The 10th House Podcast by Female Founder Collective

During this event, join FFC co-founder and CEO, Alison Wyatt, as she hosts an in-depth panel on Non-Dilutive Funding + CPG Business Growth with Babba Rivera of Ceremonia and Dwight Funding's Jessica Bates and Rachel Gordon. From funding your business without venture capital, what to expect with alternative funding methods, cash management, team building, and landing retail partnerships to standing out amongst the crowd, this conversation covers all corners of being a product founder! 

​Babba Rivera is an award-winning entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Venture-backed beauty business- Ceremonia, a clean hair care brand rooted in Latinx heritage. Inspired by the rituals she grew up with, fueled by her mission to enable representation for the Latinx community, Babba has seen tremendous growth with her startup in record time. As one of only 58 Latina's to ever raise over $1M in VC funding, and as the first Latina-owned hair care brand to enter Sephora, Babba is a trailblazer within the founder community.

​Jessica Bates leads Dwight’s Business Development team, which is focused on building and nurturing relationships with the best brands in beauty, personal care, apparel, and the general consumer products space. Jessica has years of experience working with founders to secure working capital solutions designed to support the specific cash flow needs of growth-stage CPG, and digitally native brands. 

​As Director of Business Development, Rachel Gordon is passionate about her work helping innovative founders secure tailor-made financing solutions and curating relevant introductions from her broader network of investors and service providers. Prior to joining Dwight, Rachel supported and advised emerging Venture Capital fund managers at Carta, while previously she raised debt capital for companies globally in the Global Capital Markets division of Morgan Stanley.

Liz Elting, Founder and CEO of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, is an entrepreneur, business leader, linguaphile, philanthropist, feminist, and mother. During this deep-dive interview, Liz sits down with CEO of Female Founder Collective, Alison Wyatt to share exactly how she built a billion-dollar business.

​After living, studying, and working in five countries across the globe, Liz founded TransPerfect out of an NYU dorm room in 1992 and served as Co-CEO until 2018. TransPerfect is the world's largest language solutions company, with over $1.1 billion in revenue and offices in more than 100 cities worldwide.

​Liz received the 2019 Charles Waldo Haskins Award for business and public service from NYU’s Stern School of Business, the American Heart Association’s 2020 Health Equity Leadership Award, the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs’ 2021 Vertex Award for changing the face and direction of women’s high-growth entrepreneurship, the American Heart Association’s 2022 Woman Changing the World Award, and Trinity College’s 2022 Kathleen O’Connor Boelhouwer ’85 Alumni Initiative Award. 

​Liz has been recognized as a NOW Woman of Power & Influence, American Express' and Entrepreneur magazine's Woman of the Year, and one of Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women every year since the list’s inception. 

​Elting is the author of the upcoming book, Dream Big and Win: Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business.

​Join CEO of Female Founder Collective, Alison Wyatt as she sits out with Deborah Benton for an in-depth conversation about the future of fundraising. As the former President & COO of Nasty Gal and current Founder and General Partner at Willow Growth Partners, Deborah has sat on both sides of the table. With this unique perspective, she is able to share industry secrets and trends that will help any founder looking to fundraise. From expected returns, common mistakes to avoid, and the future of fashion, CPG, and femtech, Deborah shares what it takes to drive growth in 2024.

​MORE ABOUT YOUR HOST

​Deborah is the Founder & General Partner at Willow Growth Partners. Willow provides early growth capital to entrepreneurs building the next generation of transformative consumer brands and the disruptive technologies that power them. In 2014, Deborah launched a family office investment vehicle focused on seed-stage consumer brands and enabling tech companies.

​Prior to Willow, Deborah invested in 15 companies, and achieved seven liquidity events, realizing 2.6x the invested capital and significant unrealized gains, with the portfolio currently sitting at 10.6x MOIC. All remaining portfolio companies are active, healthy, and growing, providing significant unrealized gains. During this time, Deborah assumed a number of Advisory Board and Board of Director roles to support the successful growth and development of a number of her portfolio companies. A critical element of Deborah’s investment thesis is to leverage her 20+ years of operating experience by helping founders rationally, effectively and optimally scale their businesses.

