Category: Past Events

Iris Choi, WG’04, is a Partner at Floodgate, an early-stage VC. She’ll share her perspective on how startups can navigate a down market

Join Floodgate Partner Iris Choi, WG’04, to discuss what founders should strive for in a down market. She’ll explain Floodgate’s approach to Intelligent Growth and what VCs are looking for in this environment.

Date: April 23rd, 2020
Time: 12 PM PST
Cost: FREE

Event Video

About Iris Choi

Iris Choi is a Partner at FLOODGATE. She leads follow on investing at FLOODGATE and works closely across the portfolio of companies on a range of strategic areas, including business development, partnerships and financings. Iris serves on the board of select companies, including TouchofModern, MangoHealth, Sharethrough, Maker Media, Nirvana and Business Connect China.

Iris also leads FLOODGATE’s efforts to cultivate new and existing relationships with senior leadership at established technology companies that operate in the spaces in which FLOODGATE invests. These relationships afford FLOODGATE an opportunity to gain insights into industry priorities and trends and also partnership opportunities between the larger players and FLOODGATE portfolio companies.

Iris is also responsible for offering a current perspective around capital markets and M&A trends for portfolio companies and best practices in exit scenarios.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

Join Superkin Co-founders Miriam Williams (C’04 WG’15) and Tara Elwell Henning and their award-winning agency, Bartlett Brands.

Superkin founders, Tara Elwell Henning and Wharton grad Miriam Williams, share their recent rebrand journey and reveal their brand superpowers in this fun-not-stuffy 60min zoominar. Hear why they decided to rebrand, how they came to select Bartlett Brands, what went down—and where their post-COVID-19 journey may go. Award-winning boutique branding agency, Bartlett Brands, lends their all-girl power expertise and provides pointers for this unexpected, constantly evolving and weird time. Cape optional.

Date: April 10th, 2020
Time: 1-2PM PST
Where: Online
Cost: FREE

About Superkin

Superkin is Not a Maternity Brand. Superkin makes high tech, low maintenance clothing for exceptional women. Founded by women who were sick and tired of being asked if they were sick and tired, our wear-everywhere essentials are deliberately designed to dress you—not just your bump. Because when we create the generations of tomorrow, we deserve to be well-dressed and well-respected today.

About Bartlett Brands

Bartlett Brands is an award-winning boutique branding agency. From cosmetics to consumables, we bring the all-girl power to creating brands that challenge the status and cut through the quo.

Our snappy strategies, stylish stories and standout designs attract the attention of even the world’s most distracted humans, engaging and entertaining them for the long haul. We never met a branding boundary we couldn’t break.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

Date: April 8th, 2020
Time: 3PM PST
Cost: Free

Event video 

Resources noted during the session

 
https://hellowaffa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/The-CARES-Act.pdf
https://hellowaffa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PPP-Explained.pdf
https://hellowaffa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-Economic-Injury-Loan-Application-Tutorial.pdf

About Amy Shah

Amy Shah is the CEO of Shah Management, a real estate investment and management firm focused on the acquisition and development of commercial, retail, multi-family, and developable land properties across Southern California. Amyalso ran proprietary lending at Hunt Real Estate Capital, where she managed real estate capital markets executions and lead the structuring and securitization of CLO transactions totaling ~$2 billion. She previously served as a real estate finance and corporate practice attorney, focusing on capital markets with a focus on securitized transactions at Ledgewood Law. Amy began her finance career in 2004 at Sonneblick-Goldman Company, a Goldman Sachs and DLJ principals’ spin-off, closing over $6 billion in real estate transactions, and representing structures including dispositions, debt financings and equity recapitalizations. Amy holds a JD from Villanova Law School, a degree in finance from The Wharton School, and is passionate about mentoring young women in developing financial literacy

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

The public imagination is captivated by stories about entrepreneurs–from wild successes to public failures. Founders like Richard Branson and Sara Blakely have become household names. However, the early days in an entrepreneur’s journey happen out of the public eye. In this period, founders struggle with failures and challenges both personal and professional. In her new book, founder and Wharton alumna Mona Bijoor shares her personal insights and learnings along with tactical guidelines on how to navigate the founder journey. 

Start-Ups and Downs: The Secrets of Resilient Entrepreneurs by Mona Bijoor (Partner, King Circle Capital & Founder, JOOR) takes readers through her entrepreneurial journey where she successfully disrupted an industry as a first time founder. Ten years ago, Mona started JOOR—a global wholesale marketplace—raising millions in venture capital and built a software company successfully curing the pain points in retail. Her story, similar to the other founders interviewed is not about the successes, but rather how to overcome challenges with the right mindset. Mona created a guidebook for navigating everything from pitching with power to coping with competition and includes first-hand accounts from 10 respected entrepreneurs sharing failures and triumphs, including founders of: SmartyPants Vitamins, S’well, WTRMLN WTR, Burrow and Flatiron Health. 

