Nicole McCarthy’s Post

Working with #Chicago startups now for the past 3 years, I have been able to witness some incredible milestones in the journeys of amazing companies, and have made even better friends and role models. I want to celebrate three of those (and yes, they all happen to be #womenfounders 👭) 🌍 I met Erica Bethe Levin in 2022 when she pitched her company, Globowl, to Mars via World Business Chicago's collaboration with Venture Engine. We drank espresso martinis for hours after the pitch event and I knew I had made a true friend. Fast forward 2 years and now you can watch Erica on the current season of Gordon Ramsey's Food Stars. She is THAT talented. Erica- your tenacity and passion for baby food that doesn't suck has led you here and you deserve all the success in the world! #TeamVanderpump 🍄 The second month of my role with WBC's innovation and venture team, I moderated a virtual fireside chat with this really cool woman who claimed she could turn trash into treasure using mushrooms 👀 As I learned more about Joanne Rodriguez, LEED AP, FitWel Amb, CDT's story, I was in awe of her brilliance. Last month, she announced a sustainable partnership between her company, Mycocycle, Inc. and French flooring giant, Tarkett. Joanne you are literally making the world a better place! 🍻 Today, Jess A., founder of INT'L CAFE invited a small crew of supporters to become brewmasters at Revolution Brewing Chicago as she launched her own beer! Jess's language events now take place in breweries across 5 states and she plans to be in 100 cities by 2025. You can try "Malty-lingual" at Revolution's tap room starting August 15 (and practice a new language while you're at it). Jess is unstoppable. She's also a great karaoke singer 🎤 These women are incredible people growing incredible companies- please get to know them and support them! 👏

Every time I learn more about the LGBTQ+ business community, I become more inspired and awestruck by the brilliance, resilience, and strength of our community. WE ARE AMAZING 🌈 On Tuesday I travelled to NYC (for the first time since I was a teenager!) to attend the New York Stock Exchange's Freedom: Celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride at NYSE, their inaugural event celebrating LGBTQIA+ folks in business, venture, and entrepreneurship. I learned that 1.4 million LGBTQ+ business owners add $1.7 trillion to the U.S. economy each year. We deliver outsized returns on investments, 44% more exits, and create 36% more jobs than the average founder. Yet we only receive 0.5% of venture funding and .8% of corporate board seats. Panelists like Lule D., Brian Gumbel and Phil Schraeder encouraged the audience to be unapologetic about representation, demand diverse talent pipelines, lead with vulnerability, and rise above fear to ensure those who come after us don't experience discrimination in the workplace. Myrna Soto and James Cole, Jr. gave one of the most insightful and vulnerable panels, sharing their experiences coming out as lesbian and gay on high-profile corporate boards and the pressure they sometimes feel to go above and beyond to positively represent the community. Shout out to James for achieving gender parity on the AIG board! (If your board isn't at least 50/50, what are you actively doing to change that?) Ben Stokes, Densil Porteous, and Paul Grossinger made the business case for investing in LGBTQ+ founders and products focused on the queer community. They talked about the historically inequitable practices of the VC system and how changing investment theses will lead to more diverse founders. Some of my favorite lines of the day: 🏳️🌈 On the value of creating products for the LGBTQ+ community: "If you solve for the margins, you solve for the majority." - Ben Stokes, Chasing Rainbows ⭐ On investing in historically underinvested populations: "Without investing, there is no closing the wealth gap. It's not an income gap.. it's a wealth gap." - Lule D., eToro 🌈 On being out and proud in the workplace: "When you find true joy in the work that you're doing, you bring your full self to it." - Densil Porteous, Pride Fund 1 Matan Eden and Erick Diaz: putting together an event of this scale is so much work and your team absolutely killed it. Thank you for bringing together so many LGBTQ+ change-makers into one iconic room at the NYSE! I already can't wait to bring more Chicago folks with me next year 👏 💡 Other than changing your company logo to a rainbow in June, how is your org supporting LGBTQ+ employees, partners, and customers? How are you ensuring equitable treatment and advancement of your LGBTQ+ colleagues? Are you calling out discriminatory behavior when you see it? We ALL play a part in creating a future where LGBTQIA+ folks thrive (cuz we're awesome)! 🏳️🌈 #inclusion #LGBTQ #Pride #entrepreneurship #venture #investing

