5 Women to Watch in Venture - Summer 2025

In this Summer's edition of Women to Watch in Venture, I'm thrilled to showcase five women in venture who are making significant strides in the industry and beyond. Their successes and visions inspire me deeply as they reshape venture capital with their innovative investment strategies, passion, and dedication to impact.

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These remarkable women come from varied backgrounds, enriching their funds and the industry with unique insights. Unified by their drive to challenge the norm, creative approach to problem-solving, and unwavering support for founders and colleagues, they truly stand out.

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Let's celebrate their inspiring accomplishments and ambitious goals this season.

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Tara Tan

Tara Tan is a Managing Partner at Strange Ventures, a frontier tech fund investing in the future of computing—from interfaces to AI-native infrastructure. With 15 years of experience in deep tech and innovation at firms like IDEO, Tara brings a unique blend of creativity and technical expertise to venture capital.

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Tara's background in design and invention fuels her distinctive approach to VC, combining rigorous technical diligence with strategic storytelling. Her firm focuses on startups building AI-native infrastructure and developing new ways humans interact with technology. Beyond providing capital, Tara offers founders hands-on support in narrative building, go-to-market strategy, and customer discovery.

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Her journey from design to venture reflects her belief that invention and creativity are deeply connected. At IDEO, she honed her ability to balance risk with pragmatic evaluation—skills that now inform her investment approach in frontier technologies that require both deep technical understanding and market intuition.

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"VC at the earliest stages is a leap of faith. Coming from design, I balance that risk with pragmatic technical and commercial diligence before market entry."

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Strange Ventures is also building a platform to fill the critical support gap between early seed and Series B rounds, staffed with experts from MIT, Harvard, IDEO, and Google X. This reflects Tara's understanding that deep tech founders need more than capital—they need operational expertise during the most challenging scaling phases.

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Tara hopes to impact the industry by championing inclusion in VC and encouraging more women to break into venture despite lacking traditional finance backgrounds. She believes that expanding the typical background of investors will democratize venture capital and bring more diverse perspectives to frontier technology investing.

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Tara's Hot Take: The most impactful investors are often the quietest. There's a new wave of highly technical, fast-moving, but less visible investors who will define the next decade.

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Tara's Career Advice: Education and patience are crucial for breaking into VC. Recognize that venture is a portfolio game with long horizons, and understand that expanding beyond traditional finance backgrounds will ultimately strengthen the industry.

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Caroline Lewis

Caroline Lewis is the Managing Partner at Rogue Women's Fund, where she brings refreshing honesty to the often-glamorized world of venture capital. Caroline's approach centers on transparency, actionable guidance, and lowering barriers for women entering the investment ecosystem.

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Caroline's path to venture emphasizes the importance of building credibility through practical experience. She advocates for starting with angel investing, a fellowship, advising, or running SPVs to develop a track record before attempting to raise a fund—unless you have the rare advantage of a successful founder exit or as a spinout of a well known firm. This methodical approach reflects her understanding that venture capital success requires both operational knowledge and investment acumen.

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Rogue Women is investing out of its second institutionally backed fund that invests in women-led tech companies across the US. In addition, the firm leads efforts to drive accessibility and inclusion by offering a fellowship for mid-late career professionals and offering SPVs with small minimum checks and waived fees. This approach aligns with her mission to democratize access to alternative investments. Most notably, Rogue Women is the only fund in the world that offers founders childcare, executive coaching, personal financial coaching, a family stipend, and a share of the fund’s profits.

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What sets Caroline apart is her willingness to discuss both the exciting and mundane aspects of venture capital. While she celebrates deal sourcing and portfolio work, she's equally honest about the essential but less glamorous operational tasks like fund administration, audits, portfolio monitoring, and investor communications.

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"It’s not just about selecting great companies for investment, it’s about managing a portfolio, being disciplined, transparent and regular communication, and active management of investments to drive returns. It’s the hard work after an investment that makes a fund and firm.”

