Lee X Zapis

Edith Dorsen is the Founder and Managing Director of the Women's Venture Capital Fund, a Portland, Oregon–based early-stage venture firm she launched to close the funding gap for companies whose senior leadership includes women. Before venture capital, she built a career across banking, consulting, and operating roles: she was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, an investment banker at Salomon Brothers, and a senior executive responsible for business development at Physicians' Online and at Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop). (Some profiles cite JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, and Boston Consulting Group across her two decades of finance and consulting experience.)

She founded the Women's Venture Capital Fund together with Harvard Business School classmate Monica Dodi, galvanized by data showing that roughly 95% of venture capital went to companies with no women in senior leadership. The firm was among the first VC funds in the country to focus specifically on Series A–stage companies whose senior leadership includes both women and men. A second vehicle, WomensVCFund II, was established in late 2017 with a target of roughly $20 million, continuing the same gender-diverse leadership mandate.

Dorsen's education spans the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Business School. Beyond investing, she has served on boards and advisory committees for education- and child-focused organizations including Stand for Children, the Educational Alliance, Save the Children, and Portland Jewish Academy.

• Gender-diverse leadership as a core criterion, not a side note: the fund invests only in companies whose senior leadership includes at least one woman with equity — Dorsen argues diverse leadership teams "build stronger companies that perform better."
• "Risk-intelligent" early-stage investing: targets Series A/B companies that have already raised meaningful angel capital, built out core technology, and are demonstrating revenue traction.
• Stages: Seed and Series A/B; the fund typically participates in rounds rather than leading.
• Check size: roughly $50K to $1M.
• Sectors: Enterprise/SaaS software, EdTech, FinTech, and Consumer; underrepresented founders broadly.
• Team over the individual founder: "The singular most important thing to execute on a good idea is having a core team around you because no successful company is built on the back of a single individual."
• Deliberate diligence: favors weighing decisions carefully — "decisions need to be weighed properly and probably made more slowly before you make a commitment that takes a long time to unwind."