Language: English (mozilla)
How can technology founders, civil society and policy makers engage traditional VC investors to actively foster a responsible and intersectional tech ecosystem that disrupts for good, and seeks to build rather than break? Is it fair to say that traditional VC is fundamentally at odds with a vision of tech that is healthier for all?
Decisions made by major US-based VC funds have ripple effects felt around the world, not only because they invest across global markets, but also because many entrepreneurs worldwide seek to replicate the models US VC investors drive to scale. Ownership and promotion of responsible tech among the most influential VCs has the potential to change the entire future tech landscape for the better. This solutions-oriented session seeks to foster collaborative discussion among advocates working towards public good and tech executives that sometimes straddle the divide between doing what is right for their broader community of stakeholders and doing what will maximize returns for their VC investors.
Read these articles to learn more: [Venture Capital Undermines Human Rights] (https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/04/venture-capital-undermines-human-rights/%5D), [Managing the Unintended Consequences of Your Innovations] (https://hbr.org/2021/01/managing-the-unintended-consequences-of-your-innovations), the [Amnesty Report Risky Business: How Leading VC Firms Ignore Human Rights When Investing in Tech] (https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/risky-business-top-10-leading-venture-capital-firms-failing-in-their-responsibility-to-respect-human-rights/, and the book Intended Consequences [https://intendedconsequences.com/).
This session is being livestreamed and can be viewed from the main page of the MozFest Plaza.
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What language would you like to host your session in?: English
Shu Dar Yao is the Founder and Managing Partner of Lucid Capitalism LLC, an ESG and impact investing advisory practice with expertise supporting venture capital seeking market-rate returns.
She led investments and she served as Chairman of the Investment Committee of RSF Social Finance. At Citigroup, she focused on fixed-income green bonds, microfinance fund investments, and social and cleantech enterprise investing. At the World Bank’s IFC, she was an investor on the Global Infrastructure team and developed the $4bn Global Infrastructure Crisis Facility. At the start of her career, she was an investment banker at JPMorgan, working in global M&A, Syndicated Leveraged Finance and Private Equity Sponsors.
Michael Kleinman is Director of Technology and Human Rights for Amnesty International USA. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of Orange Door Research, which helped donors, NGOs and UN agencies gather data in conflict-affected countries. Prior to that, he was Director of Investments at Humanity United, one of the Omidyar Group Philanthropies, where he worked on the intersection of technology and human rights. He has also worked for development and humanitarian NGOs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. His writing on development, human rights and technology has been published in TechCruch, The Washington Post, Vox, The Guardian, Stanford Social Innovation Review, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, openDemocracy and McSweeneys. He is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School.
Jon Zieger is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Responsible Innovation Labs, a non-profit. He was formerly general counsel and head of global policy at Stripe, the online payments company. There he oversaw the company’s legal, compliance, public policy, and corporate security functions and helped Stripe scale from a small startup to one of the largest fintech companies in the world.
Before Stripe, he spent almost a decade at Microsoft, where he oversaw the legal functions for Microsoft’s search, advertising, and other consumer online properties. He began his legal career at the Perkins Coie law firm, where he represented many dot com-era startups, including Amazon.