Renata Aráuz-DeStefano, Investor, Pivotal Venture

Renata has spent the past decade bridging the finance and social impact sectors, having held roles in microfinance, investment banking, social enterprises, and venture capital.  Most recently, she served as a Project Manager for the New Capitalism Project, an initiative co-creating a strategy to guide philanthropic investment.  Prior to that, she was an impact investor at Nairobi-based KawiSafi Ventures, where she invested in the clean energy space. 

A proud SEO and Toigo alumna of Ecuadorian descent, Renata is passionate about increasing access to capital for diverse GPs and founders and building a bench of future capital allocators who reflect the changing demographics of the US.  Renata serves on the board of VCFamilia, an organization supporting Latinx investors and founders.  She holds a BA in International Relations and French from Tufts University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jen O’Daniel, Senior Director, Virginia Venture Partners

Jennifer O’Daniel joined Virginia Venture Partners (formerly CIT GAP Funds) in 2003, where she leads seed and early stage investments in tech companies with a concentration on cybersecurity and enterprise software. A senior member of the investment team, O’Daniel has led over 50 investments in seed and early-stage companies as well as investments for MACH37, a cybersecurity accelerator. She is a frequent speaker at conferences like FinTechSouth, BlackHat, RSA, and SxSW.

O’Daniel has served as a board observer for several Virginia-based companies, including VividCortex (acquired by SolarWinds NYSE:SWI)), Canvas (acquired K1 Investment Management), Pype (acquired by Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK)), Latista (acquired by Textura (NYSE: TXTR)), ID.Me, Urgent.ly, PerformYard, HyperQube, RunSafe, Zoomph, Introhive and ThreatQuotient.

Brooke Nussbaum, Partner, Cooley

Brooke Nussbaum heads Cooley’s mid-Atlantic corporate practice. Brooke’s practice consists primarily of corporate and securities law. She represents a wide range of private company clients, from newly formed startups to high-growth companies, in all of their corporate needs, including corporate governance matters, equity financings, restructurings, recapitalizations and M&A. She also represents private equity funds, growth equity funds, venture capital funds and other investment entities on their investments in technology and life sciences companies.

Isabelle Styslinger, Investor, Revolution, Rise of the Rest

Isabelle is an Associate on the investment team at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. She joined the firm in 2023 and focuses on sourcing, due diligence, and supporting existing portfolio companies.

Prior to joining Revolution, Isabelle was a Corporate Venture and Innovation Associate at Silicon Foundry, a San Francisco-based firm, where she advised Fortune 500 corporations on investing in and partnering with innovative startups. Isabelle also worked for Netflix where she developed privacy products and solutions. She also has experience lobbying for major technology companies.

Isabelle graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Political Science, with a concentration in Internet Law and Policy through a dual enrollment program at MIT. Isabelle was born in D.C. but grew up across five states and two countries, and considers the Bay Area home.