​Prior to investing, Deborah held a number of executive-level operating roles. From 2012 - 2014, she was President and Chief Operating Officer of Nasty Gal, an online women’s fashion brand, where she led the team that grew annual revenues from $20 M to almost $100 M in two years, and quickly built the infrastructure to support this meteoric growth.

​Prior to this role, Deborah was the Chief Operating Officer at ShoeDazzle, an online women’s subscription shoe company, where she and the team built a powerful consumer brand and grew annual revenues to ~$85 M in 2 ½ years. With Kim Kardashian as a founder, ShoeDazzle was one of the original consumer brands to harness and leverage the power of social media and celebrity influencers. Earlier in her career, Deborah was the EVP of Inside Sales and Operations at Teleflora, where she managed a $100 M P&L and drove significant operational and supply chain efficiencies, improving profitability. After business school, Deborah began her career in management consulting, focusing primarily on data-driven strategic sourcing and cost rationalization.

​Deborah holds a public Board Director role at Leaf Group (NYSE: LEAF). She is passionate about and actively involved in supporting and mentoring women founders and sits on the board of Women Founder Network in LA, an organization dedicated to providing promising female entrepreneurs access to capital, services, and mentorship.

There are few things more influential in your business’s growth than branding, brand marketing, communications, brand loyalty, and brand awareness. Noora Raj Brown is your go-to branding mentor, answering questions about creating a brand, crisis management, and social strategy.

​Noora Raj Brown is the Executive Vice President, Brand at goop. A member of the executive team, Raj Brown oversees brand marketing, corporate positioning, executive communications, talent outreach, social media, influencer marketing and press strategy for the goop brand and all initiatives. She also works with the team to conceptualize new content verticals, collaborations, product lines and live events.

​Prior to goop, Raj Brown worked in a number of creative industries, most recently at Time Inc, where she led communications for their fashion and style brands, including InStyle, People StyleWatch, XoJane and Wallpaper*. Previously, she served as the Director of Lifestyle & Special Events at Alison Brod Marketing & Communications where she worked with lifestyle, tech, nonprofit and cultural organizations. She has held positions in special projects and communications at Thompson Hotels and talent public relations at BWR. Raj Brown is also an accomplished freelance writer, focusing on travel, culture, and art for publications such as Departures, Wallpaper*, Food & Wine and InStyle.

​Raj Brown is a founding board member of political engagement organization I am a Voter and is on the executive committee of the Hammer Collective, which supports the Hammer Projects, the long-running exhibition series at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She serves on the board of Proxama and is an advisor to multiple start-ups, including Motherly and Jemi (via GeneralCatalyst).

Ashley Thompson co-founded MUSH in 2015 with the conviction that simple, delicious, and nutritious food can elevate the world in powerful ways.

​CEO of Female Founder Collective, Alison Wyatt, is sitting down with this industry leader to discuss maximizing your retail footprint through product suite expansion and innovation. From retail expansion, to new flavor innovations, maintaining quality as you scale, and beyond, Ashley is sharing it all!

​Ashley developed a passion for health and wellness at an early age, sparked by personal and familial struggles with health. She has an insatiable curiosity to understand the connection between what you eat and how you experience life.

​Having graduated from Columbia University in three years, worked on Wall Street, and named to Forbes 30 Under 30 for building a high-growth CPG brand, Ashley confidently espouses that when you eat well, you feel well, and when you feel well, you do well.

​MUSH is now the leading brand in its category, powered by an incredible team of passionate individuals who love to help others feel, think, and do better.

Recently recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of 9 Women Shaping Venture Capital and by the Venture Capital Journal as a Rising Star, Gosia is an Investment Director and Co-leads the SB Opportunity Fund, heading up its growth investment team. Previously, she also worked with SoftBank’s $5B  LatAm Fund, and served on SoftBank Group’s Silicon Valley Deal Team. Her investments include Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats), Eight Sleep, Drift, PlayVs,  WelcomeTech, Loggi, Konfio, and others. She is interested in B2B software, AI  platforms, and the future of food.

​The Opportunity Fund launched in June 2020 as a $100M commitment to invest in Black, Latinx and Native American US founders. It launched in just 24 hours, built on SoftBank Group’s core belief that more underrepresented founders would build extraordinary companies given the chance, the network, and the capital to do so. 

