Originally from Nigeria, Angelica Nwandu has traveled across the country performing Spoken Word poetry that was inspired by her 12 year experience in Foster Care. A recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University, she developed a passion for writing that has translated into music, journalism, and screenwriting. Angelica is the owner of one of the fastest growing Black Entertainment Websites, The Shade Room, for which she was just named one of Forbes 30 under 30 in Media. She is a 2014 June and May Sundance Screenwriter Fellow, as well as a 2014 Time Warner Fellow.

Arlan Hamilton is Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital fund on a mission to minimize funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential, underestimated founders — including women, people of color and the LGBT community. Having previously founded and published the internationally distributed indie magazine INTERLUDE (and continuing to serve as tour manager to Atlantic Records recording artist Janine), Arlan entered the venture investing world from an unconventional path. Backstage Capital has now invested more than $2M in over 50 companies.

Joah Spearman is founder and CEO of Localeur. He has been called one of the top voices in tech by LinkedIn, and has been a frequent speaker at conferences and classrooms from the Wharton School of Business to South by Southwest. Joah was named one of the Top 10 Black Innovators of 2014 by MVMT 50 ("Movement 50"), Emerging Business Leader of the Year by the Greater Austin Black Chamber in 2013, and is a four-time finalist for Austin’s Under 40 Awards. He is also the co-author of Real Role Models: Successful African Americans Beyond Pop Culture (Univ. of Texas Press). Before Localeur, Spearmanwas the director of operations and strategic initiatives at Bazaarvoice in the leadup to their 2012 IPO, co-founded an experiential marketing agency which worked closely with SXSW and ESPN X Games, and earlier served as a social media and communications adviser to companies ranging from FedEx to Volkswagen. Joah is co-chair of the board of directors for AIDS Services of Austin and a boardmember of KLRU-TV (Austin's PBS affiliate).

Preston is the chief executive officer at DivInc, which is the first tech startup pre-accelerator in Texas focused on ethnically diverse and women led founders. In May, 2016, he was re-appointed for a second year to the position of Entrepreneur in Residence at the Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.
A former 20 year veteran at Dell, he served in executive leadership roles in enterprise IT technology sales consulting where he oversaw teams responsible for driving $250M+ in revenues. He ended his career at Dell as the managing director for the Dell Global Center for Entrepreneurship.
Preston works tirelessly to help improve the tech startup ecosystem by making it more inclusive and collaborative by creating more transparent paths to entrepreneurial resources for underrepresented groups. He is an evangelist for creating a “mindset shift” within underrepresented communities with the message of empowerment through entrepreneurship.