Four years ago, during the tumultuous year of 2020, like many others I felt moved to make a public statement about VentureWell’s commitment to equity and inclusive innovation. Each year since, I have followed up with a report on our progress, learnings, and new and ongoing commitments for the coming year.
These reflections have become a way to hold ourselves, across VentureWell, accountable to our own ambitions around increasing access to innovation and entrepreneurship. They are also a natural extension of VentureWell’s nearly 30-year history of working to drive inclusive innovation with positive impacts for people and the planet.
At VentureWell, we believe that innovators can create meaningful change in the world. Our work is about removing barriers and offering foundational support—training, connections, funding—that allows determined, inventive people from any background to use their abilities and insights to solve significant problems.
In order to address the world’s most challenging problems, we need to bring out the best in humanity, and we need to do it at scale. The more people we can reach—especially those who have historically been excluded from innovation & entrepreneurship (I&E)—the more creativity and determination we set loose on the intractable problems that reduce our prosperity, health, and well-being and threaten our future.
At VentureWell, we are pioneering the change we want to see in our world. To do this, we measure external impacts and hold ourselves accountable along three key pathways: driving institutional change, training and funding diverse innovators, and supporting the creation and commercialization of innovations that make the world a better and more equitable place for everyone. We also look at how we are shifting our internal work to be more systemically inclusive.
Driving Institutional Change
Here are some of the ways we and our partners are driving institutional and systemic change toward greater equity, fostering resilience and helping systems adapt to new social, economic, and environmental challenges.
Sharing knowledge at OPEN
At our OPEN 2024 conference, 355 higher education faculty, researchers, staff, administrators, and leaders in the STEM fields convened to share research, best practices, and future-looking models and frameworks, with 45% of attendees hailing from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). Many of the sessions touched on the importance of equity and inclusion, highlighting the need to create environments where not only are diverse voices heard but belonging is actively fostered for faculty, staff, and students.
Just prior to OPEN, we also hosted the National Science Foundation (NSF) INCLUDES sponsored workshop, “Strategies To Transform STEM I&E by Centering DEI.” Educators, inclusion experts, and industry leaders shared their ideas and solutions for how to step outside of existing frameworks and imagine solutions free from current and historical constraints.
Expanding our influence
The newly-released National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation from the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Department of Commerce features VentureWell offerings as resources and exemplars, including grants for faculty, staff, and students; entrepreneurship training for emerging student ventures; and our robust network, which provides support and community to members across the innovation and entrepreneurship spectrum.
Catalyzing inclusive investing
Diverse angel investors are more likely to invest in diverse founders, which in turn leads to the development of products and services that cater to a broader range of needs and preferences. This inclusivity drives innovation that can benefit society as a whole. In partnership with TechTown Detroit, we have supported 150 new angel investors through the Catalyst Angel Program. In this program, women, Black or Latinx investors, founders, executives, and high-net-worth individuals in the Great Lakes region gain knowledge on how to become angel investors. To date, 15 of these angels have served as mentors in our Aspire investor engagement program.
Helping MSIs win government contracts
As many MSIs increase their engagement in cutting-edge research, we are helping them build national networks and access federal research contracts. This summer we have launched a four-part webinar series specifically designed to support MSIs in creating a plan of action to illustrate their increased level of contract-readiness through the American-Made MSI Contract Readiness Prize. We are also prioritizing partnership-building with MSIs as part of our recruitment efforts for the Investor Catalyst Hub.
Educating and Funding Diverse Innovators
We aspire to provide a path forward for any person, from any background, who wants to use science and technology to make the world a better place.
Growing a diverse pipeline for the E-Team Program
We are developing our network to intentionally create inviting and welcoming pathways for student STEM entrepreneurs from every background. We have learned that partnerships are a crucial tool for expanding and diversifying the pipeline into our E-Team Program. Our Equity Ecosystem Partner Network drives innovation in STEM by ensuring equitable access to resources for underserved communities and industries. This year, of the teams in our E-Team Program, 64% included a member who identifies as a woman, while 31% had members who identify as Black, Latinx, or Indigenous. The E-Teams Program emphasizes the importance of inclusion and the benefits of diversity in I&E through storytelling sessions and other elements in the curriculum.
Tracking the fundraising success of aspire participants
We recently completed an analysis of the impact of our seed-stage investor engagement program, Aspire, on participants from 2015 to 2022. The results were encouraging: This program is helping to close the fundraising gap among women and BIPOC founders at the seed stage. Post-program, startups with women founders raised close to equal funding as startups with male founders across all funding types. Startups with BIPOC founders raised Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) / Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding at a greater rate compared with those with non-BIPOC founders. More than half of Aspire startups were led by at least one woman, while 39% of Aspire startups were led by at least one BIPOC founder. A comprehensive report publishing our findings will be available in the fall of 2024.
