women-in-vc
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Kate Laurence Wants Trust to Survive the People in Charge
Growing up in Russia gave Kate Laurence a reason to question institutions. A career at Gartner gave her a way to question technology. At Bloccelerate VC, she has made a business of doing both.
Ibrahim Hafeez
Ibrahim Hafeez is a Pakistani-born venture capitalist and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree (2026, Games) who joined Anfa as an Investor in early 2026 after four years as a Principal at Griffin Gaming Partners, one of the world's largest gaming-focused VC firms. He helped deploy over $150 million across 30+ investments in game studios, platforms, and gaming infrastructure, and pioneered Griffin's push into emerging markets like Turkey and the Middle East. Before VC, he worked on global licensing strategy at EA Sports during the historic FIFA-to-EA Sports FC split. He also founded Women Venture Capitalists (2023) and Onto Global (2021).
Carlotta Siniscalco
Carlotta 'Lotti' Siniscalco is a General Partner at Emergence Capital in San Francisco, the first woman partner in the firm's two-decade history. She backs early-stage enterprise software and fintech founders, with board roles at Federato, Whistic, and High Alpha. Milanese by birth, Wharton and Stanford by training, she sent cold emails to every AIFI member as a teenager to break into venture and hasn't slowed since.
Eileen Tanghal
Eileen Tanghal is the Founder and General Partner of Black Opal Ventures, a women-led early-stage venture capital firm based in New York investing at the intersection of healthcare and frontier technology. With over 20 years of VC experience spanning corporate venture (Applied Ventures, ARM Holdings), national security investing (In-Q-Tel), and European VC (Amadeus Capital, Kennet Partners), she co-founded Black Opal in 2021 alongside Dr. Tara Bishop - a friend of 30 years from their days as MIT engineering students. The firm raised a $58M debut fund with backing from Eli Lilly, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan, and invests in companies using AI, bioengineering, and advanced computing to reshape how healthcare is delivered and who can access it.
Genevieve Lemarchal
Genevieve Lemarchal is the Managing Partner of Suncoast Ventures and Head of Healthcare at Expert Dojo, one of Southern California's most active pre-seed venture funds. A serial entrepreneur turned investor, she focuses on early-stage healthcare startups tackling critical gaps in addiction recovery, maternal care, chronic disease management, and digital health. With a portfolio spanning 35+ companies across 7 countries, she champions underrepresented founders - 50% female, 37-43% from underrepresented backgrounds - and hosts the AdVentureous Podcast, where she interviews entrepreneurs and VCs about building companies that matter.
Giulianna Crivello
Giulianna Crivello is the Founding General Partner of DSH Ventures, the pre-seed investment arm of Draper Startup House — the global co-living and coworking network for entrepreneurs backed by legendary VC Tim Draper. A 2018 valedictorian from Sierra Nevada College, she went from research analyst in Nevada to directing investments across 14 countries in her first year at DSH Ventures. She co-manages the fund with Vikram Bharati and has facilitated over 215 investor introductions to startups spanning the US, Singapore, India, and beyond, while helping build Draper Startup House into a presence spanning 25 embassies across 5 continents.
Jennifer Vancini
Jennifer Vancini is Co-Founder and General Partner at Mighty Capital, one of Silicon Valley's few woman-owned venture capital firms. With 20+ years in technology investments and M&A, she co-founded Mighty Capital in 2017 alongside SC Moatti, leveraging a network of 600,000+ product leaders to identify breakout B2B tech startups early. The firm's track record includes six IPOs in eight years - including early bets on Amplitude and Groq - and the April 2026 close of a $91M Fund III, triple its predecessor. Before VC, Vancini built a career spanning enterprise BD roles at Certicom, Symbian, Nokia, and Telefónica, culminating in a family investment office that returned 15x cash-on-cash before she co-founded Mighty Capital.
Julie Grant
Julie Grant is a General Partner at Canaan, a $5B technology and healthcare venture capital firm, where she leads biopharma investments and company formation on the West Coast. She co-founded and served as founding CEO of Day One Biopharmaceuticals, a purpose-built pediatric oncology company that grew to a $1.5B+ valuation and was later acquired by Servier. A Yale-educated molecular biophysicist who went on to Stanford MBA and Cambridge MPhil, Grant brings rare operational depth to venture - having sat in the CEO chair before returning to investing. In 2023, President Biden appointed her to the National Cancer Advisory Board. She is the fourth woman to become a General Partner at Canaan.
Maria Palma
Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture capital firm. With over a decade of venture experience and investments in 35+ companies, she focuses on early-stage AI investments across application and infrastructure layers. Before Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital in London and a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York. She co-founded NYC Blend, a nonprofit connecting underrepresented founders to venture capital, and was named to Business Insider's 'The Seed 40: Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025.'
Mary Jane Elmore
Mary Jane (MJ) Elmore is a pioneering venture capitalist who joined IVP (Institutional Venture Partners) in 1982 and became one of the first female General Partners in American venture capital history. Over a four-decade career spanning eight IVP funds, she backed transformative technology companies in software, communications, and computer-aided engineering. Now a Limited Partner and active angel investor through Broadway Angels and Sand Hill Angels, she has reinvented herself as an oil painter - applying the same mathematical precision that made her a formidable investor to abstract landscapes and architecture.
