is how Julian Guthrie describes herself. A love of words, language, and storytelling has taken her from a childhood spent devouring books (and reading the dictionary!) to a 25-year career in daily journalism, where she won numerous awards and had her work nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize. Julian has written five books, two of which are being adapted for television.

Julian has interviewed some of the world’s most successful and interesting people, from Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Richard Branson, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to Melinda Gates, Marissa Mayer, Christy Turlington, and the late Prof. Stephen Hawking (who wrote the afterword to her third book). Julian has spent years researching how men and women succeed – and it is not the same.

Driven by an understanding of how stories can open minds, change lives, and jumpstart industries, Julian founded a 501c3 national nonprofit, The Alpha Girls Institute, to support and spotlight the lives and stories of women and girls across the globe.

She is now the founder and CEO of a venture-backed SaaS (software as a service) company, Mindset Alpha, which uses targeted storytelling and guided community to enable companies to attract, retain, and promote women and allies in entirely new ways. Mindset Alpha is poised to change the game for women across industries, and will soon be rolled out to colleges and universities in the U.S.  

Julian’s personal story shows how a love of something – whatever it is – can take you far in life. “Going from a little girl who loved to read to journalism to author to the founder of a tech company actually feels like a continuum,” Julian says. “I just took my love, my skills, and pivoted into new mediums. At its core, though, I’m still telling stories.”

Lakshmi Shenoy is the CEO of Embarc Collective, the innovation hub in downtown Tampa that helps Tampa Bay’s startup talent build bold, scalable, thriving companies. Before moving to Tampa Bay, Lakshmi was in Chicago and served as the Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at 1871, the #1 university-affiliated business incubator in the world. Prior to 1871, Lakshmi worked at Prophet Brand Strategy, Time Inc., Procter & Gamble and Leo Burnett. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Sociology from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Lakshmi was recognized as one of 20 Rising Brand Stars by AdAge in 2017. Lakshmi currently serves on the board for The Florida Aquarium and Junior Achievement Tampa Bay.