Azin Radsan van Alebeek, MBA ʼ92
Azin Radsan van Alebeek, MBA ’92, believes in the power of investing in women. By championing companies led by women, she is addressing a well-documented gender gap in venture capital funding. As co-founder and managing director of Emmeline Ventures, van Alebeek is making a clear statement of her belief in their potential to succeed. She says, “Data shows that if female founders were funded at the same level as male founders, there would be an additional $4.5 trillion added to the global GDP. There will also be new solutions to many of our pressing problems.”
After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Stanford, van Alebeek worked as a compensation consultant, designing pay packages for top executive groups and boards of directors. She enrolled in UCLA Anderson School of Business with plans to work in the entertainment industry. Although her goals soon changed, she found the experience both positive and productive. She recalls that her professors often encouraged students to widen their point of view and approach ideas from multiple perspectives. She says, “As a person from three cultural backgrounds, thinking across different viewpoints is something I do instinctively. But business school pushed it to the next level.”
She made lasting friendships at UCLA, and has continued to reconnect with former classmates. She says, “It's the long arc of that community, it pays dividends.” One such friend is Trish Halamandaris '92, now director of the UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator, which supports early-stage startups across UCLA and in Los Angeles. Halamandaris invited van Alebeek to speak at a UCLA Anderson accelerator event and to help judge student pitch deck reviews.
It was also at UCLA that van Alebeek met her future husband, with whom she would raise three children. She and her family moved to the Netherlands where she learned Dutch and reinvented herself as a stay-at-home mom and volunteer. She also began pursuing a new interest, investing and managing complicated financial matters. During these years, she says, “I would think about ways to keep my skills relevant. I'm a continual learner and I created opportunities for myself to not stagnate.” She also trained to become a life coach, “At its core, it's helping people discover their goals and unlock their full potential.”
When she returned to the United States, a friend introduced van Alebeek to the concept of angel investing. “He said, ‘I think you'd love to do this.’ And so I jumped in and expanded my personal investing portfolio to include early stage startup investing.” An angel investor is someone who invests their own capital into startup companies, often in return for equity in future earnings.
As her children launched their own lives, she began a new chapter of her own – sharing her accumulated knowledge with other women and investing in their economic empowerment. She says, “I have the privilege and the opportunity to focus on something larger than myself. Scientists have recently discovered that orca whale pods are a matriarchy. Older orca females become protectors of the pod. That concept sits in my head; I'm just an orca whale protecting my people.”
Her venture capital firm, Emmeline Ventures, began at an investing boot camp where van Alebeek met the women who would become her business partners. They enjoyed working together and found that it magnified their impact. They began the process of iterating and beta testing a partnership, then created an investment thesis and pooled their personal funds to begin building a portfolio of companies.
Emmeline has a mission to invest in emerging businesses that empower women to “manage their health, build wealth and live in a cleaner, safer world.” With less than five percent of VC funding going to female founders in 2021, the Emmeline partners believe that increasing investments in women-led venture funds is one way to level the gender disparity. Their goal is to increase opportunities for women to maximize their potential. She says, “It's absurd to me that there is so much brain power, so much ability, so much talent that is not being utilized for the benefit of the whole.”
The firm invests financially in getting new businesses off the ground, and in return, they receive a percentage of equity in the company’s future earnings. The partners also invest their time and talents in helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals. She says, “The statistics about the gender equity gap for women in management from 35 years ago are not very different than today. That is wrong on a human level and its wrong because we're not fully activating our potential.”
Emmeline is registered as a 506(c) fund, an innovative model that allows them to publicly fundraise. The partners were executive producers on the documentary “Show Her the Money,” a film that educates women about investing and entrepreneurship. She says, “We wanted to share what we're doing using the power of storytelling. It has been a dream to talk to people about our mission, and we hope it creates a butterfly effect to inspire more change.”
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