“Despite being in Palo Alto, I was pretty unaware of the magic of Silicon Valley while in school. A few fortuitous conversations later, here I am.”

I’m a venture partner at defy. As the child of Sudanese immigrants—one of whom built her business from the ground up—I have profound appreciation and respect for founders. I love meeting entrepreneurs in the earliest stages of their journey, and working alongside them as they pursue their own version of the American dream.

I cut my teeth in the business world as a consultant at Bain & Company, where I was fortunate to work with world-class leadership teams across different industries and at different stages of the company growth cycle. I supported a public tech company on its cloud strategy, a private consumer tech company experiencing hypergrowth (reaching $1B+ in annual sales in less than 5 years) on its complete org redesign, and legacy utility and built environment firms on performance improvement. While formally consulting with large companies at Bain, I informally advised friends who were at the earliest stages of building their own companies, leveraging the skills I picked up to offer support.

I entered early stage investing when I joined Aspect Ventures as the first outside hire. While there, I co-ran the seed practice and was heavily involved in 20+ deals across both consumer and enterprise, including Chime, The Mom Project, Later and Gusto. I also spent time at Gusto on the Business Development team, evaluating growth initiatives through potential company partnerships, alliances with large organizations and trade groups and new channel expansions. Most recently, I was a principal at Ridge Ventures where I invested in enterprise software, leading deals such as Codify and TrueRoll. I served on the board of Jyve and led the firm’s foray into B2B marketplaces and tech-enabled services.

I was born in Sudan, grew up in Philadelphia and attended Stanford for biomechanical engineering. Though I’d never set foot in California before my orientation, I had a blast, served on student government, ran our student store and was an RA in the largest dorm on campus. Because I had some unfinished business (winning an intramural championship) I returned to Stanford for my MBA in general management, and served on the Student-Alumni Council and co-chaired our class gift committee.

I’m extremely excited by the potential of technology to aid in the social, economic, and political development of emerging markets. I also love playing, watching and having my heart broken by sports, dreaming of a standup comedy career and learning about nearly everything.

I’m excited to be a part of the team at defy, working with amazing people and supporting great entrepreneurs building extraordinary companies.