The Pioneer Throughout Life

by Bill Sarno

Miriam Rivera has tapped into her extensive business, legal and tech savvy to co-found and serve as chief executive officer and managing director at Ulu Ventures, an early seed-stage venture fund company which has achieved a leading investment role in the start-up rich Silicon Valley.

Much of Ulu's success stems from its emphasis on helping businesses in underserved markets and its focus on diverse leadership and data driven decision-making.

The Palo Alto, California company has helped numerous business teams with diverse ethnic, racial and gender leadership to start up, to grow and in some cases to become billion dollar enterprises.phoenix.

MIRIAM RIVERA is the daughter of migrant farm workers from Puerto Rico. She is a big exponent of what she sees as an important part in building human capital, specifically the investment people make in themselves and in their careers, which also includes even taking risks.

She also appreciates the value of social capital through creating relationships with people who can help pave the way to opportunities.

Rivera said she was mentored by an attorney she met at a tech company who now works at Ulu. "When that type of person gets to work with you and sees that you are hungry, curious and learning all the time they end up being supporters, sometimes mentors, sometimes champions." she advised.

Rivera received life-changing help from people in education during her formative years.

Miriam arrived in Chicago as a youngster, the daughter of parents who had worked on farms in New York State where she was born and in Florida. The family came to the Illinois city to become factory workers and to provide a stable educational relationship for Miriam's older sister who in the past had to seasonally migrate between schools.

Miriam impressed her teachers as a bright child, one with a future, possibly as an attorney because of her ability to argue issues in class.

In middle school, the Spanish speaking, free lunch student was placed in the gifted program and was encouraged to seek a scholarship to a private high school, which she received.

Rivera said she was blessed to get a lot ofscholarships during journey that took her to prestigious Stanford University, her first time in California, where she received a bachelor's degree in sociology and graduated from the university's top rung business and law schools.

Early in her education process Rivera had developed a strong tech background which included three years of computer science at the private high school. When she was college sophomore, she was chosen to participate in a Chicago city sponsored computer program where she learned about the first generation of personal computers and about software.

An inkling of her entrepreneurial future surfaced during her junior year when she and another student developed as a business case a way to transform a typing pool into a computerized job listing.

While in college her commitment to learning and building human and social capital started to pick up momentum.

In her early days at Stanford, a placement office took Miriam under its wings and, made her go through every one of its classes and learn how to write a resume, how to interview, how to videotape an interview and how to network.

After completing her under-graduate degree, Rivera entered the nonprofit sector where she helped women re-entering the workplace to participate in a California equal opportunity program.

Soon, Rivera realized she had to find better paying work to support herself and her aging mother.

"WHEN YOU SEE THOSE OPPORTUNITIES JUMP ON FOR THE RIDE, GET INVOLVED."

Rivera would apply the skills gained at the placement center when it came to making a decision whether she would attend law or business school. After interviewing dozens of people about the value of each vocation, she decided to do both.

”I told of myself I was good with words and documents," Rivera recalled. "I much rather work with words than writing Excel spreadsheets," she said, but eventually did both.

Today, Rivera enjoys working with Ulu clients and practicing law in a business context, whether it be working out contracts or helping companies partner with bigger brands.

Early in her business career Rivera would take jobs where there was a lot of learning opportunities

and maybe not a lot of pay. In one case, she took a pay cut to join a start-up company. She would attend meetings and be able to understand and work with much more senior business people. "I wanted see what was happening in 'that back room,” she recalled.

Rivera's career included stops at several companies and in various markets. She worked in enterprise software before she went to Google, where she spent five years as a vice president and corporate attorney

Having these early exposures to different industries, Rivera said, influenced her ability to understand business, law and technology and being able to build on that.

Among the factors driving Ulu, Rivera said, was that women have been exceeding male educational attainment for a long time at both undergraduate and masters level. "Yet, 2 percent of venture capital is invested in teams lead by women, 12 percent when you have a woman in a company as a founder,” she said.

Looking forward to the next ten years, Rivera, "who has been around since before the internet became a big business," sees Block Chain and "fintech" companies as the "next biggest thing" with some diverse investments and underserved markets within this sector.

"We are just at the beginning of that wave of technology," she said, suggesting that this will be "a very interesting and fruitful area" for young people to consider and to study.

"When you see those opportunities," she said, "jump on for the ride, get involved."

Rivera also has some strong suggestions about the future of the growing Latino population. "This is obviously a very diverse population," she said, "and we need to make our voices heard at a more uniform level."

The Ulu CEO observed, "I think we don't have an impact as big as the presence in this company. When we sometimes struggle to speak with a unified voice, we have less impact than groups that are smaller than we are."

Latinos should put individual country differences aside and concentrate on objectives that are important and beneficial to Latinos as a whole, Rivera said.

A major focus of Latino advocacy should be STEM education, according to Rivera. She learned about computer sciences at a private high school in the 1970s and 1980s, and "yet it is not required in most public schools where most of kids are getting educated," she said.

Among the other big impact items that Rivera said Latinos should pursue are access to college, participation on boards and representation in all walks of life.