Providing the ACCEL curriculum
We continue to support the Advancing Climatetech and Clean Energy Leaders Program (ACCEL), an accelerator for BIPOC-led climatetech startups, led by our partners Greentown Labs, the largest climatetech accelerator in North America; and Browning the Green Space, a coalition dedicated to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in clean energy. Nearly 80 startups applied for the cohort this year, and seven highly compelling teams were selected. We created the curriculum for ACCEL, based on our learnings from the VentureWell Accelerator, to actively engage and support individuals from historically underrepresented groups.
Training underrepresented entrepreneurs in I-Corps™
We see a consistent upward trend in participation from underrepresented groups in the I-Corps™ training program, funded by the NSF and implemented by VentureWell, increasing from 10% in 2011 to 33% in 2021. I-Corps™ as a whole is intentionally broadening access to the program, offering fully virtual cohorts and expanding from major research universities to a much wider array of higher education institutions, which opens access to the program to many more individuals.
Innovation For An Equitable World
When we partner with foundations and government agencies, our impact together greatly exceeds what any organization could accomplish alone.
Sprinting for women’s health
The Investor Catalyst Hub, managed by VentureWell as part of our work with ARPA-H, supported the ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health. ARPA-H committed $100 million to address critical unmet challenges in women’s health across all demographics, geographies, and socioeconomic statuses, championing transformative innovations and tackling health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women from every walk of life. A substantial response and number of submissions were received; awards will be announced in the fall.
Improving access to diagnostic tests
Our work as part of the Independent Test Assessment Program (ITAP), an extension of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx®) initiative from the National Institutes for Health (NIH), was instrumental in developing and commercializing COVID-19 tests. From 2020 to 2023, these initiatives produced over 7.8 billion COVID-19 tests. The tests produced have been essential to at-home diagnosis of COVID-19 broadly across the U.S.
Serving as a power connector for climate justice
We are proud to serve as a Power Connector of the Department of Energy’s American-Made Solar Prize—a competition enabling the rapid development of innovative solar solutions by entrepreneur teams. In our role as the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Contest Power Connector for Round 7, we provide specific application support to teams competing for bonus cash prizes for solutions that advance solar in underserved communities. For Round 8, we have also been contracted to share our learnings and experiences from previous rounds by creating the JEDI Contest–specific learning module. Encolor Consulting, the JEDI Contest Power Connector for Round 8, will join us for a joint information session promoting the contest to a broad audience of solar innovators.
Increasing Equity Within VentureWell
In addition to increasing equity in our outward-facing work, we have intentionally created a team that represents a diversity of geographies, perspectives, and lived experiences.
Employing diverse staff
A diverse team with diverse perspectives is foundational to meeting our goals. VentureWell team members hail from 34 states. Among our team, 76% identify as women, 34% identify as BIPOC, and 17% identify as having a disability. Across director-level leadership, 36% identify as BIPOC and 84% identify as women; at our executive team level, 25% identify as BIPOC and 62% identify as women.
Updating DEI to DEIA
This year, we updated our internal DEI definitions to include accessibility: DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility). By formalizing an organization-wide definition of DEIA, we are underscoring our commitment to providing universal access not only in our workplace, but in our programming, events, and resources. We also updated several policies to expand the benefits provided to staff in caregiving roles, and those dealing with their own or a family member’s serious illness or condition.
Educating ourselves about inclusive partnerships
Our MSI Partnership Webinar Series, offered in winter of 2024, helped define our partnership strategy using an internal toolkit—created in partnership with Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions—that provides our teams with a practical roadmap for building successful and mutually beneficial partnerships with MSIs. This series featured thought leaders in the MSI space and was made available to all VentureWell staff.
Implementing inclusive decision-making
We are implementing the Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, and Decide (RAPID) process for decision-making as an equity tool. When the roles related to decision-making are clear and defined, it mitigates the influence of power dynamics in the end result and improves transparency.
Looking Forward
We are by nature forward-looking optimists: We believe that the future can be better than the present. This is why we innovate.
In the years since I started writing these letters, I have seen change for the better—the creation of over seven billion COVID-19 tests, the inclusion of tens of thousands of student and emerging entrepreneurs innovating for a better future, and the growth of climate resilience technologies. These all give me hope and strength when I look at the problems remaining to be solved.
At VentureWell, we believe in the power of the innovators and entrepreneurs we work with every day, both inside and outside of our organization, to make the world a better, more secure, and healthy place. We believe a better future is possible because we see creativity and hard work paying off as we work together, taking action for equity.