Mandela Sh Dixon
About Mandela Sh Dixon
Mandela’s career in Silicon Valley has given her an unparalleled perspective of the tech industry. She has served as a founder, operator, investor, and community leader of two of the most prominent organizations focused on creating a more equitable startup ecosystem. At the age of 25, Mandela dropped out of her PhD program to launch her first startup, and became one of the first Black women to raise venture capital from Silicon Valley investors. Mandela was later appointed Global Director of Startup Weekend Education. Funded by the Gates Foundation and Google for Startups, Mandela scaled SWEDU from two to six continents in less than two years, and transformed it into the largest community of edtech entrepreneurs in the world. Mandela was then recruited to become the founding Portfolio Services Director at Kapor Capital, building out the firm’s first platform division that serviced a portfolio of over 120 tech startups, including Uber, Twilio, and Asana. In 2017, Mandela launched her second company, Founder Gym, which became the #1 training program teaching underrepresented founders how to raise venture capital. In its first four years, over 600 founders spanning 26 countries and 6 continents graduated from the program. 1 out of every 10 Black women to raise $1 million or more is a graduate of Founder Gym. Most recently, Mandela served as the CEO of All Raise, the largest non-profit focused on accelerating the success of women and non-binary leaders in tech. 90% of women venture capitalists listed on the Forbes’ Midas List, 84% of women check-writers at funds over $25M AUM, and more than 200 VC firms are represented in the All Raise community. Mandela is an angel investor, Limited Partner, former Sequoia Capital scout, and inaugural member of First Round Capital's Angel Track program, which is comprised of several leading tech founders and operators in the United States. Mandela is a well respected thought-leader, who has shared her frameworks for success on over 150 stages and in more than 100 publications. She has received various recognitions, including being named Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women, Forbes' Women to Watch, and LinkedIn's Top 10 Voices in Venture Capital and Startups. Mandela has a Bachelor's Degree in Intercultural Communications, a Masters Degree in Education and Administration & Policy, and she was a PhD candidate in Urban Schooling at UCLA. Mandela played collegiate soccer in the ACC, the top division in U.S. women's soccer, and she was voted Co-Captain her freshman year.