👏 Such a cool moment for the whole Chicago:Blend crew! Shout out to Jessie Casey, a Listener Alumni and force within the Chicago VC scene, who joined them to rep the Blend Fellows program.
🔔 Chicago:Blend RANG THE Nasdaq BELL Y”ALL!! 🌊 Over the past two years the Chicago:Blend Venture Fellowship has been making WAVES with over 80% of our Fellows who were actively seeking VC roles land a role in VC. 🙏 SO many people help make this work possible from our leader Joey Mak, founder Lindsay Knight, and all of our incredible volunteers, mentors, partners, and now alumni. 🏆 It was so special to have this work recognized by Chicago Innovation last fall when we won the Social Innovator award and I'm so grateful they included us on this experience. 💪 To me, this is a win for Chicago and a statement that our ENTIRE tech community is putting in the work here to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the VC ecosystem. 🙌 I’m so happy that our alumni, Jessie Casey was able to join us for this special moment. Jessie was in the Fall 2023 class of Fellows, secured a role with Listen Ventures, and now in the works to start a critical fund here in Chicago and continue putting Chicago on the main stage. We have so many alumni like her and I’m so happy she joined us for this awesome win. 😎 Sounds like the market agreed as the Nasdaq ended up GREEN on our day (https://lnkd.in/d9gq25b5)! 😉 If you’re feeling inspired and want to donate a percentage of your recent market earnings, you can donate to Chicago:Blend here 👉 https://lnkd.in/d8bwWiuY This was all honestly such a cool experience. 👀 Stay tuned for more updates and wins as we have a new class of Fellows starting in September and BIG alumni news coming. The work continues. ✌️