DIVERSITY

If you only back people who look like previous winners, you are just betting on the same horse over and over.

We have a massive amount of untapped talent in this country because we have not been backing the right people.

Black developers get 1 percent of major development contracts in America. One percent. That is not a pipeline problem. That is a gatekeeping problem.

I am a Nigerian immigrant who built a $3 billion company in Atlanta, Georgia. Not San Francisco. Not New York. Atlanta. You do not need to be in Silicon Valley to build something great. You just need to solve a real problem.

75% of our portfolio companies are led by women or people of color. That is not charity. That is where the best deals are because everyone else is ignoring them.

Be color brave not color blind. Pretending you do not see race does not make racism disappear. It makes it invisible.

The single biggest barrier to wealth in Black communities is not income. It is participation in markets. You have to be in it to win it.

Diverse teams make better financial decisions. This isn't a belief — it's what the data shows.

Being the first Black F1 champion means nothing if I'm the last.

Diversity isn't a quota. It's a competitive advantage that most industries are too blind to see.

I'm a Black founder from Baton Rouge building a fintech platform. Representation matters in finance.

I live in Philadelphia, not San Francisco. Great founders exist everywhere. The VC industry just hasn't noticed yet.

I am Japanese. I am Haitian. I am American. I am Black. I am all of those at once and none of them fully explains me. My investments reflect the same complexity.

Being a woman managing partner at a top VC firm in 2022 shouldn’t be news. The fact that it is tells you everything about the industry.

When ninety-eight percent of VC money goes to one demographic, the remaining ninety-eight percent of founders are undervalued. That is a market inefficiency.

Investing in underrepresented founders is not charity. It is the smartest money in the room.

The biggest mistake people make about Africa is thinking about it as one country. It is 54 countries, 1.4 billion people, and each market is completely different.

My parents came to this country with almost nothing. The one thing they believed in was that education is the door that opens everything. I've spent my career trying to hold that door open for more people.

The awareness is much higher today than even when I started my career.