​Prior to joining SoftBank, Gosiawas a Senior Associate on the Deal Team at Onex, $44B  AUM large-cap private equity firm in New York, and a strategy consultant at Bain &  Company. Gosia graduated summa cum laude from Warsaw School of Economics as a  valedictorian. She received a PhD in Finance from the same institution, was a Fulbright  Scholar at Columbia University, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

​CEO and Co-Founder of Female Founder Collective, Alison Wyatt, sits down with this trailblazer to discuss venture capital for underfunded and underrepresented founders. From how early-stage founders can learn from growth-stage fundraisers to how to raise capital as an underrepresented founder and 2023 industry and VC predictions, this event covers it all!

GOODLES mac and cheese has managed to create a community of loyal brand fans. From GOODLES tattoos, Halloween costumes, fan content + creations, and invites to weddings, their fans will go to great lengths to show their love for the brand.

​While going up against large, entrenched competitors, GOODLES' philosophy and approach to category disruption have launched them into success.

​Female Founder Collective's CEO, Alison Wyatt, sits down with GOODLES CEO Jen Zeszut to uncover how this trailblazing brand developed a creative marketing strategy that set them apart from the rest.

​About Your Host

​In November 2021, Jen Zeszut co-founded GOODLES with a mission: to reformulate mac and cheese – the ultimate throwback indulgence – using real ingredients to be loved by all ages. Since then, Jen and her founding partners have been reinventing the multi-billion-dollar prepared pasta aisle, developing delicious, nutrient-dense (and exceedingly popular!) mac and cheese and pasta.

​As a 4x CEO and 3x Founder, Zesut has 15 years of experience leading, branding, marketing and operating mission-driven startup brands like Cerebelly, Beckon, and Scout Labs.

​Zeszut is an idealist and a mobilizer at heart, with a talent for inspiring the best talent across all corners of industry to come together and build visionary, impactful and game changing products. GOODLES is the culmination of this work: a tiny noodle, with big dreams to make, be and do good.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Is the current economic climate top of mind for you? Are you interested in learning how others are leading navigating turbulent times? Keeping your cash flow, optimizing your runway, fundraising, and leading are a few of the things on founders' minds right now. 

Come join us to hear from our all-star panel of founders, innovators, and investors on how to manage through a down market. Don’t miss this virtual event where Alli Young (The Forem), Christine L. Holcomb (CULT Capital), and Tahira White (19th & Park Inc) share their insights and courses of action.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Before she helped to launch one of the most industry-changing wellness brands — goop — Kimberly was packing in 14 years of valuable experience in publishing. And with her foundational expertise of working with celebrities, Kimberly built goop from the ground up as the CRO (in just 4 and a half years), raising more than $100 million in brand backing, increasing the staff by 16x (you read that right), and has doubled the wellness brand’s publishing revenue year-over-year. Her work with celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow inspired Kimberly to start her own full-service agency, Pivot Projects, offering everything from marketing to operational services to brands such as Cravings by Chrissy Teigen (where she now resides as CEO), Frenshe by Ashley Tisdale, and Magic Mike by Channing Tatum. In addition to all of that success, Kimberly is an advisor for our 1-on-1 advisory platform, The North, where she supports female founders and guides them toward their building and scaling goals all while working toward gender equality for women in business. 

CEO of Female Founder Collective and The 10th House, Alison Wyatt, is sitting down with Kimberly to discuss her strategies for conjuring revenue streams at scale. From hiring the right people and methodically tracking and forecasting progress to building strategic partnerships and launching new products. Kimberly is sharing it all!

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Julia Boorstin is CNBC’s Senior Media & Tech Correspondent delivering reporting, CEO interviews, and analysis, with a featured role on TechCheck. In 2013, Boorstin created the CNBC Disruptor 50 list of private companies transforming the economy. She also leads the network’s ‘Closing the Gap’ initiative. Boorstin is the author of When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them, from Avid Reader Press. It weaves together the stories of 60 female leaders like Katrina Lake, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jenn Hyman, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Lena Waithe, Shivani Siroya, Julia Collins, and more, with research explaining the strategies behind their success. 

CEO of Female Founder Collective and The 10th House, Alison Wyatt, is sitting down with this trailblazer to discuss what she’s learned from industry leaders, including how women can navigate bias, defy the odds, leverage their networks of other women to succeed, and how to access your inner leadership superpower.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Today, it is an uphill battle to become a unicorn technology enterprise, especially one that centers around mutual success. This LinkedIn Live event is stacked with thought leaders and decision-makers in the tech world. 