Exciting announcement: World Business Chicago is thrilled to be sending four incredible high-growth, venture-backed founders to London Tech Week June 10-14 via the Women Founders Travel Fund! 💂♀️ Meet the founders: 🇬🇧 Anna Lisa Somera, CEO of Rhaeos, clinical stage medical device company developing FlowSense, a platform technology and a noninvasive wireless, wearable skin patch that can assess and monitor fluid flow subdermally throughout the body. 🇬🇧 Kendra Cole, Co-Founder of Sparrow Finance, a fintech company with a mission to increase accessibility and ownership of bitcoin to women. 🇬🇧 Karishma Bali, Founder and CEO of Drip, an ai wearables company building to optimize physiological performance. 🇬🇧 Tamika Vantifflin, Founder and CEO of AEGIS APP, personal safety mobile application that modernizes and simplifies 911 communication. Meet the facilitator: ⭐ WBC all-star Innovation Program Manager, Manleen Rajput will be leading this delegation to London Tech Week! Please contact Manleen with any opportunities to connect these awesome founders with investors, speaking opportunities, or networking while in London: mrajput@worldbusinesschicago.com. We are incredibly grateful to our friends at London & Partners, HERE EAST, and the UK Department for Business and Trade for being amazing partners in providing opportunities, resources, vital introductions, and access for these founders! 👏 A very special thank you to Elle Ramel, James Cummings, Chloë Griffin, Michael Magan, Jack Fraser, and Kayla Auletto for all of their support! Women, non-binary, and trans Chicagoland founders: we will have more travel grant opportunities this summer, fall, and in 2025- stay tuned 🛫

With Pride Month kicking off tomorrow (yay! 🏳️🌈 ) I've been working on compiling a centralized list of events and resources geared towards queer entrepreneurs, techies, and business professionals. Please feel free to utilize and share: https://lnkd.in/gS7cptQg. What is missing? Let's make this a living community document! If you don't see an event or resource on there that you think would be valuable for the LGBTQIA+ business/entrepreneur community, please add it! 💡 Also consider adding your name to the "People to Know" tab if you are open to being contacted for networking events, 1-1 coffees, founder support, etc. Cheers to a safe, happy, inclusive kick-off to Pride Month! 🌟 🏳️🌈 #PrideMonth #LGBTQIA+ #BusinessResources #Inclusive #Events

Started Future-of-Food Week by World Business Chicago off right today with rooftop yoga and smoothies! 🧘♀️ Thank you to our host, Alison Borgmeyer, MS, RD of Edelman and to our fantastic teacher, Kristen Freeman Wojahn. And to the city of Chicago for providing a great view on a gorgeous day! #FutureofFood #Chicago #Startups

📣 It's finally Future-of-Food Week by World Business Chicago! 🥑 Food/bev/ag entrepreneurs, investors, and ecosystem partners: join us for 25+ events over the next 5 days! 📆 May 20-24: peruse an entire list of events here: https://lnkd.in/dbZbaScj. DM me if you have questions about an event! 🗒 Check out over 130 innovative companies in our 2024 startup portfolio: https://lnkd.in/d2sMSSFx 🖋 Did someone say fancy press release? https://lnkd.in/dCgvCQS6. Thanks, Andrew Hayes and team! 🦄 We're grateful to our sponsors and partners: Consulate General of Canada in Chicago | Le Consulat général du Canada à Chicago , Mars, Edelman, DuPage County, Ajinomoto Co., Inc., Cooley LLP, Microsoft, Relish Works, TechNexus Venture Collaborative, foode, Drip, Chicago:Blend, TechRise Chicago, Orion3, Bluestein Ventures, Listen Ventures, Naturally Chicago, The Executives' Club of Chicago, Enthuse Foundation, and more! 🤠 Hats off to the World Business Chicago team: Abin Kuriakose, Lauren Backe, and Billy Ndizeye, plus so many more who helped bring this week to life! #food #foodandbev #startups #chicago #chicagoland #investors #entrepreneurs #innovation #events

