Matter builds innovators through executive coaching, training programs, innovation consulting, and speaking engagements. Clients have included Google, The New York Times, The Associated Press, KQED, Columbia University, and over a hundred founders of early-stage companies. Matter also manages an investment portfolio of 73 early-stage media companies across our two early-stage venture capital funds. From 2012 to 2019, Matter was an SF & NYC-based startup accelerator and venture capital firm grounded in the principles of design thinking that supports early-stage media entrepreneurs and mission-aligned media institutions building scalable ventures that make society more informed, inclusive, and empathetic.Since starting Matter from scratch in 2012, I led Matter in raising 2 venture funds, running 8 accelerator cohorts, investing in 73 portfolio companies, bringing together 12 institutional media and technology partners, delivering 5 partner accelerator programs, training local news organizations across the United States and Asia Pacific through Open Matter, assembling a network of 340 mentors, establishing media innovation spaces and communities in both SF and NYC, and building a team of extraordinary human beings on both coasts. Matter startups have raised over $53M and have been acquired by companies like Snap, Buzzfeed, and Kickstarter. In this tough early-stage media space, Matter startups have proven to be resilient, with 84% of our Fund II companies still operating or achieving an exit. And, in an industry with a terrible track record of diversity and inclusion, 50% of our Fund II founder CEOs are women and 40% are people of color.

I run, teach, and design the top executive education programs for leaders in media and journalism. The Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University is a hands-on, real-world, innovation-focused mini-executive MBA. The program is designed to train the future leaders of the world’s most impactful journalism and media organizations during a time of rapid transformation, uncertainty, and opportunity. I also teach and design innovation-focused executive education courses for Columbia, including the Google News Initiative Fellows Program.

The Kauffman Fellowship is a two-year executive education in venture capital and innovation leadership. The program is dedicated to the world of venture capital and the cultivation of new technology, high-growth, high-impact companies.

Taught Venture Studio, the capstone class for CCA DMBA students, empowering them to combine design and entrepreneurship to launch real-world ventures.

Runway is a pre-team, pre-idea incubator grounded in design thinking and based out of Innovation Endeavors, an early stage venture capital firm backed by Eric Schmidt of Google.

Jump Associates is a growth strategy consulting firm that blends insight from social research with the creativity of design and the logic of analytical business planning.

Taught multi-disciplinary teams of graduate students and executives how to innovate using the IDEO-based, human-centered, prototype-driven design thinking process, including customer research, synthesis, idea generation, rapid prototyping, and user testing.

Consulted for executive team on film financing, business development negotiations, and internal company projects.

Managed production of 15 FRONTLINE films and 2 PBS Specials for Kirk Documentary Group and Hedrick Smith Productions. FRONTLINE is a critically acclaimed public affairs documentary series broadcast nationwide on PBS.Awards:- Emmy Award: Outstanding Documentary on a Business Topic, 2006- The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton Award: the highest achievement in broadcast journalism, awarded for outstanding reporting and analysis of the events and aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001

Managed production of one-hour Explorer film.