+ Bahiyah Yasmeen Robinson
FOUNDING PARTNER

 Bahiyah Yasmeen Robinson is a recognized innovator of new avenues for VC and Impact investment. Her expertise in leading technology, investment and social impact initiatives since the early 2000s culminated in creating VC Include in 2018 to build platforms and programs for diverse emerging managers globally.

Less than 2% of assets in the U.S. are managed by diverse asset managers, VC Include meets this market opportunity by building an ecosystem of women, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ fund managers in alternative investments.

Born in Palo Alto, California and raised between New York City and California’s Central Valley, Robinson’s expertise is enriched by real-life and professional practice, and demonstrates an aptitude for building and managing a matrix of high-level public-private partnerships. She built a pipeline of thousands of social entrepreneurs for clients including ExxonMobil, G20, Amgen, eBay Foundation, Omidyar Network and Google for Ashoka’s digital platform in 2010, and by 2012, she started impact investing in Africa, partnering with the U.S. Department of State, World Bank, Microsoft, Mozilla and Nokia, and managed the Appfrica Fund to provide early-stage capital to the first wave of technology entrepreneurs throughout the continent. Her goal was to foster collaboration with local and global experts to build a robust tech ecosystem to support startups in East and West Africa, which created an enabling environment for the massive wave of investments we are seeing today.

Robinson is a Bloomberg News New Voices Fellow and is a current member of the Ceres President’s Council and the California State Innovation Task Force. She previously served as Co-chair of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). She’s a graduate of University of California, Davis with a degree in International Relations.

Her work has been recognized by the the MacArthur Foundation, VISA Foundation, Knight Foundation, SOCAP, Toniic, Crunchbase, Impact Alpha, Echoing Green, Entrepreneur, Alternatives Watch, Bloomberg, CNN, Essence Magazine and Forbes. She launched Young Art Collector in 2012 to connect art collectors with artists within the African Diaspora.