I'm just going to say it: David Brooks is not worth celebrating. I am confused to see so many of my industry friends who I admire and revere greatly attend his talks in Chicago the past few days, with no mention of his deeply problematic views on LGBTQ+ rights and life-saving gender affirming care for transgender kids, among other things. I am hoping that due to Brooks' dog-whistle method of writing, folks truly didn't know about his stances on these issues. If you didn't know better, it would be hard to call him out. But I do, and I have no problem if I'm the only person in Chicago not singing his praises. He writes from a place of cowardice about issues that don't directly impact his life, but have far reaching consequences for people with less power. He tells queer folks to ask for our rights politely until the rest of society comes around (because that's always worked so well). He spreads dangerous misinformation about life-saving gender affirming healthcare for adolescents. And he does it all under the guise of a need for open dialogue. I believe diversity of thought is important. I think bringing in speakers from all political spectrums to our city, while I might disagree with them, is valuable. But if we talk a big game about building an inclusive tech/business ecosystem in Chicago where ALL people can thrive, then we cannot platform people like Brooks without also recognizing his transphobic and homophobic views. It's about to be Pride Month, and some orgs are going to promote someone like Brooks and then turn around and try to celebrate Pride, a month that is only possible due to the activism and sacrifice of TRANS women of color like Marsha P Johnson and Silvia Rivera. Let's ask them to do better. I strongly believe that if enough of us refuse to support certain speakers/organizations/platforms they will be forced to look at their beliefs/policies and course correct. We cannot underestimate the power that each of our voices holds. I value trans rights and the lives of my trans friends and colleagues. Do you? Articles to read: 1. https://lnkd.in/eD_C6pXV 2. https://lnkd.in/eKYXAJZn 3. https://lnkd.in/ecs_ju8Q A fun critique of his book, Bobos in Paradise: https://lnkd.in/eAX_FT4h. "The only reason to listen to David Brooks is some sort of empty commitment to idealogical diversity. But what is the point of intellectual diversity if the person we're hearing out is shallow, and lazy, and lying, and wrong?" *these views are my own and are not the views of my employer or any associated organizations*

🚨 Chicago founders! Apply to pitch for up to $5M (up to $1M per studio winner) in investment during the world’s largest global cross-sector innovation conference on August 27 & 28 the RALLY Conference in Indianapolis. The 25 IN-Prize finalists will pitch before an audience of venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs, early adopters, corporate executives, universities, and partners. Studios include: 💻 Software 🏥 Healthcare 🥑 Food & Ag 🚜 HardTech 🏅 SportsTech 📅 Deadline to apply: May 5, 2024 at 11:59PM ET

Back in early March, I found myself preparing for one of the most incredible professional opportunities I have ever had- moderating a fireside chat at SXSW with Sophia Bush and Nia Batts. During a prep call to go over questions and get to know each other, I asked the two- who are best friends and business partners- if they would be comfortable taking questions from the audience. Going into true protective bestie mode, Nia stated kindly but firmly that Sophia would be featured in the May issue of Glamour, where she would give more details on her personal life. They really wanted to keep this fireside about their impact investing and entrepreneurship (as did I). Understandably, she didn't want anyone asking her best friend invasive, inappropriate questions. "Of course," I said. "I've been through a divorce too, and would never want to put her in a position to talk about that before she's ready. We'll make sure any questions asked are strictly pertaining to your work with Union Heritage." At the time, I didn't understand the full extent of what Sophia was going through in her personal life, or the barrage of harassment and invasive questioning she was receiving from strangers. Now that I do know, I am beyond impressed by her ability to get on a stage and be her full, shiny self. Instead of running and hiding, she continues dedicating herself to impact investing work that sends positive ripple effects to hundreds of small business owners and their families. We never ended up having time for an audience Q&A. But what we did have time for was a robust, insightful conversation around the state of diversity in investing, their journeys into entrepreneurship (failures, wins, and all), the role money plays in each of their lives, and why its important to see women and people of color at the helm of businesses and cap tables: https://lnkd.in/e5dpYYEr If you haven't read the Glamour piece, please do. In a world that tells women to live their lives for other people, Sophia is brave to choose her authentic self. I hope her vulnerability inspires others to do the same. https://lnkd.in/ePjxj2un I am so honored to have shared the stage with Sophia, even if just for 30 minutes at Midwest House in March. Make sure to follow the investing work she, Nia, and many other talented folks are doing by following Union Heritage.