Carol Sands

Carol Sands holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Iowa. She began her career in the Midwest as a bank officer at First Bank Systems before taking on marketing and sales roles at Motorola and Xerox Computer Services. After relocating to San Francisco, she rose to executive positions at Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young) and Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers), where she developed deep expertise in business consulting and corporate management.

Drawing on her corporate experience, Sands founded MarketingPlus, an international sales management and marketing consulting firm with advertising and PR agencies. In 1997, she formed The Angels' Forum Management Company, an innovative angel investment group that organizes individual investors with previous entrepreneurial experience to invest as a single entity using a venture capital model for due diligence, mentoring, and board management. Over more than 20 years, The Angels' Forum has deployed over $75 million to help hundreds of entrepreneurs grow thriving businesses, many of which achieved successful exits via IPO or M&A.

Starting in 2000, Sands co-founded The Halo Fund, a $25 million venture fund focused on early-stage Silicon Valley startups, alongside Ed Esber, Phil Schlein, Craig Sirnio, and Ed Berkowitz. The same core partners subsequently launched Halo II and Halo III, bringing total assets under management to over $40 million across three funds. She is a globally recognized expert on early-stage investing, teaches two courses at Stanford University's Continuing Education Program -- "Angel Investing for the Serious Investor" and a course on Startup Board of Directors governance -- and has guest lectured at universities around the world. She is a Charter Member of TiE, a member of SV Forum and M31, serves on the Advisory Board of the Global Women's Leadership Network, and is a member of The International Women's Forum.

Carol Sands focuses on capital-efficient, fast-growing companies across technology and life sciences. Her approach applies a rigorous venture capital model to angel investing, emphasizing thorough due diligence, active mentoring, and hands-on board management. The Angels' Forum brings together experienced entrepreneurs as co-investors, leveraging their operational expertise to support portfolio companies beyond just capital. Investment sectors span Enterprise Applications, Life Sciences, Consumer Internet, Education, Mobile, and Consumer Products. She targets seed and early-stage companies based primarily in Silicon Valley, looking for founding teams with domain expertise and businesses that can scale rapidly with disciplined capital deployment.