Marianna Pappas

About Marianna Pappas

Specialties: Accelerator Programming, Marketing, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Psychology, Operations, Start-Ups, Impact, & Investing & Venture Capital Marianna is the Program Director for Conscious Venture Lab, a 16-week accelerator program for early stage startups that exists to create new prosperity for entrepreneurs in any community, no matter where they come from, or what they look like. The Conscious Venture Collective creates opportunities for diverse founders who others ignore for all the wrong reasons. We use business as a force for good to create a more just, joyous, equitable, profitable and prosperous society for us all. Marianna\'s primary role is to manage relationships with 150+ underrepresented alumni founders, hundreds of mentors, and prospective applicants to the Conscious Venture Lab accelerator. She creates opportunities for female founders and founders of color, and teaches the core tenets of Conscious Capitalism and stakeholder theory. This work helps to eliminate risk & waste in the companies businesses, thus decreasing risk in the investments of the fund. Marianna uses her skills and experience in writing, problem solving, leadership, management, planning, and marketing to help the CVL scale and thrive. She supports founders by helping them build social impact directly into their business models, making valuable connections for them, and guiding them through the program process. Marianna earned a dual-degree in Communication & English & also studied Corporate Psychology at the graduate level. Marianna has experience working in the Baltimore non-profit sector and owned & managed a family business in the restaurant industry for 10 years. Prior to joining CVL, Marianna was a Project Manager for SHIFT, a business collective of executive level management consultants.

Experience

1. Selection Committee

   Innovators Of Progress

   Sep 2021 — Present · Baltimore, MD

   Innovators of Progress is a rigorous, school-agnostic program with a strategic focus on supporting freshly-minted, and often under-represented, alumni from colleges and vocational programs within the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. Aiming to increase the amount of student innovators that become full-time, local founders of technology-enabled ventures, Innovators of Progress identifies motivated students seeking to acquire an entrepreneurial mindset and provide them with financial aid and seed capital for their progressive ideas in science, technology, engineering, math, healthcare, finance, infrastructure/civil, education, literacy, and business (“applicable industries”).

Education

• University of South Florida

  Bachelor of Arts, Communication & English

  2004 — 2009