Our mission for this 'Invite Only' dinner experience is to bring amazing founders and investors of Color together to develop meaningful relationships and have intimate conversations. Our selection committee will carefully curate this intimate community of attendees to help amplify this mission of alleviating barriers to wealth creation, empowering the sustainability of local ventures’, & encouraging diversification in the way investor’s deploy their capital.
Lisa Friedlander is an attorney, entrepreneur, and angel investor who practiced corporate and telecommunications law for 15+ years in both large and small firms. Lisa then joined Shulman Rogers to help launch the NEXT Platform and is an active mentor and speaker for a variety of entrepreneurship and investment groups while sitting on the advisory board for several startups. Lisa is also a founding member and on the Board of Directors for Citrine Angels, a women investing in women angel group in the DC Metro Area.
The eldest son of entrepreneurs, Haywood Perry serves as an investor for Mark Cuban Companies. Seeking to connect people to their purpose by investing in their ideas, Haywood began his career in venture by investing in student entrepreneurs through First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund. Haywood also supported SoftBank in launching their $100M Opportunity Fund, focused on Black, Latinx, and Native American founders.
Rachel is passionate about entrepreneurship and supporting entrepreneurs and founders. Four years ago, she became a Co-Organizer of DC Startup Week where under her leadership the community grew to over 10,000 entrepreneurs in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region.
Rachel is also the Founder and CEO of Upace. She speaks on the importance of community engagement and entrepreneurship entrepreneurship-focused conferences throughout the United States and Canada.