The Representative
Yesenia Gallardo Avila
Title: Principal, Occam Advisors
What it does: develops and implements mission-driven investment programs for clients
Role: manages the family office for London-based Potencia Ventures
Previous: InventOR, Poda Foods
Investment focus: Education technology and future of work, largely in Latin America
Portfolio: 30 funds where Potencia Ventures is the LP; 4-5 direct investments into companies
For more stories on this new generation of investing see the main story here.
For entrepreneur-turned-investor Yesenia Gallardo Avila, switching sides of the table was all about representation.
She joined the team at Occam Advisors three years ago to work with one of the firm’s clients, a London-based family office called Potencia Ventures. She is investing that firm’s capital, which was generated from real estate.
Potencia had a generalist tech investing and impact strategy in 2009 but zeroed in on education and future of work investments in 2015. Those investments are largely in Latin America, India and the U.S. Potencia invests in other funds as a limited partner and directly into companies. Those decisions are led by Avila.
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Since Avila started working with the firm, it has made direct investments anywhere from seed to Series A stage. Potencia has a portfolio of 30 funds it has invested in as an LP. Four to five of those manager evaluations were under Avila's purview. On the direct investment side, she has led their last four to five investments.
“Even as much time as I have spent in communities where there are underrepresented managers and founders, the assets that we manage are significant enough that I have only met roughly five other, in the U.S., Latina women who have this kind of decision making and managed this asset size,” she said of her decision to join Occam.
“There is a lot more diversity in junior, mid-level folks in different firms,” she added. “That was really important for me to have more of a face and a voice where we see so few women and Latinx especially. The numbers are pretty dire.”
According to the latest study of diversity within venture capital, Hispanic representation was 7% of the workforce and just 4% of investment professionals. The study was done by the National Venture Capital Association and Deloitte. Women comprised 23% of investment professionals, up from 15% in 2016.
Avila has followed a nontraditional path into the investment field. She doesn't have an MBA. She was raised in Oregon and earned a master's degree in environmental management from Princeton University. It was there she fell in love with entrepreneurship and started the company Poda Foods, an edible cricket supplier working in food systems and sustainability. After Poda wound down, she worked with student entrepreneurs at Portland State University and started a business importing mezcal from artisanal producers in Mexico.
While there is still much work to do, she has been pleased to see an increase in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color founders and a heightened awareness about disparities in access to capital.
“When I started (Poda) in 2015, we weren’t really having the same conversations about access to capital or underrepresented founders,” she said.
Now that people are having these conversations and “putting their money where they mouth is,” Avila saw the opportunity to step in and help. She has worked with Potencia to invest in both underrepresented founders and fund managers.
“I think there are some exciting things that family offices are doing. You get to have a lot of experience doing something like this with a client that is flexible and committed and looking at nontraditional backgrounds,” she said, adding that she and Potencia are willing to back first time, emerging fund managers.
