Deena Shakir

Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital, where she invests in transformative technologies streamlining analog industries and improving lives and livelihoods. She is particularly interested in intersectional and polymath entrepreneurs building breakthrough companies and accelerating advances and equity in human and population health.

Since joining us in late 2019, she has led Lux’s investment in H1, enabling healthcare innovation via collaboration across stakeholders, Shiru, a company that leverages computational design to create enhanced proteins to help feed the world sustainably, Mos, a technology platform seeking to democratize access to education, and Neo.tax, whose advanced NLP simplifies SMB accounting to unlock scientific innovation. Deena serves on the boards of H1, Shiru, and Allstripes (fka RDMD), a data platform for rare disease drug development.

Prior to joining Lux, Deena was a Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), where she worked closely with a multitude of investments, including Slack, One Medical, Quartet, PatientPing, Tamr, and Segment. She previously led product partnerships for early stage products in healthcare, AI/ML, civic innovation and search at Google and also directed social impact investments at Google.org.

Before she became an investor, Deena had diverse people-centric global experiences as an aspiring anthropologist, journalist, diplomat, aid worker and technologist. She was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010. Her non-traditional path to venture capital landed her in roles that brought people together to foster partnerships through diplomacy, public service, and technology. It has also cultivated Deena’s deep conviction in the potential of breakthrough ventures to positively transform the future and an unparalleled network to help them achieve it.

Deena serves on the Boards of several non-profits including Tarjimly, TechWadi, Technovation and AMIDEAST. She is a Kauffman Fellow, a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, and a founding VC member of the Valence Fund Network for Black entrepreneurs. A Forbes contributor, she has also been featured in TechCrunch, Fortune, Crunchbase and the Wall Street Journal. Financially independent since the age of 18, Deena self-funded her undergraduate and graduate degrees through a variety of merit scholarships and side hustles, including co-founding her first internet company while still in college. Deena earned a joint BA in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard (where she delivered the graduation address) and an MA from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.