Bonnie Oliva-Porter Email and Phone Number

A boutique consulting firm helping mission-driven businesses, founders, and funders solve complex business problems and proactively create and maintain equitable workplaces.

We are diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) advisors helping organizations design and implement authentic, stage-appropriate, and data-informed DEI strategies. Converge was founded to address equity issues at scale and drive systemic change within the tech industry. We also facilitate opportunities for coalition building, industry-wide collaboration, and bold conversation.We invite you to converge with us.

We are a boutique social change consulting firm working to bring forward social, economic and environmental justice in organizational life. We help our clients tap into our collective intelligence and imagination to create new possibilities for justice and belonging to thrive.

The Venture Cooperative is a free 6-month educational program and inclusive community that make Laconia's investments, processes, and learnings accessible for the next generation of early stage investors.Cooperative participants participate in Laconia’s investment processes, share collaborate on due diligence, hear perspectives from industry leaders, share their expertise within the community, and collaborate with early stage founders.

Leading a vision/strategy for diversity & equity projects and practices across Tala via:• Designing and launching diversity and equity programs across all Tala offices focused on underrepresented groups to promote employee retention across all demographics within Tala’s workforce.• Developing goals and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of D&E initiatives and prepare progress reports for LT and all-hands meetings. • Partnering with Talent Acquisition team to build a more diverse candidate pipeline and represent Tala at career fairs with a specific focus on underrepresented groups (especially in key focus areas, such as Tech guilds).• Identifying and implementing opportunities to better align employee experience with Tala’s values. Proposing and executing innovative ideas to improve current policies and overall culture, and measure impact / effectiveness

Modern credit for a mobile world. Expanding financial access, choice and control globally through #RadicalTrust. Tala is the leading mobile technology and data science company committed to financial inclusion globally. More than 1.3 million people have borrowed through Tala’s smartphone app, which provides instant credit scoring, lending, and other personalized financial services in emerging markets. Tala has raised more than $105 million from leading venture and impact investors including Revolution, IVP, Ribbit Capital, Data Collective, and Lowercase Capital. Tala’s global team is headquartered in Santa Monica, with additional offices in Nairobi, Manila, Dar Es Salaam, Mexico City, Mumbai, and Bangalore.

The Pepsi Refresh Project was an initiative by PepsiCo to award $30 million grants to individuals, nonprofits and businesses to promote ideas that had a positive social impact on their community and moved the world forward. $5k to $250k grants were awarded through democratic voting, and over 1000 projects were funded. The Pepsi Refresh Project garnered 85M online votes and over 4B media impressions.Managed a portfolio of 50+ grant winners by ensuring procedural compliance, providing technical support and enhancing capacity-building opportunities. Compiled reports and narratives to document the overall social impact of the Pepsi Refresh Project. Spearheaded the “Big Apple Challenge,” a one-time, small-scale version of the Pepsi Refresh Project presented at the annual PepsiCo Investor meeting at Yankee Stadium. Recruited several Bronx-based non-profit organizations to submit applications, provided guidance through the application process and technical assistance to challenge winners.

Managed a $20MM portfolio of 20+ sector-based job training and placement programs aimed to serve historically neglected populations by fostering partnerships with service providers in the social, public and private sectors. Analyzed vendor performance outcomes to identify root causes of performance issues, developed appropriate solutions and guaranteed that contractual and budgetary goals were met.

Managed the successful launch of the Hunts Point Workforce1 Career Center. Provided technology support for the city-wide Career Center system by providing UX design support for in-house CRM software and designing and delivering on-going training workshops for all NYC Workforce1 Career Center staff.

Empowerment Group accelerates economic growth in distressed urban communities by cultivating local entrepreneurship. Our bottom line is to create positive, lasting change for our clients, their families and their communities. Managed caseload of 45+ clients by providing 1-1 consulting on financing, marketing and other business needs in both English and Spanish. Tracked economic impact data related to business start-up.

Coordinated the development of 100+ styles each season by leading a virtual team consisting of members in Hong Kong, Bangalore and Sri Lanka. Served as liaison between design, technical services, merchandising and production teams.Graduate of the 2004 Executive Training Program