For over 20 years I’ve been fortunate to help lead innovative companies and high impact projects that have contributed in forging a future that pushes humanity forward and promotes diversity and inclusion.
My entrepreneurial and investing activities have been focused on frontier technologies that push humanity forward including AI, biotech, and space. Along the way I have backed visionary entrepreneurs like Elon Musk (SpaceX I Tesla I Neuralink) and Amir Husain (Sparkcognition), and rockstar venture partners like Maryanna Saenko and Steve Jurveston (Future Ventures).
I also partnered with Dmitry Starson to make significant advancements in the state of the art of beamed-energy propulsion technology, which for long was the stuff of science fiction—until the dedication of our team of Caltech and MIT scientists and the results of our R&D program brought beamed energy propulsion onto the NASA Technology Roadmap in 2015. (more…)
I’m proud to serve as a board member of the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) which has come into being at a critical time for the US, as we are facing growing gaps in math proficiency that affect Americans, American jobs, American innovation and leadership, our national security and our future as a people and as a country. We lack a steady pipeline of domestic STEM talent. Women and minorities continue to be extremely underrepresented in STEM fields. Meanwhile, research has identified the early development of a positive self-image around mathematics as critical to future academic achievement. (more…)
I started my career in Finance in the late 1990s where there weren’t and still aren’t enough women. One way to encourage change is to chart the way, so in 2008, I took the leap and founded my own investment firm, and despite it being a challenging year for most in the market, we won numerous industry accolades. And one of my greatest satisfactions since has been to help and bring other women along to also chart their own path in Finance and other sectors where women are under-represented. Because women can do great everywhere! (more…)
No woman faced with a cancer diagnosis should give up on her dream to have children. No woman should have to choose between family and her career. Extend Fertility started as a business plan co-authored with HBS classmates and became the first company in the US focused exclusively on enabling women, including those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer treatment, to proactively preserve their fertility. (more…)
I believe the only path to bridging the connectivity divide is in deploying space-based broadband connectivity systems unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations as SpaceX and Lynk are building. As an early investor in both companies, I am incredibly excited that we finally will be in a position to address this issue at scale, which for me comes full circle, as my early work at the dawn of the internet, with my GII Junior Summit fellow participants, some 25 years ago, is what introduced me to folks like Nicholas Negroponte, Founder of the MIT Media Lab, who became my sponsor on my path to US citizenship.
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