Our Team
Founding Team
Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Ph.D. is the Director of the VC Inclusion Lab and an Associate Professor of Management and member of the Organizations and Social Change faculty at the College of Management, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Prof. Ozkazanc-Pan is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty at The Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, Brown University.She is also a visiting scholar at The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Writing on Women at Brown University during 2018-2019. She is the current co-PDW chair and incoming co-chair for the Academy of Management Diversity and Inclusion Theme committee and past co-chair of the Critical Studies Management Division.
Her research interests include leading for diversity and inclusion in organizations and entrepreneurial ecosystems, examining the Future of Work and its impact on different people, organizations and societies and studying the intersections of culture, postcoloniality and transnationalism as they relate to changing nature of work and societies.
She started the VC Inclusion Lab with funds from a $260,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to examine how VC decision-making and networks impact the flow of resources in entrepreneurial ecosystems. The aim of this project is to identify levers for change towards more inclusive VC industry with partners including Crunchbase and Aleria Tech.
Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, PhD
Director
Heatherjean MacNeil
Associate Director
Researchers and Practitioners
Theresa Moore is President/Founder of T-Time Productions (www.t-timeproductions.com). T-Time develops and produces unique and diverse programming/content for various media platforms including television, film, online, mobile, tablets and gaming consoles. T-Time is currently producing a digital curricula library focused on providing more inclusive demographic representations and learning styles in the educational resources/materials used in schools, classrooms and other educational environments across the country. T-Time’s pilot product, available on iTunes, Amazon and for Chromebooks, is an educational app called “Third and Long” (TAL), based on T-Time’s groundbreaking documentary of the same name (www.thirdandlong.tv) . TAL examines the Civil Rights Movement and racial integration in the country through the prism of pro football. T-Time’s current project explores the Boston busing crisis through the prism of the Boston Celtics. Moore is also a Visiting Professor at Providence College, teaching in their MBA, Masters of Urban Education and School of Continuing Education programs and providing pedagogical and curricula training and support in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for the college’s faculty. She previously worked at the Highlander Institute, an educational non-profit, as their Director of Equity where she focused on issues of diversity, culturally relevant teaching/curriculum and equity in students’ educational experiences, assessments and opportunities. Previously, Moore was an executive at ESPN, The Coca-Cola Company and Chubb Insurance. She serves on the Harvard Board of Overseers Visiting Committee for Athletics and the Board of Directors for Trinity Repertory Company in Providence.
Theresa Moore
Contributing Entrepreneur
Courtney L. McCluney, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and a research contributor to the VC Inclusion Lab. Dr. McCluney’s research expertise are primarily in the areas of diversity, inclusion, and leadership in organizations and society. Her latest work on Black women’s entrepreneurship in Detroit MI has been supported by research grants from the Batten Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She previously worked as a research fellow at Catalyst, Inc. investigating women of color’s work experiences around the globe, and as an AmeriCorps fellow through New Sector Alliance–a mission driven consulting and leadership development firm for nonprofits. Dr. McCluney earned her BA in Psychology and Interpersonal/Organizational Communication at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and a PhD in Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Courtney L. McCluney, PhD
Assistant Professor
Emily is a research specialist in the Brown University Library. She is a partner in research, teaching & learning across the curriculum, with special focus on entrepreneurial information ecosystems.
Emily Ferrier
Research Specialist
Michael’s industry background is in new venture financing, start-ups, mergers and acquisitions, business development, marketing and sales. As Director of Stephens & Partners, a Los Angeles-based merchant bank, Michael originated, developed and deployed proprietary investment opportunities and pitched them to the principals at some of the nation’s leading private equity firms. In this role, Michael raised over $150 million in venture financing across a number of industries. His experiences in the start-up arena include marketing and venture financing with Shop2Give, the first cause-related eCommerce company and with Quantpost, a machine learning pioneer in the institutional derivatives market. Michael received his Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2006. He has an MBA with a finance concentration from the University of Southern California, a Master’s degree in Publishing and Media from New York University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies from Cornell University. Michael is the Poe Family Distinguished Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the University of Montana where teaches entrepreneurship, venture financing and business model innovation.