Brenda Darden Wilkerson, President & CEO of AnitaB.org, is a pioneering thought leader and an advocate for access, opportunity, and social justice for underrepresented communities in technology. AnitaB.org, is an organization that connects, inspires, and strives for greater equality for women technologists in business, academia, and government. Alexandra Zatarain is the co-founder and VP of Brand and Marketing at Eight Sleep, the world's first sleep fitness company. Eight Sleep designs tech-enabled products, content, and services that make people sleep fit. 

Female Founder Collective and The 10th House Co-Founder & CEO, Alison Wyatt, is sitting down with the powerhouse of panelists to discuss underrepresented communities in technology, using technology to create cultures/communities conducive to mutual success, steps to becoming a venture-backable tech company, and marketing strategies to stand out in the technology space.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Candace Nelson is a serial entrepreneur, a New York Times bestselling author, Wall Street Journal contributor, and an expert in turning one’s passion into a profitable business. In her book Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe For Turning Your Passion Into Profit, Candace walks you through the steps she took to build a globally beloved brand, so you can do it too. 

CEO of Female Founder Collective and The North, Alison Wyatt, is sitting down with this trailblazer to discuss packaging a product for profit, cultivating brand evangelists, personal branding, and effectively allocating marketing dollars (no matter your budget)! ​

Candace Nelson revolutionized the baking industry when she left a career in finance to start Sprinkles, the world's first cupcake bakery and Cupcake ATM. Nelson followed with the launch of Pizzana, a growing chain of Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded pizzerias leading the third wave of pizza in the US. She continues to expand her portfolio of investments with CN2 Ventures and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons, and Norwich terrier, Willy.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Mahisha Dellinger is the definition of a powerhouse. In her time on OWN Network as the host of ‘Mind Your Business with Mahisha’ the dynamic CEO helped female entrepreneurs take their small businesses to the next level. ​Although Curls Beauty Brands is a household name in textured hair care today, it started as an unknown small business. In her television series, Mahisha Dellinger reflected on her own early days when there was no one in the space to guide her. The story of her rise to a widely successful enterprise is decorated with the testimonies of entrepreneurs whom she mentors. Mahisha has climbed the ranks of the beauty industry to become a self-made millionaire. Knowing the importance of lifting while you climb, the CURLS Founder and CEO are now turning her attention to helping the next generation of Black women do the same. ​Mahisha is passing on the valuable entrepreneurial lessons she's learned through the Black Women Making Millions Academy. She gives business advice to so many entrepreneurs and a deep insight into her struggles and accomplishments of being a successful businesswoman. ​

FFC Co-Founder & CEO Alison Wyatt is sitting down with entrepreneur/powerhouse Mahisha Dellinger as she shares the story of her road from poverty to next-level success and how she has turned that experience into an opportunity to help other Black women and girls in their own entrepreneurial efforts with Black Girls Making Millions Academy.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Shelia Lirio Marcelo is Co-Founder and CEO of Proof of Learn, a Web3 education platform with a mission to unlock accessible, high quality education across the world through blockchain and a learn-to-earn protocol. Prior to POL, Sheila founded Care.com in 2006 and served as Chairwoman and CEO until early 2020. With Sheila’s leadership, the company had year-over-year growth of over 100% prior to going public in early 2014. Today, Care.com is the world’s largest online destination for finding and managing family care– serving more than 35 million people across 20 countries. Sheila founded both POL and Care.com with a conviction that technology and innovation can address real world problems, and that digital marketplaces, whether between caregivers and families on Care.com or students and employers on POL, are powerful platforms for equality and change. 

