Alicia Robb

Dr. Alicia Robb is the Founder and CEO of Next Wave, which provides early stage financing and advising to young firms.  She is also a Visiting Scholar with the University of California in Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder. She was previously a Senior Fellow with the Kauffman Foundation for more than a decade. She is also the Founder and past Executive Director and Board Chair of the Foundation for Sustainable Development, an international development organization working in Latin America, Africa, and India. (www.fsdinternational.org). Dr. Robb received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has previously worked with the Office of Economic Research in the Small Business Administration and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She is a prolific author on the topics of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she is the co-author of Race and Entrepreneurial Success published by MIT Press and A Rising Tide: Financing Strategies for Women-Owned Businesses and The Next Wave: Financing Women’s Growth Oriented Firms published by Stanford University Press. Some of the boards and advisory boards she serves on include: the National Advisory Council for Minority Business Enterprise, Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Deming Center Venture Fund, and the Good Food Institute.  She is an angel investor, a mentor to various young firms, and a general partner in several early stage venture funds. She enjoys being a judge for pitch competitions around the world as well as speaking globally on the topic of entrepreneurship. She relocated to Boulder, CO in 2014 after 12 years in Marin County, CA and 5 years in Washington, D.C.  An avid animal lover and long time vegan, she is interested in supporting vegan entrepreneurs and getting better plant-based products to market.