A Chat with Daisy Onubogu, COO at Diversity VC: Working To Build A Fairer, More Inclusive Venture Capital industry

Diversity VC is a non-profit organisation working to build a fairer, equitable, more inclusive Venture Capital industry for all by driving every venture fund in the world to change.

We aim to activate and empower key decision-makers at VCs to become DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) advocates, enable funds with the understanding, tools and resources to promote DEI in their firms and the companies they fund, and sustain change by monitoring, supporting and celebrating progress across the ecosystem.
 
 

 

You recently joined Diversity VC as COO, what attracted you to this role?

 
Simply the opportunity to create meaningful change. When you grow up as I have you cannot escape a sense of responsibility. To be aware that the system around you was built to your disadvantage, and to understand that you’ve escaped a worse fate thanks to the hard work of activists and leaders who came before, instills a strong need to continue that work.

Venture Capital as a key facilitator of entrepreneurial activity enjoys an outsized impact on the way we live, work, and do just about everything else in society. Driving change here has the potential to send ripples of impact far and wide.
 

How has Diversity VC evolved during the pandemic?

 
Our focus has been mainly on maturing as an organisation. We’ve been growing the team and implementing the type of infrastructure that will allow us to: better support and integrate our community of changemakers, broaden the scope of our reporting, make it easier to access our tools and resources, and expand our impact globally by entering new ecosystems.

We’re now a team of 30 people across 4 chapters, UK, Iberia, US, and LATAM. Soon, we’ll have a Dutch chapter too. We’ve been lucky enough to exist at a time when there is so much appetite to get stuck into justice and activism work.
 

What can we hope to see from Diversity VC in the future?

 
Broader and more frequent reports, a resource directory and changemakers community to equip and empower everyone driving this work within funds and the continued growth of our Future VC and Standard programmes.