Venture F: The Podcast

Venture F: The Podcast

Venture:F where the future is female. Join host Laura Nix Gerson as she delves into conversations with financial experts, female founders and funders discovering solutions for creating greater opportunity, gender equity and wealth for women.

Episodes

December 12, 2025 30 mins

Maggie Switek, PhD, an economist and a senior director on the research team at the Milken Institute. She heads all projects related to economic growth and opportunities across regions and communities in the US and abroad. Before joining the Institute, Switek worked in academia and consulting, developing a broad range of expertise in economic competition, labor, public policy, and well-being. Her experience includes working with enf...

Mark as Played

Zibby Owens, is the founder and CEO of Zibby Media and Zibby Publishing House, host of the award-winning podcast Totally Booked with Zibby, owner of Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica, CA, and author/editor of the USA Today bestselling anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors and Advocates, as well as five other books. Zibby hosts retreats, a book club, and frequent events for booklovers. She also founded the original ...

Mark as Played
November 21, 2025 31 mins

Janine Firpo is the Co-founder of Invest for Better and author of Activate Your Money: Invest to Grow Your Wealth and Build a Better World. 

From the early years of Apple Computer to senior positions with Hewlett-Packard, the World Bank, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Janine has always found herself making an impact. In 2017 she left a successful 35+ year career in technology and international development to focus on how w...

Mark as Played

Steph Wagner is a nationally recognized thought leader in women’s wealth and financial empowerment. Today, she serves as National Director of Women & Wealth at Northern Trust, where she leads the firm’s advisory practice for women and its Elevating Women platform—a national program focused on building financial literacy and helping women use their wealth to create meaningful impact in their families, businesses, and communities. Be...

Mark as Played

Alicia Hanf, Head of Institutional Partnerships, Ecosystem Development. LG Nova where she leads efforts to forge strategic institutional partnerships and expand a dynamic ecosystem for innovation. 

Prior to joining LG Nova, Alicia founded Dear Mama Ventures a platform dedicated to improving access to capital for underrepresented entrepreneurs. Dear Mama’s  industry-agnostic investment approach focused on diverse founders tackling gl...

Mark as Played
October 24, 2025 28 mins

Kerry Rupp is a General Partner at True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in women-led businesses that improve human and/or environmental health. She is a board director for True Wealth Ventures’ portfolio companies Partum Health, Rosy and RubyWell, and a board observer for Atlantic Sea Farms. She previously served as board director for BrainCheck, Flourish, reHarvest Provisions and VidaFuel.

She has als...

Mark as Played

Today we welcome to the podcast Syama Bunten, transformational wealth leader, Co-Founder of the Wealth Catalyst Summit, host of the Getting Rich Together podcast, and creator of The Wealth Catalyst Substack. Through events in San Francisco, New York City, and nationwide salons, she empowers women to speak openly about money, take control of their financial futures, and bridge the money-confidence gap. With women on track to inherit...

Mark as Played

Annie Belanger, is the co-founder of the Abundance Collective a community that empowers women to participate in the flow of money and increase their investing acumen.

Annie has lived many lives, from her tenure in the hedge fund world as a Female Founder and angel investor, to her most important role, the mother of 3 children.

She previously worked in finance at Conquest Capital, a CTA hedge fund, and at the Park Hill Group, a divisi...

Mark as Played

This week we bring to you a special year-end wrap-up joint episode where I’m joined by my friend and fellow podcast host Marcia Dawood of the Angel Next Door Podcast.

We had a great conversation reflecting on everything 2024 had to offer, the inspiring guests, the lessons learned, and the topics that resonated with our listeners. From game-changing conversations with leading experts, investors, founders and change-makers to surprisi...

Mark as Played
December 13, 2024 23 mins

Halle Kaplan-Allen is the Director of Growth at Sydecar an innovative platform that helps you start and run your investment vehicles — so you can focus on making deals, not spreadsheets. In this conversation we talk about Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVS), how to angel invest alongside other women, how SPVS help founders add more angels to the cap table while managing the investor relations aspects, and Sydecar’s solutions for founde...

Mark as Played


 

Kimberly Smith is the Chief Capital Formation Officer of Andalusian Credit Partners a solutions-oriented middle market direct lending platform. In this conversation we discuss private capital versus private equity, building opportunity and access to dealflow, women in private capital and finance, and why diverse leadership is important in finance.


