The RiseHer Podcast

Michelle is the founder of First Code Academy, a leading coding and STEM education institute for kids from 4 to 18 years old and author of Amazon Best Seller First Time Coders. She is also an advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). Prior to starting First Code, she held various technical roles in high growth startups in Silicon Valley, including Buffer and Bump Technologies.

Whitney Sales is the Managing Partner, at Acceleprise Ventures.  Whitney has 10+ years of startup sales experience and is the founder of The Sales Method, a consultancy that helps startups identify target markets, build successful sales teams and quickly get products to market.  She led four companies to the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list including LoopNet, Joby, Meltwater and SpringAhead. Whitney graduated with honors with a BA in Sociology from UCSD.

Jenny Lefcourt brings 20+ years of technology start-up experience to her role as General Partner at Freestyle, a $90M seed-stage fund in San Francisco whose partners are all serial entrepreneurs. Freestyle has led investments in companies such as Airtable, Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, BetterUp, and Wag.  Jenny is also a founding member of All Raise, a non-profit dedicated to diversity in funders & founders.

Mariel Reed is cofounder and CEO of CoProcure. Previously, she served in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, where she helped scale a program connecting tech startups and local governments across the country. She was an early employee at Coursera, a venture-backed edtech startup. She graduated top of her class from Georgetown University and is fluent in Mandarin.

Chenoa Farnsworth the Managing Partner at Blue Startups. Chenoa has more than 15 years of experience in business strategy and private equity investing. Farnsworth is the managing director of the Hawaii Angels, Hawaii’s only angel capital investment network.

Trish Costello is CEO of Portfolia and Managing Director of Portfolia Funds.  Portfolia creates investment funds designed women, so they can back the companies and innovations they want in the marketplace, for returns and impact.  Portfolia has funds in Women’s health, Enterprise, Consumer Tech, Active Aging, and Diversity. Portfolia funds provide an interactive and educational view of investing for its members while seeking market returns and innovation in the marketplace.

Aline Lerner is the co-founder and CEO of interviewing.io, an anonymous technical recruiting platform where companies like Facebook, Uber, Dropbox, and Quora have hired great software engineers. Before that, was a software engineer for 5 years, ran hiring at Udacity, and wrote a lot of stuff about hiring on the internet

Liza Rodewald is an entrepreneur and software engineer with over 16 years of technical experience.  She has built multi-million dollar enterprise software for government and healthcare industries. Her passion for entrepreneurship came from her desire to have a more flexible lifestyle back in 2004.  She is the Founder and CEO of Instant Teams a support team creation and management platform that fuels support teams with military-connected talent.

Hey, Here's Some Courage for Ya!:News Flash: You Are in Fact Crazy

Sonya Petchavich, the CEO & Founder of Meowtel. Meowtel makes cat sitting easy, affordable, and fun by offering a marketplace platform that connects busy cat parents with trusted cat sitters all across the USA. Sonya started this company with a nagging idea that wouldn’t let her go, she thought there must be a better way to take care of my cat instead of just hanging out on the dog apps. Sonya and I talk all about how she went from an idea to a marketplace full of a community of cat lovers. S

Jessica Koncz the CEO and Founder of Eatsee,  That brings the restaurant experience to the Instagram generation. They create beautiful, visual menus for cafes and restaurants to showcase photos of each dish on their menu for customers to see before they order. An image like Tinder for Food! 

Kuel Life, a lifestyle website and online community for women 45+. Recently launched the Jacqueline launched Kuel Shop which focuses on products BY women FOR women and their loved ones. The best way to check me out is to take a peek at my site, www.kuellife.com, and the Kuel Shop, shop.kuellife.com  

Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google where she co-founded the Access team. Prior to joining Code for America, Minnie was COO of Shift, a Goldman Sachs and DFJ-funded company that she founded and helped the company to raise over 200 million dollars.  She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in computer science from Stanford University. Millie has recently joined TenOneTen Ventures, based out of LA, California.  

Andrea Barrica is CEO/co-founder of O.school, a judgment-free multimedia platform to learn about sexuality and pleasure through videos, live chat, live streams, and more. Previously, Andrea co-founded accounting and tax platform, inDinero.com. She also served as a venture partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at 500 Startups, one of the world’s most active, global seed funds.

Rachel Sipperley is the CEO and Founder of Rent My Wardrobe, a peer to peer marketplace that empowers women to generate additional income while becoming more financially savvy. The daughter of a youth pastor, Rachel came from humble beginnings and was a born entrepreneur. Her mission is to inspire and equip women and girls to become their own entrepreneur in a women-supporting-women culture and share her testimony of financial stewardship.