Michael Braun, PhD
Research Contributor
Paolo Gaudiano is CEO of Aleria, President of Aleria Research, and Executive Director of Quantitative Studies of Diversity and Inclusion(QSDI) at the City College of New York. These organizations combine Paolo’s decades of experience in business, technology and academia, to transform how people think about diversity and what they do about it, with the ultimate goal of making our society more inclusive and equitable. Paolo is a Forbes contributor on Diversity & Inclusion, and has written for and been interviewed by a number of other media outlets. He holds degrees in Applied Mathematics, Aerospace Engineering and Computational Neuroscience, and is the recipient of numerous awards including a Neuroscience Fellowship from the Sloan Foundation, a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, and a Moonshot House Fellowship from the Kravis Center for Social Impact. He was a tenured faculty member at Boston University and has also taught at Tufts University and CCNY.
Twitter: @icopaolo (individual) @aleriapbc (company)
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pgaudiano/
TEDx talk: https://aleria.tech/tedxfultonstreet
Paolo Gaudiano, PhD
Research Contributor
Johannes Lenhard is an ethnographer of venture capital and homelessness and currently teaching and researching at the University of Cambridge (as the Centre Coordinator of the Max Planck Centre Cambridge for the Study of Ethics, the Economy and Social Change). Having worked towards a better understanding of survival practices of homeless people in London and Paris for his PhD, he has spent the last four years researching the ethics of venture capital investors. His monograph ‘Making Better Lives – Hope, Freedom and Home-Making among people sleeping rough in Paris’ will be published later this year and so will his co-authored book ‘Better Venture’ focused DEI in tech and VC. He contributes regularly to journalistic outlets, such as Techcrunch, Prospect, Sifte
Johannes Lenhard
Research Contributor
Emily Wanderer is a recent graduate of Brown University’s Masters of Integrative Studies program which allowed her to blend management and organizational studies with social research on inequity in social entrepreneurial ecosystems. Emily and Professor Banu Ozkazanc-Pan were 2018-19 awardees of the Hazeltine Fellowship at Brown which supported nationwide research about equity in accelerators. Emily previously served as COO at Social Enterprise Greenhouse an accelerator for early-stage to mid-stage social impact businesses in Providence, RI where she helped build the organization from $200K budget to $1.2M. As part of the Brown Venture Capital, Inclusion Lab Emily serves as a research advisor helping the lab make research findings practical and accessible for implementation in Venture Capital firms nationwide.
Emily Wanderer
Research Advisor
Kara Miller, Director of Babson College’s WIN Lab Global, leads the WIN Growth Lab an accelerator program for early stage female founded businesses that are positioned for growth. Kara has spent the past decade developing and implementing programs designed to support entrepreneurs, in addition to serving as a speaker, judge and mentor for various entrepreneurial organizations. While working for the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Economic Development she launched Women Entrepreneurs Boston, a program designed to advance Boston’s women entrepreneurs and create a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem. In addition, she also dedicated 5 years to supporting Boston’s small businesses and creating vibrant neighborhood business districts as a Neighborhood Business Manager. Kara has served as a trustee for the Boston Main Streets Foundation and is a member of the Boston Women’s Workforce Council. She received her MBA from the University of New Hampshire.
Kara Miller
Research Advisor
Trista is a strategy and sustainable business expert, who’s passionate about changing businesses of all types for good. Strongly believing that sustainable business = smart business, she co-founded Tokyo-based Read the Air (https://www.readtheair.jp/) to shift mindsets, business strategies, and ways of working towards business models that put sustainability at the core. More recently Trista has been working on how to embed sustainability, including topics such as diversity and inclusion, into VC funds’ operations and investment activities. She’s worked across various sectors throughout her career including in digital media, healthcare, consumer products, and financial services. Trista is co-author of the recently released book “Leading Sustainably: The path to sustainable business and how the SDGs changed everything”. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and a BSE from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Trista Bridges
Contributing Advisor
Students (Previous)
Ozan Adiguzel is a senior concentrating in Statistics at Brown University. His experience focuses on statistical programming and interactive web app development. He hopes to fuse his keen interest in sports with his academic skills to pursue a career in sports analytics. Ozan believes in the power of Statistics to decrease inequalities and change behavior in the Venture Capital industry.
Ozan Adiguzel
Undergraduate Researcher
Idil Cakmur is a freshman at Brown University planning to study Economics and Sociology. During her high school years in Turkey, she did research on discrimination, especially in relation to gender and ethnicity. In this research, she focused on the historical context of discrimination as well as discriminatory rhetoric and equality of opportunity in education. Her research got her interested in the question of inclusion, and she is very excited to be a part of the VC Inclusion Lab and discover ways to address the problems in the industry.
