Lauren Washington

Lauren is the cofounder of Black Women Talk Tech, Talk Tech Association and Fundr.

Founded in 2017, Black Women Talk Tech’s mission is to help black women create the next billion dollar business. In a few years, it became the largest conference for black women founders and spun off to Black Men Talk Tech in 2019. It extended its mission by creating a non-profit, Talk Tech Association, which has since grown to local cities chapters around the world.

Given her experiences with fundraising and hearing stories from the hundreds of women she’s worked with, Lauren created Fundr in 2019, a platform that automates seed investing by creating portfolios of vetted startups for angel investors.

Her companies have won multiple awards including 43North, the largest global business competition and the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Award. She has been featured in The New York Times, Elle, Inc and Black Enterprise and has been listed as a top female entrepreneur in CIO Magazine, Essence Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Lauren started her career as a special education teacher with Teach for America and went on to develop marketing and data strategy for over 100 global companies. She started her entrepreneurial journey with her first company, KeepUp, a social listening platform.

She has her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. She is on the board of advisors for SXSW Pitch and is the board chair of Talk Tech Association.