Columbus-based Venture Atlas has promoted from within for its first COO ahead of plans to keep launching impact funds making the VC world accessible to overlooked and underrepresented populations.
Jenny Lane will manage operations for the current three funds and future ones, each of them joint ventures with an outside VC firm.
Vicki Bowen Hewes joins the group to replace Lane as CEO of Ohio Impact Fund, which invests in for-profit social enterprises based in or establishing a significant presence in the state. Meanwhile, that fund has added two more startups to its portfolio.
Lane will optimize overall administration and sit on the investment committee for each fund, Venture Atlas founder and CEO Wolf Starr said.
“Where she excels the most is the back office – the pieces and parts where she does so well and I have room for improvement," Starr said. "It became clear where she can have the greatest impact is across all of these funds."
Bowen Hewes continues as founder of Meliora Community, a professional peer network for female entrepreneurs that she started in May. She had stepped down in October after one year as CEO of SocialVentures, a Columbus nonprofit that supported small-business social enterprise but ceased operations at the end of 2022. Previously Bowen Hewes founded the Columbus chapter of Dress for Success.
Ohio Impact Fund is "a wonderful path forward, utilizing the things I’ve learned so far in my career and bringing other people together to create that impact," Bowen Hewes said. "So much of my enthusiasm and energy is around helping people invest in those things that are making a difference – and also provide a financial return."
Venture Atlas, previously called Atlas Venture Partners, is a network of impact funds that also is hands-on with startups, advising on operations and making introductions to potential clients or investors. In partnership with Columbus-based Loud Capital, it formed Pride Fund, which focuses on LGBTQ+ founders, and Ohio Impact Fund. This year it launched Chicago-based American Dream Fund with VC firm Migrate Ventures, to invest in immigrant-led startups.
Assets under management are not disclosed; initial targets had been for $10 million for Pride and $5 million for Impact. The goal is to launch one fund a year.
With Lane's promotion, the team had a "small list" for the new face of Impact Fund, Starr said. He and Bowen Hewes have known each other two decades.
"We thought it was a long shot," Starr said. "We asked if she was interested. She very quickly said she had been having the same sort of thoughts … how she could be a bigger part of this."
"I have admired Wolf’s strategy, his vision, his ability to build community around initiatives that have impact," Bowen Hewes said.
Before the move, Lane led two new investments for Impact Fund:
- Conductor Solar, an Athens-based digital marketplace for financing and reducing the costs of developing new solar energy projects for the middle market. Co-founders are CEO Marc Palmer and Chairman Geoff Greenfield, both with experience in renewable energy.
- InovCares, a telehealth platform seeking to reduce the disparately high rate of maternal and infant mortality for Black and indigenous mothers. CEO Mohamed Kamara founded the startup in Atlanta, and its first patients are in Georgia and Texas, but he moved with his family to Cleveland last year.
"The Ohio Impact Fund investment into InovCares is specifically to promote and encourage expansion and adoption in Ohio," Lane said in a statement. "We are working closely with him to sign his first Ohio (insurer client)."
Conductor represents the fund's first investment in Appalachia, Starr said.
"We just really want to support the home team … so they can grow up and not out of Athens, Ohio," he said.
