Candice Matthews Brackeen is a standout voice on inclusive innovation, venture funding, and the future of minority-led entrepreneurship.
5 of 5
“Candice's knowledge and experience on topics related to venture capital, entrepreneurship, and ecosystem building are second to none. She also made time after the event to engage our community, which was extremely appreciated.”
Karlos L. Marshall, Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Dayton Metro Library
Candice Matthews Brackeen is a driving force in reshaping who gets funded, heard, and represented in the world of innovation. As General Partner at Lightship Capital and Founder & CEO of Lightship Foundation, she backs high-growth, minority-led companies while guiding founders through product development, brand building, AI adoption, and fundraising. Her influence extends to NASA and leading research institutions, where she ensures diversity stays central to the technologies shaping our future.
Candice Matthews Brackeen has built a reputation as one of the most prominent voices advancing equity and innovation across the American startup landscape. Her career is rooted in a clear mission: ensuring that high-growth, minority-led companies receive the resources, visibility, and capital needed to thrive. Through her leadership at Lightship Capital, she works at the center of some of the Midwest’s most dynamic and underserved ecosystems, identifying promising founders and guiding them toward long-term success.
As a General Partner at Lightship Capital, Candice focuses on backing companies led by underrepresented founders in sectors experiencing rapid growth and transformation. The firm, launched in 2020, is raising a $50MM fund dedicated to entrepreneurs in Consumer Packaged Goods, E-Commerce, Sustainability, Artificial Intelligence, and Healthcare. Her work builds real economic opportunity and shifts the narrative about who can lead in the innovation economy.
Beyond her investment work, Candice is the Founder and CEO of Lightship Foundation, a powerful platform created to support minority entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey. The foundation provides hands-on instruction across key areas that determine whether a business can scale: product development, brand building, the use of artificial intelligence to improve operations, and fundraising strategies that position companies for sustainable growth.
Her programs are designed with a clear purpose closing the opportunity gap by giving founders the knowledge, resources, and frameworks that many emerging entrepreneurs struggle to access. Through this work, Candice has helped shape a new generation of founders who are equipped to compete in fast-moving industries.
Candice’s influence reaches far beyond traditional entrepreneurship. She is part of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium, where she contributes leadership on diversity of thought as entirely new cultures, systems, and economies are imagined for future lunar missions. Her perspective ensures that as the next era of space innovation unfolds, representation remains a core component rather than an afterthought.
Being involved in this groundbreaking effort allows her to expand her impact from Earth-based ecosystems to the frontier of space exploration. It also highlights her unique ability to operate at the intersection of technology, culture, and long-term innovation strategy.
Candice plays a pivotal role in shaping how emerging technologies make their way into the real world. She serves on advisory and selection committees for technology at Ohio State University and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center. In these roles, she helps evaluate innovations with an eye toward commercialization, ensuring that diversity is integrated into decision-making as new technologies move from research environments into broader markets.
Her work helps these institutions bring forward solutions that reflect the needs, cultures, and perspectives of a wide range of communities. It also reinforces her commitment to creating more inclusive pathways within academic, medical, and scientific innovation.
Audiences benefit from Candice’s rare combination of venture expertise, strategic foresight, and deep understanding of how diversity drives meaningful innovation. She offers grounded, actionable insights on funding, scaling companies, applying artificial intelligence, and building ecosystems that support founders who have historically been overlooked.
Whether speaking to business leaders, entrepreneurs, educators, or institutions shaping the future of technology, Candice delivers a compelling look into the shifts transforming modern innovation. Her experience across venture capital, founder development, space innovation, and technology commercialization makes her an exceptional speaker for organizations aiming to understand the future of entrepreneurship and equitable growth.
5 of 5
“Candice's knowledge and experience on topics related to venture capital, entrepreneurship, and ecosystem building are second to none. She also made time after the event to engage our community, which was extremely appreciated.”
Karlos L. Marshall, Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Dayton Metro Library
Keynote by Candice Matthews Brackeen:
As an innovation focussed venture capital investor and economic development leader, Candice Matthews Brackeen works to influence outcomes for entrepreneurs who are typically underfunded and outside of access to the networks necessary to scale. Her motivation to make change in this space was originally inspired by her own experiences as a woman and tech founder of color determined to find support in her local ecosystem and continues to be driven by her desire to create structures for the support of minority innovators.
Candice’s approach to building an inclusive ecosystem in Cincinnati began as a small weekly meet-up including several of her peers facing similar difficulties and quickly led to her challenging small business funding inequities across the state of Ohio. Candice’s efforts ultimately influenced legislation around an ongoing, dedicated allocation of Ohio’s Small Business Administration (SBA) funds to minority-led businesses across the state. She also led local corporations and universities including Kroger, Procter and Gamble, and the University of Cincinnati to meaningful engagement with the startup community, creating opportunities for innovators to access their labs, technologies, and other key resources.
Candice’s local weekly meetups became the catalyst for Lightship Foundation, where she now shares entrepreneurship education programming and ecosystem-building guidance across a dozen US cities and has led tech founders to more than $100 million in funding. Her journey continues to represent the truth that social impact can be both measurable and profitable.
Keynote by Candice Matthews Brackeen:
How underserved founders can and do build high-growth companies. Navigating the challenges inherent to minority entrepreneurship including access to networks and capital.
Keynote by Candice Matthews Brackeen:
The pandemic, social unrest and their influence on minority-led funds, How disproportionate access to capital inhibits overall economic growth in minority communities.
Watch Candice Matthews Brackeen in action