FFC Co-Founder & CEO Alison Wyatt is sitting down with Sheila Lirio Marcelo as she shares how she lead a company to IPO, the importance of data when scaling a business, and how she’s leveraging technology to make high-quality education accessible in all corners of the globe.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

​The last couple of years have been challenging on so many levels, especially for mothers. Thankfully, there are people like HATCH Collection Founder, Ariane Goldman. Since its founding in 2011, HATCH Collection has grown into an array of different products. What began as a small capsule collection of chic maternity clothes now incorporates a non-toxic beauty line, an editorial platform, and a strong social community of over 160K women. ​Ariane has made it her mission to help mamas embrace and celebrate all stages of their pregnancies. To provide them with solutions, education, and information to take them through this wild and beautiful journey. HATCH’s mission isn’t just to sell solution-based clothes that make women feel good, but also to provide a support system and community to let women know they are not alone. ​

FFC Co-Founder & CEO Alison Wyatt is sitting down with mama and entrepreneur Ariane Goldman to discuss how HATCH is cultivating community, developing and expanding the brand, and how she’s finding ways to stand for something bigger.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

The status quo of investment in Black founders needs to change; having funding isn’t enough. Entrepreneurs of Color Need an Ecosystem of Resources. BrainTrust and BrainTrust Founders Studio CEO & founder Kendra Bracken-Ferguson is building the catalyst. Kendra Bracken-Ferguson’s establishment of BrainTrust, an innovative social, digital, and influencer marketing agency focused on growing brands from organic communities since 2016, recently launched BrainTrust Founders Studio. This membership-based community platform focuses on increasing inclusive economic opportunities for Black Beauty and Wellness Founders connecting them with resources, capital and strategic guidance to help them accelerate their businesses and build sustainable growth. 

FFC Co-Founder & CEO Alison Wyatt is sitting down with Kendra Bracken-Ferguson as she shares her journey, the BrainTrust Founders Studio initiative, and what she’s doing to support Black founders in growing their businesses.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

​A VC daughter of immigrants says she’s deliberately investing in diverse and intersectional entrepreneurs, who embody unique, winning qualities. Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital (a multi-stage venture capital firm with $4B under management), where she invests in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods. She is particularly interested in contrarian and underdog founders building ambitious companies in digital health and sits on the boards of companies including Maven Clinic, SteadyMD, Alife Health, H1, Adyn, AllStripes, and Shiru. 

FFC Co-Founder and CEO Alison Koplar Wyatt is sitting down with Lux Capital’s Deena Shakir to discuss her a-linear path to VC, championing women’s health startups, and how she’s quickly risen to become one of the few Arab-American women in VC.

Join the 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

​Lauren Kleinman is the Founder of Dreamday, a first-of-its-kind performance PR agency sitting at the intersection of affiliate marketing and commerce PR. Lauren has reinvented herself plenty of times during her career, eventually leaving a full-time, in-house job to start her own consultancy. With the goal of a healthier work-life balance and time for her own vision, she named it “Dreamday“, and it supports innovative direct-to-consumer companies. With Dreamday, Lauren’s pioneered the concept of performance PR, connecting the best brands, with the best publishers on a fully performance, affiliate only basis. 

FFC Co-Founder & CEO Alison Koplar Wyatt is sitting down with PR/Content Marketing visionary Lauren Kleinman, founder of Dreamday PR, and The Quality Edit as she shares tips on how to build your brand, expand brand awareness and build community, and more.

Join The 10th House: https://the10thhouse.femalefoundercollective.com/

Rachel is an early stage Investor and leading business development expert with a niche focus on creating opportunities between the start-up, venture and entertainment space. Rachel founded Muse Capital a seed stage strategic Venture Fund with her partner Assia Grazioli-Venier in November 2016. Muse Capital invests in consumer tech deals with a focus on underserved markets. Investment sectors include the future of women's health, motherhood, parenting, education, fintech, wellness, sustainability, entertainment, media & Web 3. Current investments include Robinhood, Therabody, BYJUs, Clarity Money, Motherly, Mahmee, Beekeepers Naturals, Oath Care & MIDI. Within Web 3 we are investors in Metalink, Supernova and FlickPlay. Originally from the UK, Rachel launched her corporate sales and business affairs career in brand research giving her early access to decision makers at Fortune 500 brands. In 2007 she was headhunted by the leading luxury lifestyle group Quintessentially. As Global Head of Corporate Sales, Rachel traveled the globe, building relationships with some of the world’s leading CEOs, celebrities, entrepreneurs and brand directors. Clients included Amex, Gucci Group, LVMH, Google, Armani, HSBC, British Airways, Jaguar, Ferrari, Chelsea Football Club etc. After meeting and being inspired by renowned artist manager and angel investor Troy Carter in 2012, Rachel moved from London to NYC and into the technology space in 2013 consulting young technology companies with their Business Development strategy and execution. She combines her global network with expert business development knowledge to build companies for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Founder of Unique Markets, Sonja Rasula is not only a foundress extraordinaire, she is a woman that pays it forward big time. She has launched not one but two businesses, runs a set of spaces, has a killer YouTube channel, a runaway hit of a Skillshare course, and a raw, funny, personal podcast titled “SOS with Sonja Rasula,” which gives tips, tools, and tricks for small business owners everywhere.

