Lauren Washington, 2022 Fund Operations Fellow

Lauren is the cofounder and CEO of Fundr, a platform that uses data and AI to empower decision-making in seed investing.

Prior to this, Lauren cofounded Black Women Talk Tech, the largest membership organization and only conference for black women founders and KeepUp, an automated social listening platform. Her companies have won multiple awards including 43North, the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Award and the Austin Inno Fire Award. She has been featured in The New York Times, TechCrunch, Elle, Inc and Fortune and has been listed as a top entrepreneur in CIO Magazine, Essence Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and the ForbesNEXT1000 list.

Lauren started her career as a special education teacher with Teach for America and went on to develop marketing and data strategy for over 100 global companies at InStyle Magazine, TVGuide and Omnicom Group. She has her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. She is on the board of advisors for SXSW Pitch, Athena and New Profit’s Future of Work Fund.