Kimberly was previously the Chief Capital Formation Officer at Techstars, where she l...

Mark as Played
November 29, 2024 25 mins

Marisa Warren is the Founder & Managing Partner of ALIAVIA Ventures and Founder of ELEVACAO. Marisa invests in female-founded tech startups across the U.S. and Australia.

Beginning her career in enterprise software sales in 2001, Marisa went on to build the Microsoft Partner Development Centre for Australia and Southeast Asia. Marisa's efforts resulted in customer acquisition targets exceeding 230% and as a result she received the M...

Mark as Played

Jennifer Pullen and Zain Pirani are the co-founders of Zenn Capital a strategic partner for growth companies, providing a suite of services designed to propel success in today's dynamic business landscape. Their expertise lies in private placements encompassing equity, debt, and hybrid financing solutions. They specialize in fundraising for founders and fund managers across distinct categories, where the managers have established t...

Mark as Played

Nyakio Grieco, Co-founder of Thirteen Lune and Founder of Relevant: Your Skin Seen is a beauty entrepreneur and advocate for clean, inclusive beauty that suits all skin types, tones, and needs. As a veteran beauty founder and trusted industry voice, Nyakio has launched two successful businesses: her award- winning brand nyakioTM, based on her family’s Kenyan roots and beauty secrets that launched in 2002, and inclusive beauty e-com...

Mark as Played

Dr. Nikki Lanier, CEO of Harper Slade and Founder of the RAARE Woman Collective.  As CEO and founder of Harper Slade one of the fastest-growing and most highly recognized race, inclusion, equity, & diversity advisory firms in the country, Nikki’s work focuses on helping organizations cultivate environments where black and brown talent can thrive. Nikki alsofounded the RAARE Women Collective, a global coaching program for “inclined”...

Mark as Played

Laura Rippy, is a Managing Partner and Board Member at Alumni Ventures. She runs the Women's Fund, the Harvard-focused fund (The Yard Ventures), and the Dartmouth-focused fund (Green D Ventures) which she grew to be the largest fund at Alumni Ventures. 

Alumni Ventures is America's Largest Venture Firm for Individuals with more than 10,000 individual accredited investors investing in their funds and is considered by PitchBook to be ...

Mark as Played

Jenny co-founded PEAK6 in 1997 with $1.6M in seed capital as a proprietary options trading firm and since then has grown it into a multibillion-dollar financial services and technology giant housing the next generation of products & service brands including PEAK6 Capital Management, PEAK6 Strategic Capital, Apex Fintech Solutions, PEAK6 InsurTech, and Zogo.

With a true knack for unearthing talent and opportunities, Jenny looks for u...

Mark as Played
October 18, 2024 26 mins

Linnea Roberts is the Founder & CEO, GingerBread Capital a venture fund launched in 2016 to build and invest in women’s entrepreneurial success and support the growing ecosystem of emerging funders who share a vision of a more equitable and inclusive landscape for female and diverse founders.

Linnea, believes that women-led businesses are changing the world for the better and that they are also really smart investments that are too ...

Mark as Played

Nicole Valentine is FinTech Director at the Milken Institute with over a decade of financial services, international mergers and acquisitions, technology, and innovation experience. In this episode we explore The Milken Institute's leadership in convening conversations and education around fintech, how fintech impacts our everyday lives, and how AI and diverse voices lend to the growing opportunities in fintech.

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEW...

Mark as Played
September 27, 2024 27 mins

This week's episode features Allyson Eman, CEO of the Venture Atlanta Conference, connecting founders and funders through one of the nation’s largest venture capital conferences and communities. 17 years ago the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Technology Association of Georgia, the Atlanta CEO Council came together to launch Venture Atlanta. 

This is the story of the growth the Venture Atlanta Summit and the venture ecosystem in Atlanta. The...

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    The Burden

    The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.

    SmartLess

    "SmartLess" with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, & Will Arnett is a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity. A nice surprise: in each episode of SmartLess, one of the hosts reveals his mystery guest to the other two. What ensues is a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the SmartLess mind. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.

    The Breakfast Club

    The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.