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Caroline hopes to impact the industry by continuing to prove out how a thesis of backing women is the secret to high alpha in this industry. The firm is well on its way, having already returned capital on Fund I. Her honest and “no bs” authenticity is a welcome change in an industry overrun with self-promotion and “up and to the right” optics.  

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Caroline's Hot Take: It’s not about the amount of money raised, AUM, or “unicorns,” it’s about solid high-growth businesses, investing fundamentals, and discipline in returning capital. Just because a firm has a number of unicorns they’ve invested in, doesn’t mean they’ve returned a multiple on capital back to LPs.  

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Caroline's Career Advice:

• Start with angel investing, SPVs, or deal sourcing to build your track record before attempting to raise a fund
• Align with firms that match your investment thesis, risk tolerance, and desired level of autonomy
• Master foundational skills—many applicants overlook basics, so excelling at them will set you apart
• Demonstrate hustle and execution - you can’t survive in the industry without those fundamental traits.

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Tahira Dosani

Tahira Dosani is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at ResilienceVC, a seed-stage venture capital fund with a dedicated focus on fintech. The firm recently announced their $58M Fund I, with a core mission to invest in startups leveraging technology to enhance the financial resilience of low- and moderate-income consumers and small businesses.

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Tahira's path to venture capital has been driven by a consistent desire to leverage finance and technology to create positive social impact. She began her career as a management consultant at Bain & Company, then moved to Afghanistan to work with Roshan, the country's leading telecommunications operator, where she served as Head of Corporate Strategy and helped launch the nation's first mobile money platform.

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This transformative experience in a country where the vast majority of the population was unbanked showed Tahira firsthand how technology could provide access to basic financial services and dramatically improve people's safety and economic standing. It solidified her belief that commercially successful enterprises could also have transformative social impact.

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Her journey continued through impact investing roles at the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development and LeapFrog Investments, before becoming Managing Director at Accion Venture Lab, where she invested in over 75 early-stage fintech startups globally, including four that became unicorns.

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"Being able to provide that capital, to be a company's first believer, and to then work alongside the founders to help them build and scale their vision is an incredible privilege. It's at this early stage where you can have the most significant influence, not just on the trajectory of a single company, but on the evolution of an entire market."

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ResilienceVC represents Tahira's vision that there's no trade-off between financial returns and social good. For the markets they target, she believes a deep understanding of the end-user and genuine commitment to their financial well-being creates significant competitive advantage.

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Tahira hopes to impact the industry by proving unequivocally that investing with an impact lens is not a concession, but a source of alpha. She wants ResilienceVC to demonstrate that top-tier venture returns can be generated by investing in companies solving fundamental social challenges, encouraging more capital to flow into inclusive fintech.

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Tahira's Hot Take: A lot of people underestimate go-to-market fit, especially when serving underserved populations. You can have the most elegant product in the world, but without deep understanding of the trust and behavioral economics required to reach that customer segment, it won't succeed. The best tech doesn't always win; the best-distributed tech does.

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Tahira's Career Advice:

• Build differentiated expertise in a particular technology, sector, or business function that makes you indispensable to an investment team
• Don't be afraid to take a non-traditional path—diverse operational and international experience provides unique perspective and valuable networks
• Build your network authentically and proactively, offering value before you need anything in return

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Tanvi Narain

Tanvi Narain is a Principal at Counterpart Ventures, where she brings an operator-first mindset to early-stage B2B software investing. The fund is entering its third vintage with a generalist approach, but its true differentiator lies in deep connectivity to the corporate venture capital ecosystem.

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Tanvi's dual perspective as both an operator and institutional investor creates her unique superpower in venture. Her operational background helps her understand GTM challenges from the trenches, while her institutional experience provides a sophisticated grasp of venture dynamics and corporate relationships. This combination allows her to help founders navigate both startup scaling and enterprise customer acquisition.

