Good morning, Broadsheet readers! There’s new research into the lack of women CEOs, team Australia fights equal pay in soccer, and Fortune senior writer Maria Aspan has an exclusive report on an early VC network selling itself to a nonprofit. Have a terrific Tuesday!
– Non-profit venture. In 2011, entrepreneur Natalia Oberti Noguera founded a for-profit company called Pipeline Angels to bring more women into the male-dominated world of private investing through networking and bootcamps. It was a small but high profile early effort to address a huge (and ongoing) problem: The lack of female investors exacerbates the persistent lack of money backing female founders, especially women of color and those who come from other marginalized groups.
Over the next decade—as Silicon Valley’s growth exploded, but the percentage of venture capital invested in women remained stubbornly tiny—Pipeline Angels continued trying to rebalance its corner of this unequal financial ecosystem. Today, the company has trained hundreds of women and nonbinary members to become early-stage investors.
But now Oberti Noguera is handing off the reins. She has sold Pipeline Angels to the nonprofit Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL), run by cofounder and CEO Jill Johnson, The Broadsheet is exclusively reporting.
Terms of the deal, which closed in late June, were not disclosed. IFEL had net assets of $985,849 at the end of 2021, according to tax filings. Pipeline Angels members have invested about $8 million since 2011 in about 120 companies, including Mahmee, CareAcademy, and Goalsetter, according to Oberti Noguera.
The sale is “bittersweet,” says Oberti Noguera, who will continue to consult for Pipeline Angels through 2024. Her company counts more than 540 graduates of its angel investing training programs, including managers and executives at PayPal, Citigroup, and Howard University.
But the pandemic forced Pipeline Angels’ training camps to go online; then they went on hiatus for the first half of 2022. As Oberti Noguera marked ten years of running her company, while trying to scale up its digital growth strategy, she came to realize that “what got you here won’t get you there,” she says. As she looked for buyers, “what got to me, with respect to Jill, was an affinity when it comes to values [and] representation.”
Johnson already had decades of experience working to close the wealth gap for underrepresented founders. The daughter of Black entrepreneurs, who ran a newspaper publishing business in New Jersey, Johnson started her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs before she and her father cofounded their Newark-based nonprofit in 2002. Today, IFEL already has programs specifically supporting women of color entrepreneurs and Black angel investors.
“I’m very focused on these issues at a systemic level,” Johnson says. “We want to see this system of how people think about investing, and how they think about making decisions, change—so that in the next 10 years, we’re just not having the same conversation about access to capital.”
Maria Aspan
maria.aspan@fortune.com
@mariaaspan
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Executive women. New research from global data company BoardEX shows that CEOs are often promoted from very specific corporate roles, and women are disproportionately absent from them. According to BoardEx data, high concentrations of women in HR and marketing positions largely take them out of the running for CEO. Companies should adjust their hiring practices to place women in executive and operations positions. Financial Times
- Equal pay. The Matildas, Australia’s women’s soccer team, is leading the charge against FIFA to guarantee equal prize money for both the men’s and women’s World Cups. In a video published by the team yesterday, the Matildas criticized FIFA for only offering $110 million for the winner of the women’s tournament this year compared to the $330 million payed out to the winner of the 2022 Men’s World Cup. Washington Post
- Bad news for Wood. Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF has seen better days. The fund has rallied more than 50% this year, but investors have pulled a net $717 million out of the ETF in the past 12 months. The fund's assets have shrunk from a high of $30 billion to $9 billion, and investors are taking this year’s rally as an opportunity to exit before future losses. Wall Street Journal
- Breaking records. With the recent release of the chart-topping “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)," Taylor Swift now has more No. 1 albums than any woman in history. The rerecorded version of her 2010 album has sold more copies than any album this year and became the 12th No. 1 album in Swift’s discography, putting her total ahead of the 11 No. 1 albums from previous record holder Barbara Streisand. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Brooks Wallace joins Deep Sky as a vice president of communications and marketing.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Porter problems. Katie Porter remains the frontrunner in the race to replace California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, but the outspoken adversary of big banks is facing new controversy for her stint at a mortgager servicer in 2015. Porter aides and advisors claim that Porter's consultant position at Ocwen Financial Corporation, which she held just after a $2.1 billion settlement between Ocwen and California homeowners over deceitful practices and other misconduct, involved advising the company on how to effectively communicate with customers. Politico
- Saying goodby to an icon. Judy Solomon, former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and original proponent of the Golden Globes, passed away last weekend at the age of 91. Solomon began her career as a journalist before joining HFPA, supporting the development of the Golden Globes award ceremony, and serving six terms as the organization's president. Variety
- Yellen speaks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made clear yesterday that a recession is not on the horizon for the U.S., despite slow economic growth and high interest rates. Yellen is optimistic about recent statistics showing low unemployment rates and shrinking inflation, but warned that China’s dragging economy could slow U.S. growth. Bloomberg
- New Tubi Exec. Former Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud has been named as the new chief executive officer of Tubi, the free, ad-based streaming service from Fox Corp. Sud juggled various executive positions in the nine years she spent at Vimeo; she will start at Tubi in September. Variety
ON MY RADAR
How the speaker of the New York City Council gets it done The Cut
Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran thinks you shouldn't 'have to work your buns off to get rich,' saying the thought never crossed her mind Fortune
Joyce Carol Oates figured out the secret to immortality New York Times
PARTING WORDS
"In a really good, and really difficult, way, comedy provides me with context about where I fit into the world. It makes me feel like we're all just humans and we can all get along."
—Actor and comedian Sabrina Wu on comedy and their understanding of the world.
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