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Brittany brings experience sourcing early-stage ventures for investment, conducting diligence, and managing an investment pipeline. She was a Manager at Village Capital where she analyzed opportunities and created investment recommendations in the fintech, education, health, food/agriculture, and energy sectors. Previously, she founded an ecommerce startup, Runway Technologies, while completing an MBA at Harvard Business School. She gained experience supporting entrepreneurs as an Associate at Techstars and as a Mentor at Startup Jamaica, built a solid foundation in finance working at Bank of America Merrill Lynch for 5 years, and received her BS in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Arnulfo “Chacho” Valadez, Jr., fulfills the important role of assisting Backstage Managing Partner, Arlan Hamilton, ensuring operations run smoothly and successfully. An aspiring venture capitalist soon to complete his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration + Marketing, he has experience with running day-to-day operations at SMBs, business development, and sales. The son of an immigrant, Chacho has a strong desire to highlight diversity, especially amongst the Hispanic Entrepeneur community. You might also find him fishing for bass + pike with his wife, working on his golf swing, cheering on Wisconsin sports teams, and exploring his new home of Metro-Detroit. 🎣🏌🏽

Greer has worked in the legal industry for 8 years, most recently focused on emerging growth companies and venture capital. Her VC operational expertise includes everything from stock certificate distribution to due diligence process. She holds a BA in Journalism from California State University Northridge. Greer is also an avid sports fan.

Del Johnson is a Principal at Backstage Capital focused on sourcing and vetting potential portfolio investments, as well as supporting operations on the East Coast. Previously, Del worked with the People Operations team at Google coordinating the engineering hiring committee, directing the candidate gifts program for the Mountain View headquarters, and developing an internal initiative that added over 50 women and minority engineers to the company’s hiring pipeline. He was also an award-winning account manager at Oracle, where he led complex B2B enterprise and mid-market software sales cycles from sourcing to close. Del holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and received his Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School.

Christie is Partner + Chief of Staff of Backstage Capital. She is responsible for guiding our Crew to ensure Backstage runs smoothly towards its mission as well as joining Managing Partner, Arlan Hamilton, in making investment decisions (aka signing Headliners!) Christie has extensive experience creating valuable partnerships between startups and Fortune 500 top 20 corporations, and joins Backstage from her role as Venture Development Manager at Verizon Ventures. Christie holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from San Jose State University, and an MBA from University of Phoenix.

Arlan built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a fund that is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now invested nearly $5m into over 80 startup companies led by underestimated founders.

Arlan is also tour manager to Atlantic Records recording artist Janine. Having founded and published the internationally distributed indie magazine INTERLUDE, and toured extensively as a live music production professional, she enters the venture investing world from an unconventional path. When she’s not writing about herself in the 3rd person, she enjoys yelling at teenagers from her porch, writing the ‘L Word’ fanfic twitter page @ModernLWord, and watching the hell out of some ‘General Hospital’. 👊🏾

Bryan is COO at Backstage, translating vision into execution. He works to grow our impact globally through Backstage Accelerator, invest in the best underestimated founders through Backstage Capital, and support our team and founders through Backstage Studio. He also produces + co-hosts Backstage Capital’s podcast (The Bootstrapped VC, leads overall brand design, and creates content for Green Room. Bryan’s past work with startups ranges from helping the early Pinterest team with HTML email campaigns to leading visual design and co-leading product at Zapier (YC S12). He holds a BFA from CalArts and has been a touring + recording banjoist in Nashville, a film/TV composer, and a music editor for the Reba McEntire sitcom, of which Arlan is a fan.

Amiah is an Operations Associate, assistant to Backstage Partner + COO Christie Pitts, and an Analyst on the Deal Flow Team. Originally from Inglewood, CA, she’s is a perpetual learner interested in examining the myriad ways founders harness, strategize, and utilize their unique socio-cultural location at the intersection of technology and finance. At Barnard College of Columbia University in NYC, Amiah leveraged sociology to explore gender and organizational leadership (specifically for Women and Women of Color), entrepreneurship, and business development. She has worked and led social innovation impact projects for a wide variety of non-profits, community organizations, higher education institutes, and corporations. Amiah is focused on startups bringing innovation to the beauty and wellness industry.