Wendy Lea

Wendy Lea is a veteran technology CEO, board director, and ecosystem-builder with more than 30 years advising Fortune 500 companies and early-stage ventures. She began her operating career as co-founder of The Sales Consultancy (Dallas and London, 1992–1999), which merged with OnTarget and was acquired by Siebel Systems in 1999. She then served as a VP at Siebel Systems (1999–2002), launching its eBusiness Consulting unit. From 2009 to 2013 she was CEO and board chair of Get Satisfaction, a venture-backed San Francisco customer-community platform that reached ~70,000 active communities and 35M+ monthly consumers before its acquisition by Sprinklr. She was recognized during this period as a "Woman of Influence" in Silicon Valley.

In October 2014 she relocated to Cincinnati to become CEO of Cintrifuse (2014–2018), the public-private partnership building a tech-based economy in Greater Cincinnati alongside founding partners including P&G, EY, and the City of Cincinnati. There she grew the local builder community from roughly 24 to 800, launched the StartupCincy brand and the 35,000-sq-ft Union Hall coworking space, and ran the Cintrifuse Syndicate Fund, deploying $100M of corporate LP capital into 17 national early-stage venture firms. Her impact was durable enough that Main Street Ventures created the annual $25K "Wendy Lea Female Founder Grant" in her honor.

Since 2020 Lea has been based in Colorado, where she co-founded and chairs Energize Colorado (a certified Community Development Financial Institution that began as COVID-19 small-business relief) and co-founded TechHubNow! (2023) with Brooks Johnson and JB Holston to win a federal EDA Regional Tech Hub designation for the state. She sits on the board of Elevate Quantum (a U.S. EDA-designated quantum Tech Hub across CO-NM-WY, joining February 2024) and has been part of the effort to bring the Sundance Film Festival to Colorado. Her federal service includes the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE, 2022–present), the Center for American Entrepreneurship (advisor, 2022–present), and the USPTO Council for Inclusive Innovation. She earned a BA in Business Administration & Marketing from the University of Mississippi and holds a Directors' College certification from Stanford Law School's business executive education program. Early in her angel career she apprenticed to Brad Feld of Foundry Group in Boulder.

• Invests primarily at seed / early stage, both directly as an angel and as a limited partner across multiple venture funds — a "strategic investor adept at identifying technological innovations for B2B and B2C markets."
• Backs technology and digital-transformation companies as well as consumer/household brands, and increasingly AI, quantum, and advanced technologies that deliver "economic and national security."
• Applies a strong "values-based investing" and ecosystem lens: she funds ventures that build entrepreneurial communities, advance economic mobility, and diversify who gets access to capital (e.g., diversity on corporate boards, women founders).
• Frames investing as pattern-recognition and community-building: *"Business is my art—orchestrating ecosystems is a creative act that requires vision, precision, and the ability to see patterns others don't."* When she enters a new market her first question is always *"Where are the entrepreneurs?"*
• Draws on a Techstars/Foundry Group pedigree — her portfolio exposure includes early Techstars-era winners (Uber, SendGrid, Twilio) — so she favors coachable founders plugged into accelerator and mentor networks.