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Her inspiration to move into venture came during her time at Plaid, where she worked closely with mid-market and scaling startups. Sitting in on customer conversations and seeing how business models worked across different sectors, she realized she wanted to zoom out and help more founders from the investment side rather than just one company.

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Counterpart Ventures' proprietary network of 650+ corporate VC arms gives the firm—and their founders—real-time access to enterprise buyers, talent, and distribution partners. This creates a value exchange that provides leverage at the earliest stages, helping startups access corporate partnerships that would typically take years to develop independently.

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"I start with the customer—why are they buying this product? I underwrite for the first use case, then expand to the second, third, fourth. It's about identifying clear milestones and mapping the GTM path to the next round of funding."

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Tanvi has a broad based focus on vertical applications of AI. Of late she has spent time in claim’s automation having recently invested in Arintra. where she sees growing appetite from providers to adopt AI-forward, tech-native solutions with demonstrable operational ROI.

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Tanvi hopes to impact the industry by driving more women into executive roles, not just cap tables. She focuses significant energy on helping founders build diverse leadership teams from the ground up, addressing the notable lack of women in executive positions at Seed and Series A companies.

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Tanvi's Hot Take: College is still required—but it's going to look very different. Think Waterloo's co-op model: semesters split between school and real work experience. Founders need both technical and practical training, and we'll see more hybrid models emerge.

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Tanvi's Career Advice: Be resilient and understand that venture funds operate like startups—messy, lean, and dynamic. Your success is tied to the fund's success, so figure out your differentiated value and own it. You're not just an investor; you're part of building a brand and a thesis.

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Tori Deems

Tori Deems serves as Head of Community at Prologis Ventures, where she builds the connective tissue between portfolio companies and their ideal customers. In this stage-agnostic global venture fund focusing on supply chain, energy & sustainability, and Proptech & construction tech, Tori's mission involves creating meaningful relationships and driving value through strategic community building initiatives.

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Tori's journey to venture began in marketing and strategy at Deloitte, but her true exposure to the VC ecosystem came through her time at Silicon Valley Bank. There, she fell in love with the venture community and decided to get closer to the action by transitioning into her current operational role within a fund.

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At Prologis Ventures, which has invested in 52 companies to date, Tori leads community building efforts including executive forums and strategic events. Her role focuses on relationship-building with the ideal customer profiles of portfolio companies, helping identify pain points and facilitate solutions. She describes herself as the "connective tissue" between stakeholders, creating high-volume, low-cost initiatives that unlock significant outcomes for both startups and corporate partners.

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Her approach to community building goes beyond traditional networking events. Tori designs programs that create genuine value exchanges between portfolio companies and potential customers, helping startups access the enterprise relationships that are often critical for scaling in supply chain, sustainability, and proptech sectors.

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"I see myself as the connective tissue between stakeholders—helping identify pain points and facilitate solutions through meaningful relationship building."

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The strategic nature of Tori's work reflects her understanding that modern venture platforms must evolve beyond traditional portfolio services to create tangible business outcomes. Her initiatives directly contribute to portfolio company growth by facilitating customer discovery, partnership development, and market validation.

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Tori hopes to impact the venture industry by shifting the perception of platform functions from "nice-to-have" services to essential strategic functions that drive real value for both funds and founders. She's proving that thoughtful community building can be a competitive advantage for venture firms.

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Tori's Hot Take: Your brand is your multiplier — for founders, funds, and platform teams. In a noisy market, storytelling and community aren’t nice-to-haves; they’re your edge. 

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Tori's Career Advice: Build relationships before you need them. Be curious, have perspective, and consistently connect with others through coffee chats and meaningful conversations. That's how you become memorable and open doors when opportunities arise.

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Nominate a woman to watch

This Summer edition showcases five women who are redefining what value creation looks like in venture capital—from frontier tech innovation to operational excellence, community building, and inclusive investing. Each brings a unique perspective on how to support founders more effectively while building sustainable, impactful investment practices.

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If there is a woman you’d like to see us feature next, nominate her here.