Our new Academic Director is Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, an accomplished academic and international expert on inclusive entrepreneurship and organizations. She comes to us from the College of Management, University of Massachusetts Boston. As an Associate Professor of Management, she worked closely with graduate students in analyzing organizational change initiatives and supported emerging diverse leaders across industries. During her time at Boston, Banu served as Chair of the Organizations and Social Change track of the Ph.D. program and focused on curriculum development, taught Organizational Theory courses and advised doctoral students.

Banu joins Brown as Associate Professor of Practice in Engineering and is also the Founder and Director of the Venture Capital Inclusion Lab at the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship. The Lab focuses on understanding and solving funding inequities in the VC industry through data-driven research, education and advocacy. Recently, Banu contributed her expertise on gender and inclusion to the 2018 UN Report on “Gender Lens to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Rights”. Her research has been covered in CBS Boston, NPR All Things Considered, NBC News, and Boston Magazine among other media outlets. Her piece in The Conversation, focusing on the intersections of gender, inclusion and tech, has over 23,000 reads and offers ideas and steps that are necessary for the tech sector to become inclusive. In June this year, Banu was invited to testify at the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship hearing to re-authorize the SBIC program to speak about the importance of women and minorities as investors and as entrepreneurs for the economy.