"Forbes 50 Over 50: Meet the Women Winning Life's Second Half". While scheduling some posts for AZTEC's social media profiles, I came across that intriguing title. Always on the lookout for an interesting topic for a blog post, I decided to dig a little deeper.
What I found was Forbes' fourth annual list of two hundred women in their fifties and beyond whose careers are reaching new heights. These successful women are broken down into four categories of fifty each: impact, innovation, investment, and lifestyle (they were so close to all being I's! Describing its finalists as "culture creators" challenging social norms, the category easily could have been called inspiration, illumination, influence, or even instigation! But I digress). Forbes explains the benefit of this list: "The payoff from all this work is a collection of inspiring women who understand that age and experience can be the best tools for success—and that, ultimately, there is no deadline for becoming who you are meant to be."
Pretty inspiring, right? Whether you find yourself in your thirties worried that you're behind in life, or in your seventies wondering if new achievements can only be found in the rearview mirror, these women serve as an example of success at any age.
Although I'm sure each and every one of them has a riveting story to tell, let's just start with one: underdog-turned-successful-venture-capitalist Miriam Rivera (not to be confused with the deceased model and reality TV star with the same name; it's safe to say I was confused when trying to do research, so let me save you from the same fate).
Sesame Street and Free Lunches
Rivera is open about the struggles of her early years; in fact, she cites them as a contributing reason for her success today. On her bio page for her company's website, she says of her childhood, "I’m an inner-city, Spanish-speaking-first, free-lunch kid born out of wedlock to a mother who initially had less than an 8th-grade education. Domestic violence, crime, mental illness, and trauma punctuated life in our household" (Uluventures). She was born to Puerto Rican migrant farmers in New York, and later settled in Chicago -- the frequent school changes weren't cohesive with an education for Rivera's older sister.
Early on in school, Rivera's teachers recognized both the intelligence and spirit within her. They thought she'd make a good attorney, due to being talented at arguing topics in class. As she got older, she was put in a program for gifted students, and then went to a private high school on scholarship. That school was no other than Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, NH, only half an hour from Dover!
It was a unique experience for her, to say the least. She describes it this way: "I remember everyone was dressed in LL Bean and wore duck shoes. I was thinking ‘what are those ugly shoes!’ But there I was, looking like I had just stepped out of a disco, in a black three-piece polyester suit and big hair. I was very urban, very Saturday Night Fever" (Stanford Lawyer).
Despite the initial culture shock, Rivera made lifelong friendships and excelled academically, eventually earning a scholarship that brought her all the way across the country to Stanford University. There, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology and went into the nonprofit sector, obtaining a job helping women who were re-entering the workforce.
A few years passed before Rivera realized she needed a job that would provide better for herself and her aging mother. She was drawn both to law and business, and after trying to decide which to do, she decided on both. With this action plan, she went back to Stanford, and in 1995, received her JD-MBA.
You could sum up her life so far with two words: hard work. It ran in the family, about which she writes in her bio on Ulu Ventures' website, "Few have ever worked as hard as my migrant farm-worker parents or my mother as a woman raising 5 kids in poverty; not me and I’d been attending some of the country’s most competitive schools and helping support myself since age 14". Whether or not her assessment of her hard work compared to her parents was accurate, she continued to imitate their example.
A Little Startup Called "Google"
With her JD-MBA in hand, Rivera spent the next half a decade working for a few different tech-based startups. A landmark in her career, though, came in November of 2001, when she landed a role as second attorney for a three-year-old search engine company called Google, Inc. Although a young business, Google had already raced to the top of search engine popularity. When Rivera joined the company, their annual revenue was $85m. Not too shabby! Yet by the time she left in 2006, she had helped it skyrocket to $10B. Her role? To create and then lead a legal department that spanned the entire globe, and use that team to re-design, simplify, and improve Google's business contracts. During her time at at the company, she was promoted all the way up to Vice President, and received two Google Founders awards and one Google Luminary award.
According to her bio page referenced earlier, at the interview for Google, the company's former CEO Eric Schmidt said to her, “We take the smartest people we can find and we work them to death.” And she just laughed to herself, because he didn't know the example that had been set for her.
Something a hard worker recognizes, though, is when to take a step back. By 2006, Rivera was exhausted. Despite being offered General Counsel, she left the company and took some much needed time off. Part of that time was spent in Hawaii, which had many similarities to Puerto Rico, where her parents were from.
This Hawaiian escape influenced her next major step: co-founding Ulu Ventures.
"To Grow and Inspire"
Ulu Ventures was founded in 2008 by Rivera and her husband, Clint Korver. It is a seed-stage venture capital firm. In Hawaiian, "Ulu" means "to grow and inspire", so by calling the firm Ulu Ventures, it was an inspiration both for the founders and the entrepreneurs that would work with them. Building up this company wouldn't all be paradisiac, though — among other things, discrimination was something Rivera had to overcome. She explained, "When I first started to raise capital for Ulu Ventures, I asked an experienced venture capitalist for a referral... and he told me that venture capital was a young man’s game — I was really left astounded because I’d served on a board with this person, but he dismissed me out of hand" (MSNBC).
She not only overcame prejudice to create a successful business, though — Ulu Ventures became known to support entrepreneurs that faced the same struggles she did. She didn't set out with that goal, but explains what happened: "We are a traditional venture capital firm that is return-driven. We have no mandate around diversity, but 90% of our companies include a diverse founder, meaning a woman, an underrepresented minority, or an immigrant. We find that most of our teams bring that kind of diversity and have unique skill sets, backgrounds and professional perspectives, all of which make them strong founders and lend their expertise to the problem they're trying to solve" (Forbes). In other words, companies led by a diverse population appeal to a diverse population. Who would've thought?
It's obviously working; Ulu Ventures is now one of the leading VC firms in Silicon Valley. They manage over $400m in assets, aim to invest in at least fifty new companies a year, and so far have backed ten current or recently-exited unicorn startups (unrelated to the mythical creature, although that would be very cool).
An Angel on Sesame Street
As if Rivera didn't have enough balls to juggle, she is also involved in many other activities. She and her husband took the Kauffman Fellows Program, which is designed to educate and refine venture capitalists, as well as provide them networking opportunities. She's also the co-founder of Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs, a network for both angel investors and entrepreneurs searching for funding. On top of it all, she joined the board of trustees of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street — the show she credits for teaching her English as a child.
A Seed Investor True To Her Roots
Rivera may be a long way from her Sesame Street education, but she's kept her experiences close to her heart. You could even say that what she's been through has contributed to her success. It may sound cliche, but her example shows us to stay true to our roots, offer a hand to those who would otherwise be ignored, and to give our very best to whatever we do.
Terms:
JD-MBA: Juris Doctor and Master of Business Association. It is a dual-graduate degree that pursues a career in both law and business.
Venture capital firm: a company that provides funds to new companies.
Angel investor: someone that invests their own funds to new companies.
Unicorn: a privately held business that is worth over $1 billion. There are only a little over 1200 worldwide, as of 2024. Some examples are Airbnb, Instacart, and Uber.
Silicon Valley: An area in California with a highly concentrated amount of technology and internet companies. It is considered the global capital of the tech sector, and houses such companies as Apple, Visa, Amazon, and Netflix.
To exit: Also called "going public". This refers to when a company that had previously been funded by a venture capital firm accepts an Initial Public Offering (IPO), meaning that stockholders can now purchase shares of the company. This usually raises the company's value, so that both the VC firm and the company founders benefit.
Sources: