Alicia Syrett
Alicia Syrett is the Founder of Madam Chair, a collaborative group of 250+ female Chairs and Lead Directors of publicly-traded companies, which represents over 35% of the women who hold these leadership roles in the US. She has made it her mission to connect female Chairs and Lead Directors to support each other and to increase the number of women at the highest levels of corporate leadership. Less than 10% of these roles are currently held by women, and by increasing the representation we can collectively oversee CEOs and influence entire corporations, especially in the area of diversity. Ms. Syrett holds monthly Madam Chair events and partners with other organizations (Him for Her, Extraordinary Women on Boards, Black Women on Boards) to further the mission.
Ms. Syrett serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Governance, Nominating, and Sustainability Committee of Digimarc Corporation (DMRC), a publicly-traded technology company. She was named as the "Board Director of the Year" by Women in IT Awards USA. She published "So You Say You Support Diversity?" in Directors and Boards magazine and has been quoted in the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Directorship magazine in the article, "How Private Companies Can Level Up on Board Diversity." She has spoken at numerous events including the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors, How Women Lead, Capital One, ISS, KPMG & the Private Equity Women Investor Network, and the Women Governance Trailblazers podcast.
She is the Founder and CEO of Pantegrion Capital, an investment vehicle focused on early-stage investments (primarily in entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities). Ms. Syrett has been named for the “Woman of the Year” shortlist by the Women in Asset Management Awards, one of LinkedIn’s “Top Voices in Startups and Entrepreneurship,” one of the “30 Women in Venture Capital to Watch” by Business Insider, and one of Virgin’s “Five Next Generation Leaders Emerging from Tech.” Her TED talk on “Why VCs and Angel Investors Say ‘No’ to Entrepreneurs” has been viewed over 400,000 times, and she wrote MentHER: Guide for Entrepreneurs, available on Amazon. She has appeared on major TV networks 100+ times and has been a Contributor for Inc. and an Instructor at Columbia University. She has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, WSJ, Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, Inc., The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, NPR’s Marketplace, USA Today, CNBC, PBS, MSNBC, and Fox Business.
Prior to founding Pantegrion, Ms. Syrett spent her career in the financial industry, which included her entrepreneurial journey as the first employee and CAO of a multi-billion-dollar private equity firm. She graduated early from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Economics (magna cum laude) and concentrations in Finance and Accounting. She also possesses two MBA degrees from the London Business School (with distinction) and Columbia Business School where she received Beta Gamma Sigma honors.