Laura Weidman Powers is a partner at Base10 Partners, the former CEO of the technology industry diversity organization Code2040 and formerly worked at White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Barack Obama administration. [1]
Laura Weidman Powers is a partner at Base10 Partners, the former CEO of the technology industry diversity organization Code2040 and formerly worked at White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Barack Obama administration. [1]
Powers grew up in Manhattan and attended Hunter College High School. Her father is the famous librettist John Weidman and her mother is Lila Coleburn, a clinical psychologist. Her paternal grandfather is Jerome Weidman, the Pulitzer prize winning novelist and playwright. [2]
With a Black mother and a white father and surrounded by the diversity of her city and her school, she grew to appreciate the value of diversity at an early age. She told an interviewer in 2016, "You see everything in New York. You see wealth. You see poverty. You see the best and the worst of society. You see people from all backgrounds. You hear every language being spoken on a daily basis. It’s just such a multicultural upbringing, that I think it really shaped my view of what the world can or should look like." [3]
Powers attended Harvard University, her father John Weidman's alma mater, and then attended law school and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where she met her Code2040 cofounder Tristan Walker. [4] [5]
Weidman Powers started a West Philadelphia nonprofit arts education organization. She also started a tutoring company. She joined a technology startup company as Vice President of Product. [6]
After working at the tech startup for two years, Powers cofounded Code2040 with Tristan Walker.
In late 2016, she spent six months as a member of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, focusing on increasing diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. [7]
Freada Kapor Klein is an American venture capitalist, social policy researcher and philanthropist. As a partner at Kapor Capital and the Kapor Center for Social Impact, she is known for efforts to diversify the technology workforce through activism and investments. Her 2007 book Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay examines the reasons people have for leaving corporate America as well as the human and financial cost.
David Oliver Sacks is a South African-American entrepreneur, author, and investor in internet technology firms. He is a general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Additionally, he is a co-host of the All In podcast, alongside Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Previously, Sacks was the COO and product leader of PayPal, and founder and CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for ten months. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb.
Marissa Ann Mayer is an American business executive and investor who served as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017. She was a long-time executive, usability leader and key spokesperson for Google. Mayer later co-founded Sunshine, a startup technology company.
Diane B. Greene is an American technology entrepreneur and executive. Greene started her career as a naval architect before transitioning to the tech industry, where she was a founder and CEO of VMware from 1998 until 2008. She was a board director of Google and CEO of Google Cloud from 2015 until 2019. She was also the co-founder and CEO of two startups, Bebop and VXtreme, which were acquired by Google and Microsoft, for $380 million and $75 million.
Cheryl Contee is an American entrepreneur, CEO, blogger, and writer. She is co-founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency, Do Big Things. Before founding Do Big Things, Contee co-founded Fission Strategy and Attentive.ly. In 2019, Contee released her book, “Mechanical Bull", which details her history as a non-traditional startup founder. She received her B.A. from Yale University and has an International Executive M.B.A. from Georgetown University.
Ellen Kangru Pao is an American investor and former interim CEO of social media company Reddit.
Elizabeth Anne Holmes is an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection to her blood-testing company, Theranos. The company's valuation soared after it claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that needed only very small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick. In 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. In the following year, as revelations of fraud about Theranos's claims began to surface, Forbes revised its estimate of Holmes's net worth to zero, and Fortune named her in its feature article on "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders".
Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su is an American billionaire business executive and electrical engineer who is president, chief executive officer (CEO), and the chair of the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.
Women in venture capital or VC are investors who provide venture capital funding to startups. Women make up a small fraction of the venture capital private equity workforce. A widely used source for tracking the number of women in venture capital is the Midas List which has been published by Forbes since 2001. Research from Women in VC, a global community of women venture investors, shows that the percentage of female VC partners is just shy of 5 percent.
Tracy Chou is a software engineer and advocate for diversity in technology related fields. She previously worked at Pinterest and Quora with internship experience at Google and Facebook.
Elissa Shevinsky is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, cybersecurity expert, public speaker, and author.
Leanne Pittsford is an American entrepreneur. She is the founder of Lesbians Who Tech, a community of queer women and their allies in technology.
Nicole Shariat Farb is an American entrepreneur and business executive. She is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of the video community Darby Smart. Prior to founding the company, Farb worked as a Head of Emerging Private Companies at Goldman Sachs. Farb has also appeared several times on Good Morning America as a DIY expert. She is also active in pursuing diversity and equality in the tech industry.
Carol Elizabeth Reiley is an American business executive, computer scientist, and model. She is a pioneer in teleoperated and autonomous robot systems in surgery, space exploration, disaster rescue, and self-driving cars. Reiley has worked at Intuitive Surgical, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric. She co-founded, invested in, and was president of Drive.ai, and is now CEO of a healthcare startup, a creative advisor for the San Francisco Symphony, and a brand ambassador for Guerlain Cosmetics. She is a published children's book author, the first female engineer on the cover of MAKE magazine, and is ranked by Forbes, Inc, and Quartz as a leading entrepreneur and influential scientist.
Everette Taylor is an American business executive. He has been the CEO of Kickstarter since September 2022, and was CMO of Artsy, and founder of ET Enterprises which includes the marketing firm MiliSense, social media software company PopSocial, ArtX and GrowthHackers.
Jennifer Rubio is an American businesswoman. She is the co-founder, president, and chief executive officer of Away, a luggage manufacturer and retailer. Rubio was head of social media at Warby Parker and global director of innovation at fashion company AllSaints.
Revathi Advaithi is an Indian-born American business executive. She is the CEO of Flex and an advocate for women in STEM and in the workplace.
Tristan Walker is an American founder and CEO, most notable for starting Walker & Company in 2013, which was purchased by Procter & Gamble. In addition to being CEO of Walker & Company, Walker is a board member for Shake Shack and Foot Locker. He also co-founded the non-profit CODE2040, which helps connect people of color with engineering internships.
Riana Lynn is a scientist, investor, and Artificial Intelligence patent holder. She is the founder and CEO of the software startup Journey Foods which uses an "in-house automated scientist," JourneyAI that now creates product formulations and plans for global food companies after launching with micro foods as nutrient-dense snacks called Journey Bites. She was also the founder of the former FoodTrace, a Chicago-based technology platform, designed to help food businesses with growth and Supply chain management by providing insight to industry executives on food sourcing origins.