Democratizing Investing in Women

Kelley is the founder of Golden Hour Ventures, angel investor, consultant for women-founded business, and advocate for women in finance. She began her career at a professional football franchise (go Eagles!), rotated through various operating companies at Johnson & Johnson, and moved to investment banking at Merrill Lynch, specializing in public finance and healthcare mergers and acquisitions.

Kelley founded Golden Hour Ventures, with one mission in mind: to Make Women Rich. We do this by activating female angel investors, bringing women closer to their finances, realizing the power of our collective consumption, and diverting the flow of venture capital from 98% male founded companies to the incredible women founded companies who are ready to scale.

Kelley has since consulted with dozens of brands, and loves helping founders find their voice. She has a portfolio of 20 companies, boasting 18 companies founded by women. She is a proud mother of two wild boys, an advocate for students with special needs, and a regular volunteer with the Osborne Association, mentoring formerly incarcerated people reentering the job force.

Halle Kaplan-Allen is the Head of Revenue at Sydecar where she is responsible for growing the ecosystem of VCs building their businesses on Sydecar’s standards-driven investing infrastructure. She is passionate about building a more inclusive tech ecosystem and has helped hundreds of founders and funders raise millions of dollars to date. Halle has previously led strategic operations teams at multiple startups, building systems and processes to enable scale.

Laura Nix Gerson is VP of Partnerships for Worth Media Group where she drives strategic partnerships and business development opportunities for the company. Additionally, Laura spearheads community and events for Women & Worth, bringing groundbreaking business leaders, innovative founders and industry experts together to accelerate progress toward a more equitable economy for women.

Laura has led both agency and corporate environments, where business development, marketing strategy, community building, audience growth and communications have been key components of her expertise. Laura has a knack for seeing the opportunities in specific introductions and is known for creating strategic partnerships that garner results.

Throughout her career, Laura has advised start-ups and entrepreneurs on business growth strategies. An advocate for female founders, she launched FOUNDED, a curated community for female founders focused on strategic introductions, to help founders grow and scale their businesses. She is also the host and producer of the Venture F Podcast, delving into conversations with founders, funders and financial experts discovering solutions for creating greater opportunity, gender equity and wealth for women.

As the CEO and Co-Founder of Nix|Gerson Media, a development and production company with a focus on storytelling that celebrates women, she produced The Riveter Stories, and developed four series for television. An expert at content development she has booked hundreds of top-tier speakers for interview series, panel discussions, events and conferences to include four years of the annual SoCal Wellness Summit, The MomFair (career conferences to help moms return to work), the United State of Women, Women’s Entrepreneurship Day and numerous events during her tenure at Leader Publishing Group.

Via her platform MomAngeles Media, she spent 10 years working with brands in the parenting and women’s and maternal health & wellness space. This was a formative time in her career that she credits with a deeper appreciation for the ability of women to innovate, launching businesses that solve challenges women and moms deal with every day.

As a writer, she has been a contributor to CBS LA Local, Babble and Modern Mom.