we’re not just investors, we’re partners

Carlton J. Charles is senior vice president of treasury and risk management at Hearst. In addition to his duties as corporate treasurer, Charles oversees the risk management activities of the company through his role as chairman of the Risk Working Group, which he helped start at Hearst. He also is responsible for the company’s insurance operations and is heading up an effort to further diversify the company’s roster of vendor partners. Charles is a member of the Hearst board of directors and is on the board of advisors for HearstLab, Hearst’s platform for nurturing and grooming early-stage, women-led companies.

Charles also serves on the board of BUILD, which teaches entrepreneurship to youth in underserved communities. He was on the board of trustees of St. Thomas Aquinas College and previously served on the board of the Bronx Preparatory Charter School, where he briefly chaired the Audit Committee. Charles is a member of the Executive Leadership Council and National Association of Corporate Directors, where he is a governance fellow.

In 2011, Charles joined Hearst as vice president and treasurer, overseeing treasury, risk management and insurance. Prior to Hearst, he was most recently senior vice president and chief operational risk officer at Moody’s Corporation, an SEC regulated company. Charles was an early architect of Moody’s Enterprise Risk Management program and regularly reported to the Moody’s board on treasury and enterprise risk topics.

Charles holds an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago, and a master’s in public policy and a bachelor’s in quantitative economics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Shashi Srikantan is the Managing Director and Head of Level Up Ventures, where she leads investments in early-stage startups founded by underrepresented founders.

Prior to joining Level Up, Shashi spent over a decade at Hearst’s credit rating business, Fitch Ratings, where she held various analytical and operational risk roles within the agency’s Structured Finance business. Most recently, Shashi spearheaded Fitch’s ESG product rollout for the company’s global asset-backed securities portfolio and worked with Fitch Group’s corporate development team to identify and evaluate cybersecurity risk platforms for potential strategic partnership.

Previously, Shashi launched PLVSH, a fashion tech startup and prior to that, she was part of the Leveraged Finance team at BNP Paribas and at Credit Suisse.

Shashi serves as a Global Board Member for Columbia Venture Community where she founded Project Two.Eight, an accelerator program for female entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of launching a company; she currently leads the organization’s DE&I efforts.  Shashi also serves as a Scout for HearstLab, Hearst’s investment platform for early-stage women-led startups.

Shashi holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s in Finance from Villanova University.

Iyke Iwotor is the Senior Venture Analyst at Hearst Level Up Ventures, where he focuses on operations, sourcing deal flow, due diligence, and deal execution for early-stage startups.

He received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Economics from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. He has a strong foundation in information technology, with experience in analytics and data-driven decision-making.

Iyke began his career at HearstLab as their first venture intern, focusing on data management and sourcing women-led startups for investment. Before that, he co-founded and successfully exited Elevate Thrifts, a thrift retailer centered on sustainable fashion, where he played a key role in operations and team management.

Beyond venture, Iyke is passionate about expanding opportunities for underrepresented communities. He serves as the Executive Director of the Solid Seed Foundation, a nonprofit that provides scholarships to graduating high school seniors in Georgia’s school system, an initiative he leads to give back and support future leaders.

Kange is a professional with experience sourcing, investing in and mentoring early-stage startups. As the VP of SAP.iO North and Latin America and Caribbean, she led SAP's startup accelerator program in the region with a team of 7 and managed 69 startups that have resulted in 3 exits and 1 unicorn. 67% of the startups are led by underrepresented individuals and the 69 startups have raised $600M+ in venture capital collectively.

Kange is also an active angel investor with a focus on access to opportunity. She is a member of Pipeline Angels and The RainMakers Collective, two private communities that provide capital and mentorship to female entrepreneurs who are creating positive change in the world.

With over 16 years of experience in the enterprise software industry, she brings operational experience from roles in business development, sales operations and corporate strategy. In addition, she has a deep network of professionals who lead the innovation teams at Fortune 500 companies that has led to millions of dollars in pilots for startups in her network.

Kange is the chair of the board for KIPP NYC, a network of public charter schools focused on education parity, a 7K+ organization with $200M+ operating budget.

She has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and a Master of Business Administration from New York University Stern School of Business. In 2023 she was named one of the World’s Most Inspiring Women In Business by World’s Leaders magazine and she has shared her leadership story  on In Her Shoes Podcast and Women with Power Rise Podcast. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and loves international travel, cooking, Michael Jackson, dance and theater.

Gary Stewart is the founder of, a VC-backed start-up that uses conversational AI agents and a proprietary semantic recommendation engine that allows tech founders and small business owners to access AI-generated mentorship and warm intros. Prior to that, he was part of an $80 million fund (with JP Morgan as the sole LP) to invest in underrepresented founders. Born in Jamaica and raised in the Bronx, Gary is a VC-backed serial entrepreneur with a successful exit. He is also the inaugural lecturer of entrepreneurship at Yale Law School and was an associate professor of entrepreneurship at IE Business School in Madrid. As an early-stage investor and fund manager in Europe, Gary built a start-up portfolio whose market capitalization grew to $1.6 billion. He is an alumnus of Yale College (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and Yale Law School. He has spoken about entrepreneurship at Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and INSEAD, and he was formerly a contributor to Forbes Magazine.