Candice Matthews Brackeen

Why organisations work with Candice Matthews Brackeen

• She invests her own fund’s capital into the same founder profile most institutions struggle to reach, which makes her perspective on deal flow operational rather than advocacy-led.
• She built and now owns Black Tech Week, the largest US convening of Black founders, investors and corporate partners, giving her direct visibility on which company-building patterns are working at scale.
• She testified before the US House Financial Services Committee in 2025 on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley, a credibility marker few speakers on this topic hold.
• She translates between corporate procurement, venture capital and underrepresented founder communities, the three groups that rarely sit in the same conversation despite all needing each other.
• Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020, a recognition that signals investor peers, not bureau marketing, rate her work.

Biography highlights

• General Partner, Lightship Capital, a Cincinnati venture fund backing underrepresented founders in CPG, e-commerce, sustainability, AI and healthcare.
• Founder and CEO, Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator alumni have raised more than $100M in follow-on funding.
• Co-founder, Hillman Accelerator, the first Midwest accelerator dedicated to underrepresented tech founders.
• Witness before the US House Financial Services Committee, March 2025, on access to capital beyond Silicon Valley.
• Named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Women in Venture Capital, 2020.
• Member of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium; advisory roles with the Cincinnati Innovation District and Endeavor Northwest Arkansas.
• Contributing author at TechCrunch.

Biography

Less than one percent of US venture capital goes to Black-led companies. That number has been broadly stable for years, despite every major institutional commitment to change it. The interesting question for senior leaders is no longer whether the gap exists. It is what mechanism actually closes it.

Lightship Capital is one of the small number of funds built specifically to answer that question with capital rather than commentary. As General Partner, Candice Matthews Brackeen invests in early-stage companies across consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, sustainability, artificial intelligence and healthcare, with a focus on founders outside coastal networks. She also founded Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator programmes have helped portfolio companies secure more than $100M in follow-on funding.

Before Lightship she co-founded Hillman Accelerator in 2016, the first Midwest programme dedicated to underrepresented tech founders, and Hello Parent, a school-safety app that became a national partner of the Brady Campaign. She has since acquired Black Tech Week and moved it to Cincinnati, anchoring it next to Fortune 500 corporate partners including Kroger and Procter and Gamble.

Her authority on this subject is institutional, not rhetorical. The Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020. In March 2025 she testified before the US House Financial Services Committee on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley. She also serves on NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium and writes for TechCrunch on venture and entrepreneurship.

Key speaking topics

• Venture capital outside Silicon Valley
• Building inclusive innovation ecosystems
• Access to capital for underrepresented founders
• Corporate partnerships with early-stage companies
• Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership
• Public policy and capital markets
• Diversity, equity and inclusion in technology

Ideal for

• Chief investment officers, corporate venture leads and innovation heads designing pipelines into underrepresented founder markets
• Procurement and supplier diversity leaders building substantive routes to minority-led suppliers
• Boards and CEOs of large corporates with stated commitments on capital, supplier or workforce inclusion
• Public sector and economic development leaders working on regional innovation strategy

Audience outcomes

• A clearer picture of where credible deal flow from underrepresented founders actually sits and how to access it.
• A working view of what corporate partnerships with founder communities look like when they generate revenue, not just press.
• Specific language for boards on why capital access is an economic question, not only an inclusion one.
• Direct exposure to a working venture model that has produced documented follow-on funding outcomes.