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This event took place on February 19th, 2022. You can find a recording of the event on our YouTube Channel.

Harvard Globalwe
Annual student/Alumni Roundtable

Invest in Her:
Women Creating Impact Through Entrepreneurship 


Join Harvard GlobalWE on Feburary 19th 

Harvard GlobalWE is dedicated to the empowerment of women through education, dialogue and connection among individuals working for women's rights and freedoms worldwide.

Every year we organize a Roundtable discussion to encourage dialogue on pertinent topics affecting women worldwide and to bring together our student and alumni communities.

As women entrepreneurs represent about one in three growth-oriented entrepreneurs active in the world today; and women’s entrepreneurship is a fundamental promoting factor of inclusive economic growth in developing economies, this year our Roundtable topic is

“Invest in Her: Women Creating Impact Through Entrepreneurship."

This discussion will involve women entrepreneurs as well as women investors and their insights on how to promote and continue this growth

Saturday, February 19, 2022, 10 am EST, via Zoom

Register

Register: Please register below to receive the zoom details. 

                                                                                                                                 

Please register here                                      

About our Speakers
 
Panel 1: Founders 
 
Rebekah Bastian
CEO and Co-Founder at OwnTrail, Author of Blaze Your Own Trail, Forbes Contributor
Rebekah Bastian is an entrepreneur, award-winning writer, artist, tech executive, mentor, wife, mother and aerial acrobat. She is the CEO & Co-founder of OwnTrail and was previously vice president of product and vice president of community and culture at Zillow. Rebekah is the author of Blaze Your Own Trail, is a contributor to Forbes and an investor and advisor to AuthenTech companies.

 
 
Serena Fan
Founder + Executive Director at Hong Kong Children's Discovery Museum 

Serena Fan founded Hong Kong Children's Discovery Museum (HKCDM), the first of its kind in the city, which aims to promote child-led, learning through play experiences for families with children 10 years old and under. Since opening in the fall of 2018, HKCDM has welcomed more than 82,000 visitors and provided over 240 school visits. HKCDM is a member of the Association of Children's Museums. 

 

Serena is an experienced and passionate early childhood educator who believes that young children should be provided ample time, space, and opportunities to develop their innate curiosities. Prior to HKCDM, her professional experiences were in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, working in classroom settings, education management, and providing educational consultations to families. Serena was awarded as a Gen.T Leader of Tomorrow for shaping Asia’s future in 2020. 

 

Serena holds a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Bachelor of Child Development and International Relations from Tufts University. She is also a licensed teacher in Massachusetts, USA.
 

Tanya Menendez
Co-Founder and CEO, Snowball Wealth 

Tanya Menendez is the Co-Founder and CEO of Snowball Wealth, a platform that provides a free student loan plan and helps users save an average of $6K. Snowball Wealth's mission is to empower people to make financial progress and the platform also provides free resources on debt, saving, and investing. Before Snowball, Menendez co-founded Maker’s Row, an online marketplace used by over 200K businesses. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she worked at Goldman Sachs and Google. Menendez has been included in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List and named one of People en Español’s Most Powerful Latinas, and PopMechanic’s 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing the American Dream.


 
 
Aarti Gupta, Moderator
CIO, DBR Ventures, National Head FICCI FLO Startup Cell
Dr Aarti Gupta belongs to the promoter family of the Jagran group, a business house with interests spanning across media & communications, education, real estate and hosiery exports. Dr Gupta heads the investment strategy for the family office and is the Chief Investment Officer at DBR Ventures, an angel investing entity that invests in smart and transformative early-stage start-ups. She is an investor on India’s first reality start-up funding TV Show, Horses Stable. Named amongst the 22 Top Women Investors in the country by Inc42, she looks for companies with innovative and transformative solutions to problems that exist on a larger scale. 
 
She is an immediate past Chairperson for FICCI FLO Kanpur and is currently serving as the National Head for FICCI FLO Start-ups, an ecosystem for women founders and funders, where she has been instrumental in bringing forward pertinent issues related to the growth of women entrepreneurs both at the state and national levels.
 
Dr Gupta holds a PhD in Economics from IIT, Kanpur, a post-graduate diploma in business studies from Harvard University, and a Master’s degree in Economics from Northeastern University. Further, she is on the board of Harvard Alumni for Global Women’s Empowerment, and on the board as the Advisor for Women’s Entrepreneurial Committee for Merchant Chamber of UP.
 