If you already sell online and have an audience, you're already ahead of most small businesses! The biggest opportunity now is to learn how to convert your community into customers, growing both sales and potential repeat business. In this talk, Sonja will cover how to engage with your community in the time of Covid-19, ways to create deeper brand loyalty, steps you can take to grow your following, and the best ways to communicate with your audience.

New York Times best-selling author, sought-after speaker, and podcast host Luvvie Ayaji Jones joins Co-Founder of FFC and Designer Rebecca Minkoff to break down the chains that hold us back from accomplishing our wildest dreams. Pulling from her latest book, "Professional Troublemaker: The Fear Fighter Manual," Luvvie will give real-world tools for how to "be too much," kick 'nice' aside for being 'kind' instead, and how to truly climb mountains that feel too tall.

Join Claire Wasserman - Founder & Author of Ladies Get Paid, Lauren Washington - Cofounder and CRO Fundr, and Zanade - Founder The Black Women's Business Collective for actionable takeaways.

You will leave this event with the tools you need to never accept less than what you're worth!

WHAT YOU'LL TAKE AWAY

• Learn Why Talking About Worth Or Equality Make Us Feel Ashamed Or Awkward & How to Remove that Shame
• ​Find the Courage to Be Your Own Advocate
• Advice On How To Advocate For Your Own Worth
• How To Change The Narrative Of Internal Thoughts, Emotions, And Beliefs That Make Us Second Guess Our Worth
• Step-by-Step Strategies On How to Be an Advocate (on social media, with investors, in the workplace, and in your community)
• Opportunity to network with the panelists

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

• Claire Wasserman is an educator, author, and founder of Ladies Get Paid, a platform, global community, and book, that teaches women to level up professionally and financially. She is also the host of the John Hancock podcast, “Friends Who Talk About Money”. Claire was chosen as one of Marquis Who's Who 75 Most Influential Financial Leaders of 2021, as well as Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 Most Powerful Women.
• Lauren Washington is the cofounder and CEO of Fundr, a platform that automates and removes bias from seed investing by creating portfolios of AI-vetted startups. Prior to this, Lauren cofounded Black Women Talk Tech, the largest membership organization and only conference for black women founders and KeepUp, an automated social listening platform. Her companies have won multiple awards including 43North and the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Award. She has been featured in The New York Times, TechCrunch, Elle, Inc and Black Enterprise and has been listed as a top female entrepreneur in CIO Magazine, Essence Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine.
• Zanade has over fifteen years industry experience in digital marketing and communications with a strong background in creative writing and social media management. In 2020, birthed out of the COVID-19 pandemic she built the Black Women's Business Collective to highlight Black and Afro-Latina owned companies. Zanade is also the architect of Indefinite Breakthrough, a learning membership community that focuses on the economic advancement of underinvested and underserved women in business where its mission is to educate, resource, and inspire women to grow their limitless potential through entrepreneurship.

We are over the moon to have such thought-leaders lead us in this conversation!

Julia Xu, Startup Business Advisor, Founder & CEO of Multitasky, illustrates steps to creating a growth strategy and financial model to attract ideal customers.

Founder of Finance Savvy CEO and Your Profit Playbook™ program, Marguerite Pressley Davis knows that in business, every dollar you make, spend, or re-invest has an impact on the future trajectory of your business.

Therefore, you must be intentional about each and every financial decision you make.

Intentionally profitable is what I refer to as being intentional about the money decisions you make so that you can be more confident that you can thrive financially from a “start-up” to a ”mature” business, no matter what stage you’re at right now.

Know Your Worth! Setting & Packaging Prices, Author of forthcoming, "We Should All Be Millionaires" and Founder & CEO of Hello7 - an advisory for teaching small business owners how to grow their businesses, draws out a framework for coming up with pricing that will convert, and packaging that will enable you to take your business to exactly where you want it to go.

