Welcome to Season Three of Uplifting Conversations! In this exciting premiere episode we dive into the inspiring stories of two remarkable leaders at the forefront of all things uplifting.

Join Toussaint Bailey as he sits down with Uplifting Capital's Linda Assante (Managing Partner, CIO) and Linda Magara Horner (Partner, Impact Investments & Corporate Strategy). Their stories, accomplishments, and goals will leave you impressed and inspired.

Noramay Cadena and Shayna Harris are Managing Partners of Supply Change Capital, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage food tech. Jon Carter is an entrepreneur, investor, and Co-Founder & CEO of Prado. Together they are working to change the future of food. Join us in this important conversation to learn more about one of our underlying funds and the people they invest in.

Noramay Cadena https://www.linkedin.com/in/noramay/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondcarter/ @jondcarter (Instagram & X)

We often discuss the lack of funding available for underrepresented founders and entrepreneurs, which is necessary and important. But what happens when we have a more UPLIFTING conversation, and tell more stories about the people working to change this? We are doing so today. La Keisha Landrum Pierre, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Emmeline Ventures, is a purpose-driven investor and 3x founder on a mission to create a more equitable world. Sydney Paige Thomas, Founder and GP of Symphonic Capital, has worked side by side with founders for almost a decade, ensuring they are able to achieve their goals. Both of these women have an insatiable drive to positively impact the venture capital space by using their unique superpowers. This episode is one for the books. La Keisha Landrum Pierre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lnlpierre/ Emmeline Ventures: https://www.emmelineventures.vc/ Sydney Paige Thomas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydneypthomas/ Symphonic Capital: https://www.symphonic.vc/ Toussaint Bailey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toussaint-bailey-8b174760/ Tamerri Ater: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamerriater/ Uplifting Capital: https://upliftingcapital.com/

Sandra LaPlante is a woman on a mission to bring affordable and accessible tutoring to the people who need it most. Having lived in two worlds - one of privilege in her home country, Peru, and in the US, where she worked multiple jobs to put herself through engineering school, Sandra realized affordable tutoring options were scarce. She founded Papaya Tutoring to help transform student’s lives by making STEM education more inclusive.

Aaron Samuels and his partner, Brian Hollins, are Founders and Managing Partners of Collide Capital, an investor in Papaya Tutor. Their mission is to guide under-networked and overlooked founders on their institutional journey and equip them with resources, knowledge networks, and hands-on operational support for a successful exit.

Uplifting Capital is a Collide Capital Limited Partner. Our collective efforts to help underrepresented founders solve the world’s most pressing problems, is how real impact is made.

We hope you enjoy and are inspired by this episode.

Papaya Tutor: https://papayatutor.com/ Sandra LaPlante: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandravlaplante/ Aaron Samuels: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-levy-samuels/

Pierre Le Veaux witnessed wealth at the highest level during his time as an Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs, while also witnessing a community of underrepresented entrepreneurs and non-accredited investors without access to capital and investment opportunities that could help grow their wealth. As General Partner at Seed At The Table, Pierre is helping to solve an important problem. Seed At The Table, is a mission-driven equity crowdfunding platform committed to connecting diverse entrepreneurs with non-accredited investors looking to obtain equity and/or debt exposure at modest investment amounts. This is Uplifting at its core. Pierre Le Veau II LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pal2/ Seed At The Table: https://seedatthetable.com/homepage @seedatthetable

In this episode, Toussaint chats with Uplifter Marlon Evans. Marlon is the CEO of Nex Cubed and President and Founder of the HBCU Founders Accelerator, a nonprofit organization that partners with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), to engage rising students and alumni across all HBCUs interested in developing solutions that close the wealth gap ranging from increasing access to healthcare, education, and financial services.

Nex Cubed Website

HBCU Founders Accelerator Website

Marlon Evans Bio: Marlon's professional career spans higher education, foundations, Fortune 500s, and startups. The driving force behind all of his career choices has been a desire to create positive social impact. In 2018, Marlon was named CEO of Nex Cubed, an investor that creates and accelerates frontier tech companies with an emphasis on digital health and fintech. To date, the Nex Cubed portfolio consists of 80+ startups with an aggregate value of $500M and over 60% of the startups are led by female and minority founders. In an effort to increase Nex Cubed’s impact, Marlon led the launch of the HBCU Founders Initiative, a 501c3 organization designed to inspire entrepreneurship at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In partnership with corporations such as AT&T, Franklin Templeton, Verizon, Mastercard and Morgan Stanley, over 500 students and alums from 60+ HBCUs have participated in its acceleration programs. Finding that many of the teams with venture backable ideas lacked access to pre-seed and seed funding to help grow their business, Nex Cubed recently launched the HBCU Founders Fund, a 40M accelerator and fund investing in the most promising startups where at least one of the founders is a HBCU student or alum. Prior to joining Nex Cubed, Marlon served as CEO of GSVlabs (renamed One Valley), a global innovation platform that accelerated startups and connected corporations to exponential technologies, business models and ideas. His career includes experience as a Director of Corporate Affairs at HP, where he led HP Company Foundation programs, including Matter to a Million, a company-wide employee engagement program in partnership with Kiva. He received his BA in Political Science and a MA in Sociology from Stanford University, where he competed on the football and track & field teams. Marlon lives in Redwood City, CA with his wife Dena Evans. They have two daughters, Adrienne and Elise.

Taj Ahmad Eldridge wears many hats - both literally + figuratively - around the health, wealth, & self impact of climate + environmental change and investing.

In this inspiring episode, Taj shares his personal journey from being diagnosed with kidney failure due to environmental factors, to becoming a leader in the fields of fintech, media, energy, transportation, and the circular economy.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tajahmade... Twitter: https://twitter.com/Econoahmad?ref_sr...

Taj Ahmad Eldridge is a 25+ year investment professional whose career has included high level executive roles in banking, asset management, alternative investments, and entrepreneurship. As General Partner of Include Venture Partners and former Senior Director of Investments at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), Eldridge has built a longstanding career with expertise in the fields of fintech, media, energy, transportation, and the circular economy. Eldridge is also one of the 70 Black Investors in Bevy.com - a $325 million virtual conference platform as noted in AfroTech.