Book Reviews

Date: February 26, 2020
Time: 6PM
Location: HSBC: 11th floor of 452 5th Ave
Admission: $5 or $15 with book

About Mona Bijoor:

Mona Bijoor is a Partner at King Circle Capital LLC, an investment firm and is also the founder of JOOR, an online global B2B marketplace for wholesale buying that directly connects brands and retailers. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, Mona lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters. She is a frequent contributor to TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, and Thrive Global. 

About our sponsor, HSBC:

HSBC is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organizations, serving more than 40 million customers through four global businesses. The commercial banking operations cover 53 countries and territories including the US. Through teams of strategically placed relationship managers, HSBC connects businesses to opportunities, helping them thrive and grow. Working with a wide range of customers, from small enterprises to mid-market companies and large multinationals, they provide the solutions needed to operate efficiently.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

WAFFA Valentine’s Special: we are inviting female founders, funders, as well as supporters to join a 21st Century Workshop for success and fulfillment in the bedroom and the boardroom.

Date: Thursday, Feb 13, 2020
Time: 5:30pm – 6:00pm Check In & Mingle, 6:00pm – 8:00pm Interactive Session Time
Location: CANOPY Jackson Square – 595 Pacific Ave, 4th Floor
Cost: WCNC Members: $15; Non- WCNC Members: $20 Register Now

Experience

We are living in the most anxious of times and modern love is stirring more anxiety than ever. Struggling with the perplexities of relationship, we often miss that what stymies us in our most intimate lives is also what stymies us in our professional lives. Get a handle on how to show up as your brightest, boldest, truest self in your most intimate encounters and you will find yourself more powerful, more comfortable and more effective in all the spheres of your life.

In this highly interactive workshop, we explore the nitty gritty of what runs amok in the earliest phases of our relationships and how we can change course. Through a deep dive into the biology and psychology of love and lust, we examine how nature may lead us astray. Through an examination of our own beliefs and baggage, we uncover what keeps us from the fulfillment we long for. From there, we explore how to change the script. We help you move into the glorious wonderful space of generous fearless loving and open the path to becoming the strongest and best version of yourself.

About Michele Taipale

Michèle is a passionate advocate for human potential with 30 years of experience helping high achievers become more powerful, intentional and effective leaders in their personal and professional lives. With a broad range of experience, from entrepreneur to strategy consultant, from animal trainer to mindfulness and positivity scholar, she sees professional and personal challenges from many perspectives and provides unique insights that bring out the best and the bravest in her clients in all realms of their lives. She is a Leadership coach for The Wharton Executive MBA program and The Coaching Fellowship, and a mentor with Women Unlimited, Inc. She is advisor and coach to many young founders and innovators of pro-social companies such as Copia’s Komal Ahmad (Toyota Mother of Invention, Forbes 30 under 30) and Kidogo’s Sabrina Habib (winner of the 2017 Unilever Young Entrepreneur Awards). In addition to an MBA in Multinational Management, an MA in international Affairs and an MFA in Creative Writing, Michèle has been a member of Ellen Langer’s Mindfulness Lab in the Psychology Department at Harvard and is a certified Happiness Advantage Coach. She has also taught many workshops focused on increasing knowledge, openness, acceptance, humor, curiosity and communication in the realm of relating and bonking.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

Hosted by Boss Women Collective & Wharton Alumnae Founders and Funders Association

Join BWC and WAFFA for a panel discussion on how to power digitally native brands in a new retail landscape. On March 5, we’ll hear from incredible leaders at Google Shopping, Rocksbox, Part & Parcel, Birdies, and Re:store about how they form a connection to their brand, how to think about balancing personalization with scaling, what it takes to build a brick and mortar footprint, and how to grow their physical fleet in the evolving retail tech landscape.

Date: Thu, March 5, 2020
Time: 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM PST
Location: Re:store, 120 Maiden Lane, San Francisco, CA 94108
Cost: $15

About the panelists

Meaghan Rose, Founder and CEO Rocksbox

Lauren Jonas, Founder and CEO of Part & Parcel

Marisa Sharkey, Co-founder and President of Birdies

Moderated by Lucy Liu (Strategic Partnerships at Google Shopping)

About BWC

BWC is an organization focused on empowering women through IRL experiences across San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. Follow us on social to learn more!

About WAFFA

Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association​ is a 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for women founders and funders.