Idil Cakmur
Undergraduate Researcher
Jessica is a sophomore concentrating in Applied Math-Computer Science. She’s interested in the macro-level interactions that drive the tech- and tech- adjacent worlds, and hopes to find a way for tech to shape the world for the better. In particular, her technical interests revolve around algorithmic fairness, natural language processing, and the applications thereof; more broadly, she’s curious about the impact of algorithms on human decisionmaking. When not coding, she’s probably reading or looking for her next cup of milk tea.
Jessica Dai
Undergraduate Researcher
Greyson Gerhard-Young
Undergraduate Researcher
Ben Gershuny is a sophomore at Brown University pursuing in Sc.B. in Computer Science, with a focus on Machine Learning and Data Science. He is a member of the Technology Team of the Brown Entrepreneurship Program, has interned as a software developer for a financial technology startup, and is currently running a startup of his own, hoping to make the internet a more fair space. He is passionate about social entrepreneurship and using data to understand and combat the complex social dimensions of inequality, and is very excited to be a quantitative researcher for the VC Inclusion Lab.
Ben Gershuny
Undergraduate Researcher
Madison is a junior at Brown University concentrating in Neuroscience. Within neuroscience, she is interested in neural systems, and how neuroscientific principles can be layered over society for a richer understanding of how things work. In particular, she hopes to focus on decision-making, implicit biases, and finding patterns in the VC world to gain clarity and push improvements in this space. She is so excited to be a part of this research and to break down the invisible barriers of venture capital!
Madison Hofert
Undergraduate Researcher
Olivia Simmons is a senior at Brown University concentrating in Economics. She was previously President of the Entrepreneurship Program, Director of the Women’s Empowerment Team of the Entrepreneurship Program, and an investor for Van Wickle Ventures. She has interned in the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, where she researched and drafted legislation to create mentorship programs for women and founders of color at all federally funded venture capital firms. She is fully committed to revealing the disparities within entrepreneurship/VC and developing informed strategies to eliminate barriers to entry for female-identifying founders, black founders, Latinx founders, LGBTQ+ founders, and founders of other historically underrepresented demographics.
Olivia Simmons
Undergraduate Researcher
Constance Gamache is currently a Master of Public Affairs candidate at Brown University, holding bachelor’s degrees in Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations as well as Public Policy. With experience in social consulting, organizational transformation, and public policy, she is most interested in how to create and sustain macro- and systems-level social change. As a Graduate Lead in the lab, Connie is most excited to foster collaboration among the research teams to spark innovative (and much needed!) thought leadership on practices of diversity and inclusion within the venture capital industry.
Constance Gamache, MPA
Research Lead
Maria Carolina Velasco, Sc.M.
Data Lead
Bridget Duru is a senior at Brown concentrating in Political Science and Gender studies, with a focus on economic justice— making this research role a perfect fit! She has worked in the government space, corporate social responsibility field, and in consulting. Within the VC Inclusion lab, she is on the interviews team and writes blogs on issues facing women and minorities in venture capital. She is very excited about the VC inclusion lab because she believes that the low capital allocated to women and minority founders discourages people from these groups to start businesses.
Bridget Duru
Undergraduate Researcher
Manny Gorotiza is a rising senior concentrating in Geology-Physics/Mathematics and German Studies. Before coming to Brown, he took a gap year in Brazil where he worked with a small social enterprise. During his first semester, he was a part of Brown’s Innovation Dojo, a fast paced 8-week introduction to entrepreneurship. In his second semester, he became a mentor for the program. In his third semester, he led it. He’s helped students get their ideas off the ground through mentorship, some have even gone on to win awards and funding. He’s worked as a researcher in Brown’s Rock Deformation Lab, studying high pressure cracking in micro-scale rock samples to create better models for predicting earthquakes. After winning a scholarship from the Taiwanese government to study Mandarin in Taipei, he took the fall semester off to pursue the opportunity. He’s excited to continue contributing to Brown’s entrepreneurial community as a PEIR and as the lead organizer for Startup@Brown as he gets ready to start a career in the business world.
Manny Gorotiza
Undergraduate Researcher
Josh is a Master’s student in Computer Science, focusing on Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence. He has researched in robotics and artificial intelligence throughout his undergraduate degree at Brown and hopes to continue in the future. He has long been interested in the Venture Capital business and Data Science and is very excited about applying his knowledge in the VC Inclusion lab.
Josh Roy
Data Team Lead
Melisa Sevim
Undergraduate Researcher