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iLab Spring 2019: Meet our Spring cohort!

We are so thrilled to be working with our latest cohort to the Kapor Center iLab.

We opened applications to the community and received an overwhelming response. Applicants were requested to pitch at the Kapor Center on their business plan, community commitment, and founding team. The interviews were inspiring and the final decisions were challenging. In short, we’re excited about this cohort!

We kicked off the program with a full day orientation focused on goal setting, culture creation, and building community.

“I didn’t know tech could be for me. Now that I’m in this space, it feels like I finally have a place to learn about how I fit into tech” -Carmena, Women Sound Off

Coach, Maria Choi, walks the iLab through a branding and visioning workshop

We are now more than halfway through the cohort, where our weeks consist of office hours with community partners, workshops with POC leaders in the field, coaching 1:1s, and conversations with Oakland change-makers. We are working on making our space braver for those underrepresented in our fields, and in turn making every space safer for us, by us.

Introducing our Spring cohort —

Kai Frazier: Curated X Kai is a VR education platform bringing field trips to under-resourced students.

Olivia Cueva: David E. Glover Education & Technology Center is an East Oakland non-profit providing free tech education to community members.

Orlando Watson: Honeycomb is a blockchain app using unused phone power to pay publishing subscriptions.

Carmena Woodward and Evangeline Elder: Women Sound Off is a platform that curates powerful spaces for creative women & entrepreneurs to form alliances through content & events.

Brandon Anderson: Raheem.AI is a chatbot reporting and rating interactions with police, seeking to build police accountability.

Neil Shah: Concrn is an app providing a compassionate response alternative to 911 for mental health crisis, particularly for the unhoused community.

Bri James and Sabrina Mutukisna: Exhale HQ is an online toolkit built to increase corporate retention of diverse hires.

Ethan Monreal-Jackson: Zenny is a financial literacy app utilizing gamification to encourage saving.

Ryan Diew: Trippie is an app helping users navigate within airports.

Tony Campos: Medra Health is a platform to support diverse contingency medical workforce employment for both employers and employees.

Isaiah Johnson: Project Beanstalk is a game design and development studio with a mission is to diversify the video game industry.

Monica Arrambide: Maven Youth builds programming that empowers LGBTQ+ youth to network, organize and educate for social change through the tech industry.

Jing Jin, Michelle Xiaohoa Ching, and Jeff Tchang: Literator is an app supporting teacher instruction by synthesizing data to track and evaluate student learning.

A big shoutout to our iLab Coaches —

Alex Marshall leads Platform for the Backstage Capital portfolio. Most recently, she was Co-founder + Head of Client Experience at Health IQ. She is ranked the 4th Latina in the US for the most money raised in venture capital.

Don Loeb is the Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy at Techstars. Don carries over 15 years of operational experience and was the previous head of business development at Typekit (acquired by Adobe).

Dontae Rayford has spent nearly a decade in the tech industry with stints at startups and VC firms. He has 6 years worth of experience at Google working with products like Android, Google Checkout and Google Cardboard.

Jomayra Herrera is on the venture investing team at Emerson Collective. Previously working at an ed-tech startup, she sits on the board of Young Education Professionals and named Forbes 30 under 30 in Education 2018.

Gregory Bennet was previously an associate at Working Capital and an IDEX Fellow. Kapor Capital is excited to welcome him as a Summer Associate in 2019!

Maria Salamanca is an investor at Unshackled Ventures, advisor at Swing Left and founder at Making a Techie newsletter. She was named Forbes 30 under 30 for Venture Capital, the first and youngest Latina to be nominated.

Raise for Good, Founder Maria Choi has expertise leading major fundraising and marketing initiatives working with organizations like UNICEF, Sesame Workshop, Khan Academy, NFL, and AT&T. Maria was an executive at Code.org and a startup advisor while at Fast Forward.

Visit our website to learn more about our program & follow the Kapor Center to stay up-to-date on our next application cycle.

Interested in supporting these organizations? Shoot us an e-mail at ilab@Kaporcenter.org.