According to the 2014 data from the Center for Venture Research, 26 percent of U.S. angel investors were women and merely 8 percent were minorities. Intending to increase the diversity in the U.S. angel investor community, Pipeline Fellowship creates capital for underrepresented black women and Latina women.

Pipeline Fellowship is an angel investing bootcamp for women social entrepreneurs, especially minority businesswomen, and its programs include training, mentee-mentor pitch and commercial practice.

Participating in Pipeline Fellowship, members will gain access to workshops on various business topics, such as Due Diligence, Valuation, Portfolio Strategies and Measuring impact. The experts who lead the workshops include seasoned angel investors, VCs, experienced entrepreneurs, and impact investing professionals.

During the Pipeline Fellowship Pitch Summit, invited women entrepreneurs could present their for-profit legal structures to secure their funding.

“We’re changing the face of angel investing.” The slogan marked on the homepage of Pipeline Fellowship, accompanied with the black background, shows the intention of supporting female entrepreneurs with colored skin.

Recently, Pipeline Fellowship cooperated with Black MBA Women and BeVisible, two social media platform for Black and Latina businesswomen, and enlisted them as recruitment ambassadors for African American and Latina women.

Both Black MBA Women and BeVisible offer black women and Latina women who participate in Pipeline Fellowship $1,000 scholarships.

Daria Burke, the founder of Black MBA Women, said, “We simply have to do a better job in supporting black women leaders by taking an active role in their development.” BeVisible Co-Founder Andrea Guendelman thought, “Relationships and access to capital are the biggest roadblocks for Latina Entrepreneurs.”

With the effort from Pipeline Fellowship, from 2011 to 2015, the percentage of women angel investors in the U.S. has increased 14 percent, and the percentage of minority angels in the U.S. has increased 4 percent.

Aware of the obstacle that black women and Latinas are facing, such as the lack of networking and funding, Natalia Oberti Noguera, founder & CEO of Pipeline Fellowship, told us that, “We need to bet on black women and Latinas. There are enough white guys investing in other white guys—let’s get more of us investing in more of us.”

As a Latina entrepreneur at the same time, Oberti Noguera added that “I’m committed to engaging underrepresented voices.” By offering supports on education, mentoring and practice, Pipeline Fellowship fights for the success of women who are originally from undeveloped countries and impoverished areas.

– Shengyu Wang

Sources: Black Enterprise, Pipeline Fellowships
Photo: Flickr