The Wave Tour

Dr Dana Kanze is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. Her research applies behavioural insights to understand sources of labour market inequality, spanning the areas of judgement and decision making, ethics, motivation science and entrepreneurship. Dr Kanze’s work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Academy of Management Journal and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, as well as in practitioner outlets such as the Harvard Business Review. Her research has been featured as a TED talk, as well as by BBC Radio, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Chicago Booth Review, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., MIT Sloan Management Review, Pitchbook, Scientific American, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, and Wharton Magazine. Dr Kanze started her career as an investment banker and strategic consultant for Citigroup and Winterberry Group, going on to co-found and run a venture-funded start-up before re-entering education. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia Business School.

Arlan Hamilton is a remarkable entrepreneur who built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started in 2015, Backstage has now invested nearly $10M into 130 startups led by underestimated founders and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, Inc., Entrepreneur, and Quartz.

Arlan made history by making the cover of Fast Company as the first Black woman noncelebrity to do so, and her new book “It’s About Damn Time” comes out on Penguin Random House’s business imprint Currency on May 5, 2020. She and Backstage Studio were also the subjects of Season 7 of the popular Gimlet Media podcast, StartUp. Arlan now hosts Your First Million, a weekly podcast featuring in-depth conversations with how the world’s most successful people finessed their first million dollars, customers, or downloads.

Arlan entered the venture investing world from an unconventional path. Before launching Backstage Capital, she authored the groundbreaking blog “Your Daily Lesbian Moment”, which she grew to a monthly readership of 50,000 fans worldwide. She has written for AOL, SuicideGirls, and Curve Magazine, and founded and published the internationally distributed indie magazine Interlude. Arlan was also a live music production professional, having served as a tour coordinator to numerous international artists including Toni Braxton, and Jason Derulo. Most recently she worked with Atlantic Records recording artist Janine.

In 2018, Arlan co-founded, along with Investment Partner Christie Pitts, Backstage Studio, a new venture studio designed to build products, services, and initiatives that serve the mission of eliminating underrepresentation in tech by empowering founders and their teams to succeed. Backstage is a fully remote team that has quickly scaled to 38 employees working together with an ever-expanding roster of world-class mentors and partners. Also in 2018, Backstage Studio announced the launch of four accelerator programs, in Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and London, UK. Called the Backstage Accelerator, this three month program is designed to give founders the support they need to reach their next critical milestone, through mentorship, investment capital, and access to resources and networks. Arlan was recently named on Fortune magazine’s 40 under 40 list, as well as, Vanity Fair magazine’s The 2018 New Establishment List.

Christina Stembel started Farmgirl Flowers in 2010 from her dining room in her San Francisco apartment. Over the past nine years she has bootstrapped the company to over 140 team members doing a projected $50M in annual revenue in 2020. The once one-woman operation now spans five distribution centers between Ecuador and California with a soon-to-be sixth location launching in Florida later this summer. Today, Farmgirl Flowers ships its signature burlap-wrapped bouquets, hand-tied vase arrangements, plants and gifts to recipients all over the contiguous United States.

Ita is a Partner at venture capital firm GingerBread Capital, which backs high growth female founded companies. Her mission is to engage, educate, and elevate the next generation of successful women business leaders and investors. In 2014, Ita founded Tigress Ventures, an advisory and consulting firm that tapped her considerable network to bring together visionary entrepreneurs with seasoned professionals to help women scale their businesses and hone their leadership skills.

Ita also served as Venture Partner at Plum Alley Investments, where she oversaw investment opportunities and pipeline for high-growth female-founded and gender-diverse startups. Previously, Ita held product management roles at TravelClick and American Express. She began her career at Goldman Sachs as an analyst in Credit Capital Markets and an institutional trader of preferred stock.

Ita holds an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and earned a Bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in Psychology, with a certificate in Finance, from Princeton University.

Terri Hanson Mead is the multi-award winning author of Piloting Your Life, President of Solutions2Projects, LLC, Managing Partner of Class Bravo Ventures, and an advocate for women through all of her platforms including her YouTube channel and blog. As an angel investor, Terri invests in startups that have products or services that expand the power and influence of women. Terri is based in Redwood City, CA where she is also the mother of two teenagers and occasionally reluctant wife to Zeke, her husband of nearly 25 years. In her spare time, Terri loves to cook, play tennis, and loves to fly helicopters around the San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Maha spots technology trends early and partners closely with her companies to drive growth and exits. She focuses on e-commerce and enterprise / cloud, and was one of the first investors to recognize the potential of social gaming. She was also the first investor in The RealReal (REAL) and sat on the company’s board through the 2019 IPO. A champion of women in technology, Maha is passionate about funding and raising the profiles of female entrepreneurs and is a founding member of All Raise. She is also a trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Maha holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.