Nancy Torres
With a different vision for what lies ahead, trailblazers chart new paths, innovating how we move through the world and access opportunities.
My father is the first trailblazer to inspire me. He grew up in Colombia, accustomed to people telling him he couldn’t achieve his goals, especially after having his left arm amputated at just four years old. He always had a different vision for his life and impact on the world, though. As a young 20-something, he received a fellowship from the United Nations to study in the Philippines, an experience that changed his life forever. He went on to earn his PhD and today works as a NASA scientist addressing climate change. As the first in his family to move to the United States, he charted a new path so that our family and hopefully, future generations could move through the world differently.
seek to create.
I know my father’s story is anomalous. I was raised in Prince George’s County, a majority African American county outside of DC with a large immigrant population; as a first-generation Colombian American, I grew up acutely aware of the unequal access to opportunity that prevails across the United States, Colombia, and beyond. Nevertheless, I believe that transformative technologies combined with inventive business models can democratize access across all industries. That is why I first started my career in tech and joined companies like Google and Uber that were scaling access to information, mobility and flexible work for communities around the world. Still, there is so much more opportunity that we have yet to unlock.
I’m passionate about supporting the trailblazers who are charting new paths. I’m looking for founders with a unique insight who leverage domain expertise, differentiated lived experiences, and diverse perspectives to build the transformative technology companies of tomorrow.
My sweet spot is building bridges. I enjoy unpacking the complex world around me—deriving insights from disparate points of view, creatively problem solving, making connections, and activating resources to build common ground and realize a vision.
As an operator in the private, public, and social sectors, I learned how to identify and navigate multidisciplinary perspectives, drawing on them in order to design new solutions to complex problems. As often the only Latina, woman, or person of color in rooms across big tech, Harvard, and Wall Street, I developed a keen sense for pinpointing important issues that go unobserved, often due to a lack of representation in those rooms. More importantly, I’ve developed a diverse network—unlike that of most investors in the industry—that I’m proud to show up with every day at Ulu.
Ultimately, I hope to build bridges that help founders realize their visions. Every day, I get to learn from and partner with the brightest futuristic minds while helping them experiment and iterate to build a business that scales. Others may find the lack of structure and uncertainty of seed-stage investing daunting, but I find the challenge intellectually stimulating and the opportunity to shape the future exhilarating.
Ulu’s disciplined, analytic approach to reduce bias in the earliest stages of investing alongside its focus on diverse entrepreneurial teams aligns with my skills and experiences, as well as my personal values.
Let’s build together!
