Celebrated 100 Women in Power!

In celebration of Women's History Month, Yasi Baiani (Co-Founder & CPO at Raya) partnered with global law firm, Perkins Coie to host more than 100 female founders, investors, executives, and trailblazers from various industries to celebrate the successes of these women and their impact on their organizations and industries earlier this month.

Raya, is an advisory and consultancy firm that offers product and go-to-market strategies as well as recruiting services to companies of various sizes. As an advocate and ally for women in leadership, many of the founders and executives Raya partners with are women.

We all know that there are many amazing women across various industries in key roles, trailblazing the path and delivering impressive results. However, there is not enough recognition of these women and their tremendous efforts. That inspired us to host this event. We need to celebrate the success of these trailblazers, share and amplify their stories, and inspire the next generation of women leaders.?

Perkins Coie, who co-hosted the event has been a huge proponent of women and diversity. The law firm has been ranked as the number one national law firm on Seramount’s 2023 “Best Law Firms for Women and Diversity” list. This is the 15th straight year that Perkins Coie has been featured on Seramount’s annual list. The firm is one of just eight law firms nationwide to have received this recognition consistently since 2008.

The topics covered at the event included Unlocking AI's Potential Across Industries, Investment Climate in 2024 & Impact of AI, and Leadership in Boardroom & Beyond.

The speakers and moderators included Lily Sarafan, Founder & Executive Chair of TheKey, Board Member of Instacart, Thumbtack & Stanford Board of Trustees, Cindy Bi, General Partner at CapitalX, Sara Choi , Partner at Wing Ventures, Fatima Husain , Co-Founder & General Partner at Mosaic, Purva Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO of Lily AI, Malekeh Amini, Founder & CEO of Trayt,?Elle Morrill, CEO & Co-Founder of Groupthink, and Praveena Dhanalakota, CEO & Founder of Soopra, Fiona Brophy, Partner at Perkins Coie, Aria Massoudifar, AI PM lead at Meta, and Yasi Baiani , Co-Founder & CPO of Raya.

A few highlights from the event include:

• Lily Sarafan emphasized the importance of surrounding yourself with complementary talent. You want people in your team and your board to see what you don’t see and complement you.?
• Purva Gupta emphasized that AI is an application and a tool; ultimately the most important thing for the success of any company is to be customer-obsessed and solve real problems for real users.
• Sara Choi called out that to support more diverse founders from different socioeconomic groups we need to enable access to funding from the angel round. Those founders who can raise $3-5M from “family and friends” do not represent everyone in the founder community.
• Cindy Bi, who invested in 10+ unicorns as a first check, called her differentiation factor as "fast decision-making" -- as fast as making her decision with a yes/no in the first meeting.

“What an amazing night filled with expertise, networking, and awesome reunions,” said Roya Soleimani Winner , Founder of Winner Communications. “It was incredibly inspiring to be in the presence of so many smart, dynamic women.”

Baiani is planning to host the event again in 2025. If you are a woman and would like to participate in the event next year or if you would like to nominate another woman to attend the event, please comment below to express your interest or tag other people.

Thank you to our sponsors Perkins Coie , Trayt Health , and Raya for making this event a reality.

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