Introducing the Inaugural Venture Fellows Class

As venture capitalists, we are often asked: “How can I get into venture?” The answer is unclear and frankly, uncomfortable. It is no secret that the venture capital industry lacks a transparent, meritocratic entry point.

As a result, VC has become largely homogenous. Women and BIPOC are dramatically underrepresented in venture capital, where just 12% of VCs are women, 1% are Latinx, and 3% are Black. Diversity across other vectors is lacking as well, including geography, education, sexual orientation, life experiences, and perspectives.

Disproportionate representation is bad business — diverse founding teams generate stronger financial outcomes (30% higher multiples on invested capital), and diverse investing teams are more likely to invest in those diverse founders.

Mindful of the issue of access, the Susa team has kicked around ideas about how to open more doors for aspiring investors for years. This spring, as a renewed social justice movement unfolded, we felt an urgency to take action, and the Venture Fellows Program was born.

In late September, we selected 13 incredible fellows from a pool of nearly 1,000 candidates to have a seat at Susa’s table. We could not be more excited to welcome aboard the newest members of the Susa Family: Abhijeet Patra, Caitlin Collins, Derick En’Wezoh, Elliott Mack, Emma Qian, Iyore Olaye, John Morrison, Kalvin Karsito Wang, Kam Phillips-Sadler, Lajhem Cambridge, Manjot Singh Pal, Megan Ruan, and Riley Finch.

The class includes a doctor, a non-profit founder, a scientist, and a champion sailor, among many other backgrounds and experiences, and we could not be more excited to see what they all do together.

Over the next six months, Venture Fellows will join Susa partners in pitch meetings and participate in the deal process, tap into an incredible network of program partners from firms including Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark, and Sequoia (see more in our original announcement), and join us for bi-weekly curriculum sessions.

This is our first class, so we will be experimenting with how to make the Venture Fellows Program better over time. Our greatest hope is that Fellows learn whether or not venture might be the right path for them, and some go on to be hired by funds after their time with Susa. We also plan to build out a “Venture Fellows Program Playbook” by the end of the program, which we’ll open source so that other VCs can join us in expanding access to the industry. We hope many do.

Abhijeet Patra

Abhijeet has worked on technologies at the interface of life sciences and engineering for the last 8 years. Some of the technologies he built during his graduate studies at the National University of Singapore are now being commercialized by startups. He is drawn to anything which looks like science fiction but is just, in fact, science. He loves to study businesses built around deep tech offerings. He is very interested in figuring out routes to productization and using technology refinement as a growing moat for startups.

Cait Collins

Cait was most recently COO at Mango Health (sold to TrialCard in Sept. 2019). She is a startup executive with depth in operations and consumer experience and a background in product development, mobile marketing, and scaling & automating systems. Cait is driven to have an impact on people’s lives by building teams who are happy, healthy, and productive and by creating products and services that improve people’s health and well-being. Outside of work, her goals are to get a good night’s sleep and to hike every mile of Tilden Park with her wife, 2 sons, and 2 dogs (2 is her lucky number).

Derick En’Wezoh, MD, MBA

Derick is an entrepreneurial physician specializing in the area where clinical medicine, business, and politics overlap. Currently, Derick is the VP of Growth at Viz.ai where he is leveraging artificial intelligence to identify and triage acute medical conditions. Before Viz.ai, he was a surgical resident at Stanford Hospital. He completed his MD at Harvard and MBA at Stanford.

Elliott Mack

Elliott’s career experience spans across banking, marketing, and technology. As a banker in JPMorgan’s Global Funds Group, he managed a portfolio of alternative investment firms, and also led institutional partnerships at Swivl, a Silicon Valley based education technology startup. An early employee at OneTeam Partners, Elliott currently leads strategic partnerships and sits on the OneTeam Ventures diligence committee. Elliott is a graduate of William & Mary, where he was captain of the Tribe football team, and Georgetown, where he received the Tropaia Award for Outstanding Student Achievement. Outside of work, Elliott enjoys spending time with his close-knit family and friends.

Emma Qian

Emma is an undergraduate at Caltech studying computer science. She has experience in research engineering from her time at DeepMind and Facebook AI Research, and she has worked in quantitative research at a top proprietary trading firm. Emma is a member of the first undergraduate team to win the Data Open, the largest university-level data science competition in the world. At Caltech, Emma helped start the Data Science Organization and serves as the Vice President at Society of Women Engineers. In her spare time, Emma enjoys winter sports and poker, previously winning the annual poker tournament at Caltech.

Iyore N Olaye

Iyore is a product leader at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. She thrives at the forefront of disruption, directing B2C & B2B product launches and strategies in a range of industries: consumer technology, IoT, CPG, micro-mobility, e-commerce, and marketplaces. Currently, at Bird, Iyore builds products to solve core growth, reliability, and operations problems crucial to the future of cities and transportation. Prior to Bird, Iyore headed up R&D at Walker & Company Brands (acquired) and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2018. Iyore earned a BS from Cornell.

John Morrison

John currently works as a Strategic Partnerships Lead at Affirm, where he builds relationships with leading e-commerce and payments platforms. Prior to Affirm, he worked in partnerships at Lively, an HSA provider (YC, W17), and in strategy at LendingClub. Previously, John also worked in investigative journalism, nonprofit media, hospitality, and physical commodities trading. He’s a native of San Francisco and a graduate of Boston College and the London School of Economics. Outside of work, he’s active in rock climbing, martial arts, kettlebells, and cycling. John also advocates for underrepresented and marginalized communities through Out in Tech (LGBTQ+) and Techqueria (Latinx).

Kalvin Karsito Wang

Kalvin was born in Jakarta and lived in Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan before moving to the U.S. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science, he started his career on the engineering side, working as a Software Engineer at various start-ups of different stages before transitioning to Product Management — where he’s currently a Growth PM at Noom. Outside of work, Kalvin enjoys marrying his love for Soccer and Maths to delve into sports analytics. He also enjoys exploring new foods and restaurants in whatever city he finds himself in.

Kam Phillips-Sadler

Kam founded Dream Delivered, a subscription box service for career exploration and Dream Outside the Box, an app connecting college students with PK-5th graders for imaginative career experiences. Over the last decade, DOTB has scaled to 16 chapters nationwide & been recognized by President Obama. Kam had the honor of serving as the University of Missouri Commencement Speaker in 2019 and her TED talk, “How Mentorship Can Change the World” has garnered global recognition. She is a Venture Associate at The Fund & serves as co-Director of The Black New Venture Competition at Harvard Business School where she is an MBA candidate.

Lajhem Cambridge, MS, MBA

Lajhem is a discoverer at heart, with a love for the scientific method. After pivoting away from bench research, she pursued a career in operational and strategic clinical research management roles at Memorial Sloan Kettering and UCSF. Currently, she is living and breathing healthcare data at Verana Health. Lajhem holds a BA in Molecular Biology with a minor in Neuroscience from Princeton University, as well as an MS in Human Nutrition and Metabolic Biology from Columbia University and most recently received her MBA from Wharton. She is passionate about health equity and doing work that contributes to the social good.

Manji Pal

Manji was raised in India and moved to the US to study computer science and engineering at UW-Madison. During an internship with Intuit, Manji learned how much he loved spending time with customers and went on to join Microsoft as a Product Manager, where he worked on communications (Outlook) and collaboration apps (Wunderlist/To-Do & OneNote), used by millions worldwide. Currently, Manji is Product Manager at Houzz (Sequoia-backed). His mission in life is to create an environment that helps others be successful, which is what he wants to apply by investing in founders and helping their companies succeed.

Megan Ruan

Megan is an entrepreneur, investor, and advocate based in New York City. Born and raised in the Midwest, she is passionate about building communities in which women and minorities have equal access. Currently, Megan is an investment analyst at the Johnson Company, the family office for Robert Wood Johnson IV, US Ambassador to the UK. In addition, Megan is also a Director at Gold House, the nation’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing Asian American success and representation, where she leads founder and investor initiatives, including the Gold Rush accelerator. Megan earned dual degrees from Yale in Economics and Psychology.

Riley Finch

Riley is an Accounting Associate at Clearbanc, a financial technology firm based in Toronto Canada, where he focuses on helping founders properly account for new funding, and optimizing their business. Prior to Clearbanc, he spent 4 years campaigning for the Rio 2016 games on the Canadian National Sailing Team. Outside of work — he is an avid cyclist, sailor, and skier.