No matter your budget, public relations is key to steady growth. In this workshop will help you understand what you need from a publicist, find the perfect PR team or editor, put together your first press kit, and create a pitch calendar using PR basics. It's all here!

What You'll Learn: nail down your brand story, understand what you need from a publicist, how to find and contact the right PR team or editor (depending on budget), put together your first press kit, learn evergreen pitching vs. trend pitching to create a pitch calendar, and PR basics

​Get exclusive access with CEO & Co-Founder of The Honey Pot Company, Beatrice Dixon, for a fireside chat unlike any other. Learn how to look at your brand as a consumer to pinpoint your ideal retailer, best retailer outreach strategies to get your foot in the door, create and evolve your product suite, and marketing tactics to get your products off the shelves.

​Prioritizing Branding as a Growth Strategy is a key to consistent and organic social media and revenue growth: Willow Hill will take you through how to manage to create a brand for the first time or re-branding. In this session, you will get a step-by-step process on how to manage a successful branding process, ways to avoid typical pitfalls that cause many brands to fail [sharing case studies].

Willow Hill, the Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder of Scout Lab, is an award-winning Creative Director, who has spent her entire career focused on building and scaling brands that shape culture.

​Co-Founder and CEO of The 10th House and Female Founder Collective, and investor to companies such as Hatch, Tia Clinic,  HeyMama, and Summersalt has a long-standing history of angel investing.

In her workshop, she will cover what startups need to do and know before getting started with angel investor outreach. This includes the basics of what language you need to know before networking. Ali will also help you understand how angel investors operate, how to find the right one, where to connect to angel investors - and what they expect from you in the process. Finally, she will dive into the psychology of an angel investor, so you're one step ahead in any funding meeting.

Bootstrapping, crowdfunding, venture capital, oh my!

Hear from seasoned founders on how they leveraged all forms of capital to grow and fuel empires.

More about the panelists:

• Jaime Schmidt is an entrepreneur and the founder of Schmidt’s Naturals, a global brand of natural personal care products that she started in her kitchen in Portland, Oregon in 2010. Today, Jaime is focusing her efforts on helping emerging entrepreneurs pursue their own dreams. Jaime is the co-founder of Color, an investment portfolio that supports modern makers through investments in Seed to Series A. Last September, Jaime released her first book entitled “Supermaker: Crafting Business on Your Own Terms,” a personalized guide on how to put your business on the map, turning your passion into profit.
• Hana Jung is the Founder and Chief Connector of Re:Boot Experiences, which hosts growth accelerators for impact-focused leaders, first time entrepreneurs, and multi-hyphenate creators to powerfully move through fear, upgrade their mindset, and intentionally build their vision. Re:Boot inner expeditions focus on deepening connection in 3 key areas: to inner power and intuition, to the higher purpose in life, and to a global community of compassionate seekers. She lives between Mexico, Nicaragua, Portugal, and Indonesia while running a business an living life to the fullest.
• Aike Ho is a Principal at ACME, where she focuses on digital health, fintech, and consumer investments. Aike’s path to healthcare investing was in large part shaped by a personal experience, a cancer diagnosis in her mid 20s. After a long year of navigating the complex US healthcare system, Aike developed a mission to better the healthcare ecosystem for patients and providers alike. Aike’s since then invested in game-changing digital health companies like Curology, Tia, Brightside, and The Pill Club. Beyond digital health, she’s also invested in other disruptive companies such as Savage x Fenty, Billie, Hyperscience, Bit.io, Forte, Braintrust, and Addi. Prior to her corporate detour, Aike was a serial entrepreneur and built companies. In 2010, Aike was named Emerging Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.

​Prior to joining First Round, Hayley Barna was Co-CEO at Birchbox, growing it from launch to over a million monthly subscribers, and raising $70M in venture capital in the process. As they took the business global, Hayley managed marketing, operations, strategy, and technology. So, let’s just say she's been through a few of the things you all face, and she sees you!

​She’s here to teach you her secrets of the trade. Here’s what you’ll learn:

• ​Discover when it’s the right time to raise capital
• ​Establish your ‘why’ to drive your raise
• ​Create a next-level fundraising strategy
• ​Determine what benchmarks are needed for your stage
• ​Layout venture capital outreach framework to get notices