Adina Tecklu
Adina Tecklu is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms, where she bets on early-stage software, AI, and fintech founders before the market catches on. A Stanford-trained engineer turned investor, she built Canaan's seed practice from zero, survived Zenefits' rocket-ship chaos as an early employee, and learned customer obsession at Oracle - then channeled all of it into backing breakout companies like Lovable, Aven, Basis, Rain, and Stuut. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital, Tecklu is known for backing exceptional founders with rare conviction, before there's consensus - and staying close through product-market fit to breakout growth.
Alice Brooks
Alice Brooks is a Partner at Khosla Ventures investing in deep tech and sustainability - agtech, climate tech, robotics, food & beverage, manufacturing, and education from seed through Series B. Before venture, she co-founded Roominate, the STEM construction toy that landed Time's #1 toy of 2014 and a $500K Shark Tank deal from Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. A mechanical engineer turned investor, she holds degrees from MIT, Stanford, and Harvard and has led hardware teams at Nest and startup operations across the US and Asia.
Maria Heyen
Maria Heyen is an early-stage investor at Lightbank in Chicago, previously the first hire at Redbud VC in Columbia, Missouri, where she helped deploy $5M+ across 35+ companies. A Pacific Northwest native who worked 80-100 hour weeks to fund her own education, she went on to co-found the Husker Venture Fund at UNL and build a reputation as one of the emerging voices in Midwest venture. She invests at the intersection of vertical SaaS, fintech, and infrastructure in overlooked industries, and writes the Soapbox newsletter on career, culture, and capital.
Minda Brusse
Minda Brusse is a Venture Partner at 2048 Ventures and Co-founding Partner at First Row Partners, a pre-seed firm backing technology companies that empower brand builders, content creators, and storytellers. With 25+ years in the startup ecosystem spanning Andersen Consulting, multiple co-founder roles, angel investing, and fund management, she also teaches Angel Investing and entrepreneurship at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business. A champion of expanding participation in Pacific Northwest venture capital, she co-founded The 1K Project during the pandemic, raising $3.3M for 1,100 families in need.
Nicole Quinn
Nicole Quinn is a Managing Partner at Connect Ventures and former General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where she spent a decade building one of Silicon Valley's most distinctive consumer investing portfolios. A former British 100-meter sprinter who traded the track for Wall Street, Quinn worked on the Facebook and Groupon IPOs at Morgan Stanley before pivoting to venture capital. Known as the 'Celebrity Whisperer,' she's backed Lady Gaga's Haus Labs, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, and companies like Calm, Cameo, and Rothy's. With a mathematics degree from York University and an MBA from Stanford, Quinn combines analytical rigor with an athlete's competitive drive and a certified coach's empathy for founders navigating the long game of company building.
Jenny Lee
Jenny Lee is a Singapore-born venture capitalist and co-founder of Granite Asia, formerly Senior Managing Partner at GGV Capital, where she spent nearly two decades building Asia's most formidable tech investment franchise. A Cornell-trained electrical engineer who bought out her government scholarship bond for S$300,000 to chase her VC calling, she has backed over 21 unicorns and facilitated 16 IPOs across five global stock exchanges, including early bets on Alibaba, Xiaomi, Didi, and Grab. The first woman ever to crack the top 10 of Forbes' Midas List, Lee now runs Granite Asia - a $5 billion multi-asset platform investing across Asia's next technology wave.
Shauntel Garvey
Shauntel Garvey is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a $300M+ San Francisco-based venture firm laser-focused on education technology. A chemical engineer turned edtech investor, she parlayed an MIT degree and a Stanford MBA/MA in Education into backing some of the most consequential learning platforms of the last decade - ClassDojo, Epic, Outschool, and Handshake among them. She co-founded Reach Capital in 2015 after her stint at NewSchools Venture Fund, building it into a firm with 132+ portfolio companies, five unicorns, and one IPO. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, founding member of All Raise, and Pahara Institute Fellow, Garvey is one of the most influential figures at the intersection of capital and educational equity.
Anarghya Vardhana
Anarghya Vardhana is a venture partner at Maveron, the consumer-only VC firm co-founded by Howard Schultz, where she has spent nearly a decade backing iconic consumer brands in health, wellness, and social tech. A Stanford grad who published a math theorem at 17, she moved from Sandia National Labs nuclear research to Google international ops to the boardrooms of startups like Co-Star, Bend Health, and Alife. Forbes named her a 30 Under 30 in VC and their First Diversity Champion across the entire class. Simultaneously serving as Investor in Residence at Vanta, she is one of the few investors who credibly bridges deep technical rigor with consumer intuition - and who also runs trail marathons and dances Bharatanatyam.
Paige Finn Doherty
Paige Finn Doherty is the founding partner of Behind Genius Ventures, a San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed VC firm managing ~$14M AUM across two funds. One of the youngest women in the world to start a venture fund (at age 22), she is also the author of 'Seed to Harvest: A Simple Explanation of Venture Capital,' host of the Seed to Harvest podcast, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Venture Capital (2022). A San Diego native and SDSU computer science graduate, she built her fund from a book she wrote to explain VC to her parents, using Twitter to raise her first $60K syndicate from 17 investors. She invests in 'technical storytellers' building 'clipboard companies' — verticalized AI applied to legacy industries.
Renata George
Renata George is a venture capital investor, author, educator, and advocate for gender diversity in the investment world. She built and exited a major franchise media network in Eastern Europe before pivoting to VC, raising a U.S.-based fund in 2011, and later joining a Singapore VC firm. She founded Women.VC, a nonprofit advancing women in venture capital and private equity, authored the landmark book 'Women Who Venture', and serves as Program Director of VC Academy. Forbes named her among the top women in VC in 2012 and a leading millennial woman investor in 2015.