Shelly Bell is the founder and CEO of Black Girl Ventures. She is a system disruptor and business strategist who moves ideas to profit while empowering people to live more authentically. As a cultural translator, she connects entrepreneurs, investors, and corporations in order to diversify their talent pipeline, increase equity and grow their brands.

Black Girl Ventures (BGV) is a social enterprise that creates access to social and financial capital for Black/Brown women founders. BGV travels the country with a disruptive pitch competition that shifts the power dynamics in funding by combining crowdfunding and pitching.

Bell is what best-selling author Daniel Pink defines as “A Whole New Mind” - a serial entrepreneur and computer scientist with a background in performance poetry, K-12 education and IP strategy. She was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Technically DC and acknowledged as A Rising Brand Star by Adweek.

She is among the nation's most sought-after transformational speakers in the Washington, DC Metro area. She has been featured in Forbes, Politico Live, The Washington Business Journal, NewsOne, The Afro, and People of Color in Tech.

As a Google Guru and Ecosystem Builder, she engages audiences from grassroots to government. Shelly has trained over 5,000 entrepreneurs, held over 300 events for empowering leaders, managed multi-million dollar contracts, and scaled over 100 businesses.

Entrepreneurship, Women in Business, Social Entrepreneurship, Empowerment, Influential Women, Female Leadership, Business, Business Leadership, Strategic Planning, Competitive Strategy, Investing,