Sara T. Brand is an American business executive.[1] She is the founder of True Wealth Ventures and co-founder of (512) Brewing Company.[1][2]
Sara T. Brand | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Texas at Austin University of California at Berkeley |
| Occupation | Businesswoman |
| Organization(s) | True Wealth Ventures (512) Brewing Company |
Biography edit
Brand grew up in both Wisconsin and Arizona.[2]
Brand obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996.[3]
She enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996 and graduated in 1998 with a master's degree in mechanical engineering and a management of technology certification from Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and then a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering in 2000.[3][4]
Before her career in venture capital, Brand worked as a semiconductor researcher in several companies including Intel and Applied Materials, and she served as a strategic management consultant at McKinsey & Company.[3] She also worked at Fremont Ventures in San Francisco for a few years before joining AMD, where she stayed over a decade until 2015, leading AMD's acquisition integration of ATI Technologies in 2006 and reporting directly to three of the company's four CEOs during her tenure.[3]
In 2008, she and her husband, Kevin Brand, co-founded (512) Brewing Company.[5][6]
She started True Wealth Ventures, a female-focused venture capital firm, in 2015, where she also serves as the Founding General Partner.[3][7] The firm's investment focus is explicitly on women-led companies improving human and environmental health.[8] In January 2018, when they closed their first fund at $19.1M, it made True Wealth Ventures Fund I the largest traditional VC fund ever raised with an explicit gender-diversity investment strategy and around 80 percent of their investors were women.[9][10]
In June 2022, they announced the closing of their oversubscribed $35M Fund II, again backed by 80 percent women LPs.[11][12]
References edit
- ^ a b "Women behind Texas' True Wealth Ventures discuss closing startup gender gap, female founder advice". The Dallas Morning News. December 19, 2016.
- ^ a b Barr, Greg. "Meet Sara Brand, founder, True Wealth Ventures". Retrieved 2022-04-07.
- ^ a b c d e "Profiles in Power: Sara Brand, True Wealth Ventures, a pioneer among women in tech". Austin Business Journal. Retrieved 2022-04-07.
- ^ "Sara T. Brand".
- ^ "Brewery Business Hopping Despite Tanking Economy". NPR.
- ^ "Mechanical Engineering Wit Behind Austin Craft Brewery". 25 June 2015.
- ^ "We rise - Harvard Business School". HBS.
- ^ "People poised to make an impact in the New Year".
- ^ Zakrzewski, Cat (February 13, 2018). "True Wealth Ventures On Mission to Back Women". Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Smith, Rebecca French (18 April 2023). "More Than 2 Percent".
- ^ "Austin-based True Wealth Ventures raises second fund to back women-led startups". TechCrunch. 27 June 2022.
- ^ "True Wealth Ventures closes $35M fund to back women entrepreneurs".