33
The
World’s 50
Greatest
Leaders
The List34
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FORTUNE.COM // MAY.1.19
It may be tech’s biggest
gender gap: Fewer than
10% of leadership roles
in venture capital are
held by women, and
only 2.2% of VC fund-
ing went to female-
founded companies
in 2018. All Raise, a
coalition of women in
the VC field, launched
last year (sparked by a
group email from Cow-
boy Ventures partner
Aileen Lee) with the aim
of boosting both those
numbers. All Raise
gives female founders
intensive one-on-one
mentoring, while its
VC Champions pro-
gram pairs promising
investors with senior
partners at established
venture firms.
Geographical diver-
sity is another hurdle
in tech: Steve Case
(below, center), the AOL
founder turned inves-
tor, says 75% of venture
funding goes to firms
in California, New York,
or Massachusetts. With
his partner, author J.D.
Vance, Case runs Rise
of the Rest, a $150 mil-
lion fund devoted to
companies in less
heavily saturated mar-
kets. Through a process
that includes buzzy
bus tours and pitch
competitions, Rise of
the Rest has invested in
about 100 companies
in more than 30 states
so far—reminding the
startup world that a
San Francisco Bay view
is not a prerequisite
for success.
THE ECONOMIC POTENTIAL of artificial intelligence captivates business
leaders. But the so-called deep-learning systems behind A.I. are only as
good as the data they are trained on. Imagine a scenario in which self-
driving cars fail to recognize people of color as people—and are thus
more likely to hit them—because their computers were trained on data
sets of photos where such people were absent or underrepresented.
No one has done more than computer scientist Joy Buolamwini to
draw attention to A.I. bias. In one widely read study, Buolamwini showed
how facial-recognition technology from Microsoft, IBM, and China’s
Megvii performed better when analyzing photos of lighter-skinned men
than of darker-skinned women. Both Microsoft and IBM subsequently
updated their tech. Her study of Amazon’s facial-scanning has been
more controversial (Amazon has disputed her approach), but the fric-
tion underscores her influence as the conscience of the A.I. revolution.venture capital
for the 99%
Aileen Lee, All Raise;
Steve Case and J.D. Vance,
Rise of the RestFOUNDER, ALGORITHMIC JUSTICE LEAGUE, GRADUATE RESEARCHER, MIT MEDIA LAB