Shashi Srikantan

Shashi Srikantan is the Managing Director and Head of Level Up Ventures at Hearst, where she leads investments in early-stage, tech-enabled startups founded by Black and Latino entrepreneurs. Prior to her current role, she accumulated more than twenty years of finance and entrepreneurial experience, including over a decade in analytical and operational risk at Fitch Ratings. She previously worked on leveraged finance teams at BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse, and founded the fashion technology startup PLVSH. Srikantan also serves as a scout for HearstLab, sits on the global board for the Columbia Venture Community, and founded Project Two.Eight, a Columbia Business School accelerator program now in its fifth cohort. Her current work focuses on closing venture capital funding gaps by leveraging Hearst's network of over 360 businesses to source, evaluate, and support underrepresented early-stage founders.