About Ayanna

At a young age, I became curious about what separated those who were financially well off from those who came from humble beginnings. I grew up in the Bronx, NY, and spent summers with relatives in Orange County, CA, moving between two very different worlds. In the Bronx, I was surrounded by micro-entrepreneurs: dollar van drivers, Jamaican patty and Italian pizza shop owners in small storefronts, and ladies selling snow cones and Italian ices from pushcarts. They hustled endlessly to provide for their families.

In Orange County, I saw neighbors in waterfront properties who played golf or tennis on weekends and talked about politics and the stock market. Money wasn’t a constraint, and they had access to information and people who put their money to work. It was a complete 180 from the Bronx.

I made a personal vow to demystify wealth building for neighborhoods like mine. It began with high school internships at Merrill Lynch and carried through college and into financial services, where I worked at small and large investment banks across the equity and debt markets. Each role built my foundation in capital markets, but felt far from the promise I made as a child. I learned that capital, an activated network, effective systems, and quality information are all essential pieces of the wealth puzzle. Bringing them from Wall Street to Main Street required something else: trust.

In 2019, I moved into venture capital to back entrepreneurs at the earliest stages instead of financing their growth. I believed an investable business should be judged on more than 3- to 5-year projections. I had seen firsthand that micro-entrepreneurs in my community couldn’t secure financing from Main Street sources. As an early-stage investor, I joined an informal cohort of VCs who intentionally diversified their Silicon Valley funds’ portfolios, backing founders from 0 to 1 whose personal and professional journeys made the founder-problem match undeniable.

Over my career, I’ve met with more than 4,000 startups, and I noticed a pattern. Many founders were behind the information curve. They didn’t know how to navigate fundraising, had no community of founders or investors to explain how a fund really decides, and received constant rejections without honest reasoning. They had no trusted space to voice their frustrations and hear the truth about what shaped an investor’s decision. The gap wasn’t only information. It was trust.

HumrWe began there. Before it had a name, I tested the idea through ecosystem partnerships and initiatives: a leadership and wellness program for first-time CEOs and CFOs, founder-to-operator dinners, off-the-record lunches with founders and investors, pitch competitions, and 1:1 pre-pitch and fundraising strategy sessions. Each time, founders, investors, and operators asked for more of “something like this.” With my co-founder, I’m building what it became: a trust-first platform connecting founders, capital allocators, and operators, starting with Community, then Connections, then Capital.

The promise I made as a child was never only about money. It was about who gets trusted with it.