I'm an investor, entrepreneur, and technologist with a 30-year track record for creating and scaling non-profit and for-profit organizations that improve millions of lives. My career has been driven by the belief that a company is only as good as the people who power it.

As the sole founder of Pathbrite, I conceived and developed the first cloud-based digital portfolio platform. With Stanford University as my first customer, I raised $12 million in venture capital and launched the company in 2012. Three years later, I sold it to Cengage Learning. Today, Pathbrite is used by hundreds of colleges and universities, with 6 million active users. For many years, I held the dual distinction of being the only Black female founder to have raised the most venture capital and the one to have orchestrated the best exit.

In addition to Pathbrite, I have founded or co-founded SFWorks (delivered job-skills training to women on welfare), EARN (helped tens of thousands of people acquire assets), The Hiles Group (managed philanthropic and investment portfolios worth more than $2 billion), and Calbright College, a (statewide online college that teaches job competencies and gets people hired into tech jobs). I have advised numerous startups including Pivotal Ventures, Melinda Gates’s investment firm. I also served as deputy director of post-secondary success solutions for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where I made direct investments, invested in emerging funds, and made over $300 million in grants. In that role, I was asked to advance the foundation’s equity agenda.

Today, I am the Managing Partner of Black Ops Ventures, a venture capital fund investing 100% in black founders of tech companies. I was included in the 2021 Forbes 50 Over 50: Impact list.

I serve on the boards of Udemy, (a multibillion-dollar online education giant), OppZo (a company that lends money to small and mid-sized businesses), Luminary Media (podcast company), and Made in Africa, (an African textile business that began as a woman-owned sewing cooperative in Liberia). I also serve on the boards of two non-profit organizations: Black Girls Code and NextGen Directors’ Academy. Previously, I served as communications director for Gavin Newsom, ran rapid response media for the first Clinton/Gore campaign, and advised the Obama for America campaign.

I was born in Los Angeles, California and lived in the Bay Area for 35 years. Now, my partner and I live in Miami, Florida.