Panel 2: Entrepreneurs
 

Ebru Dorman
Non-Executive Director and Investor

Ebru Dorman has been Chairwoman and Director since 2015 on a diverse range of boards from large corporates to technology companies and NGOs. She has over 25 years of executive experience in Europe and Asia with leading companies such as McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Orange, Maxis and MV Holding.  She currently holds Non-Executive Board Member roles at HSBC Bank Turkey, Borusan Logistics and Saran Group.

 

Ebru has been in Venture Capital since 2000, first as an entrepreneur then at Morgan Stanley Strategic Ventures and Orange Ventures, investing across Europe and US. During 2015-2000, she's been Chairwoman of StartersHub, a seed stage fund and accelerator. Ebru is an angel investor in Wellness, Biotech, Industry 4.0, Fintech and Digital Life startups under the umbrella of Dorman Capital. She is a long term mentor to entrepreneurs of all ages; social impact, wellbeing and personal growth enthusiast.

 

Ebru has an MBA from Harvard Business School (’99) and MSc in Industrial Engineering from UC Berkeley (’95). 


Linda Greub
Managing Partner, Avestria Ventures

Over 30+ years, Linda has invested in public and private life science companies as an institutional investor, a corporate M&A executive, a hedge fund analyst, and a private venture investor; she's held roles at companies including Essex Investment Management, Banc of America Securities, Novartis Diagnostics, Applied Biosystems (sold to Life Technologies Corp.) as well as at venture-backed life science companies such as VitaPath Genetics, Singulex, Raindance Technologies (sold to Bio-Rad), and Linkage Biosciences (sold to Thermo Fisher). Her areas of expertise includes finance, operations, and mergers and acquisitions and, within the life sciences specifically, diagnostics, genomics, healthcare services, and life science tools. In 2019, she co-founded Avestria Ventures, which invests in early-stage women's health and female-led life science ventures; Avestria closed its first fund in June 2021 after the acquisition of Alydia by Organon and Uqora by Pharmavite.  


Sara Crown Star 

Startup Business Advisor; President, SCS Innovations

Sara Crown Star is an accomplished Startup Business Advisor with expertise in vetting ideas, creating roadmaps, and building connections for viable products and services with social impact. As President of SCS Innovations, Sara backs entrepreneurs to advance new healthcare products, new technologies and higher education initiatives. After graduating from Georgetown Law, Sara practiced law for a number of years in NYC and Chicago.  She then served on ten not-for profit boards over 25 years focusing on governance, strategy, operations and programming.  In recent years, Sara pivoted into the entrepreneurial world as an angel investor and serving on the boards of Thinx, a feminine hygiene company, Advanced Absorbent Technologies, an early stage consumer products company, and 1871, Chicago’s entrepreneurial hub.  In addition, Sara serves as a judge for the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge, and recently graduated with an Executive MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Along the way, Sara launched the Business Skills Program at Georgetown University Law Center, the Star Fellows Cantorial Program at Hebrew Union College and the Bazelon Fellowship at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. Sara enjoys being creative, being a connector and is delighted to be a panelist for Harvard GlobalWE.

 
 
Hannah Frazer, Moderator
 

Event Details 

Date: Saturday, February 19, 2022
Time: 10 am EST

Location: Virtual (online) event. Meeting info will be in your registration confirmation email. Click here to Register.
Cost: FREE for Harvard College students, Harvard graduate students, alumni, affiliates, staff & guests

Other Details 

Questions: If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact us at info@harvardglobalwe.org
 
Views: Harvard Alumni For Global Women's Empowerment Harvard GlobalWE is a shared interest group of the Harvard Alumni Association. We are dedicated to the empowerment of women through education, dialogue and connection among individuals working for women's rights and freedoms worldwide. Harvard GlobalWE does not advocate a specific ideology or political or cultural agenda. We are an inclusive organization with membership open to and comprising all genders.
 
While membership is free, Harvard GlobalWE accepts donations from members to support its programs and initiatives. To become a member of Harvard GlobalWE, please JoinWE. To learn more, please visit our website and our Facebook group.
 
The views expressed during our events are solely those of the speaker(s) and participating audience and do not imply endorsement by Harvard GlobalWE and/or Harvard University.