The Alliance for Southern California Innovation (Alliance) is committed to showcasing diversity broadly (e.g. geographic, industrial, and individual diversity) and we deeply believe it is our region's superpower. The Alliance is finishing a communication plan for the SoCal Innovation Ecosystem that seeks to help root, spread, and champion the region's position both locally and abroad. Diversity is a central pillar of that work. In the coming months we will host branding materials on a dedicated website and will start to push out this work with our regional partners across the region.
The Alliance is advocating and advancing a more inclusive ecosystem across the SoCal region, including creating greater funding access to underrepresented groups. We also are working to make our programs and events more inclusive and representative of our region. For example:
Founders: We collaborated with PledgeLA and Annenberg Tech to identify and adopt best practices on how to ask and capture historically underrepresented founders in the company application form for the new capital matching program SoCal Venture Pipeline we just launched that will deliver more institutional capital ($4M+ checks) to SoCal-based startups.
VC Engagement Program: The Alliance recently launched a VC Engagement Program and VC Advisory Council, whose leadership is women led.
Regional Public Events: We plan to hold a follow up event to our 2019 Diversity Fuels Innovation Forum that will again include a panel of underrepresented innovators and investors.
Invited ecosystem events: We continue to weave diversity into our events and into our programming and want to provide authentic and credible voices on this topic a platform. This last year we had a panel of PledgeLA board members present at our annual SoCal Ecosystem Leadership Forum, so that others in the region can learn about and begin to model that work. DEI will be a topic in our next SoCal Ecosystem Leadership Forum this fall.
Invited Leadership Roundtables: We regularly host intimate conversations with C-suite SoCal executives and investors on implicit bias and leadership lessons from the frontline to achieve inclusive workplaces.
DEI Advisor: The Alliance recently brought on a DEI advisor, Dr. Donald Grant, who will help guide us on this work. We recognize that we can't do it alone and need to enlist others to help us accelerate our progress in a field that is overwhelmingly white and male.