Mama Shah, Chief of the #MamaBADAXXES.
A little story about the most important woman in my life in honor of International Women’s Day.
As many of you know, we take a lot of pride at Brand Foundry Ventures in investing in a LOT of badass brilliant female founders. Out of our 19 businesses (as of 3/8/17), 10 have at least 1 lady at the helm and Andrew and I will continue to support those in our portfolio as well as the many, many awesome women running and handling companies across the startup ecosystem.
It’s not about filling out a fucking diversity checklist. It’s lookiing to help great humans in any way we can.
That said, a lot of people ask me what’s the biggest reason why I advocate for women founders. I thought to finally answer this question, especially on International Women’s Day:
Because I was raised by the biggest badass of a woman I know: my mom.
From working since she was 16 to support her family of 6 sisters to pursuing her studies as her family moved from India to Uganda and then to New York City, she excelled in her classes (with a little Beegees celebrity crush along the way) and worked her way to taking night school classes at Rutgers and Manhattan College. The bubbly, warm, kinda, never complaining woman who raised me and my brother graduated with a degree in Nuclear Medicine and ended up working in the Radiology Department at what was St. Vincent’s Hospital in NYC.
One day at the house I grew up in (in NJ), my brother and I were going through some books in the bookshelf and found these enormous tomes on Nuclear Physics, Radiology, Chemistry, and the like. My mom popped in and cheerfully said, “oh, you found my old textbooks!” as she slipped away. My brother and I, both Biomedical Engineering majors in college, just loved her epic mic drop of a moment.
We are blessed to have amazing women and moms in our lives, and I would love to learn more about those women who raised you to be great humans. Write in the comments below with the tag #MamaBADAXXES, because on this special day (and really every day), we should ALWAYS honor the ladies who believed in us, as I know many of the female founders I know well had some BAMFs behind them!
