Overview

Gender

female

Investor Type

Investment Partner,Angel

Investor Stage

Seed

Fern Mandelbaum, is an entrepreneur, coach, lecturer and investor. She is a Managing Partner at Vista Venture Partners. Her portfolio includes: Guild Education, BetterUp, MissionU, Andela, Sparta Science, Blendoor, Pique Tea, Tinkergarten, Vocate, FaunaDB, GridSpace, popchips and PicnicHealth. She is also an advisor to Accompany, Talent Sonar, Aplomb, Pair Eyewear, ClockWise, and Ava.

Fern teaches Entrepreneurship from Diverse Perspectives, POWer - Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital from the Perspective of Women, and Equity By Design - Building Diverse and Inclusive Organizations at Stanford Business School. She co-teaches the Accel Innovation Scholars Program, a one-year entrepreneurship program for Stanford engineering PhD students. She is a mentor in the Mayfield Fellows Program, in theStanford Technology Ventures Program, and is an adviser to StartX, Stanford’s accelerator. She has lectured at Brown University and San Jose State, and in Stanford’s Ignite, Exec Ed, and Continuing Studies programs.

Fern also coaches CEO’s on building companies, and works with companies and venture firms such as LinkedIn, Sequoia, and Intercom on inclusive leadership and building diverse and inclusive organizations.

Fern was co-founder and CEO of Skyline Products (acquired by IDEO). She worked at Monitor Ventures, Metcal, Bain and Company, SRI International, Hewlett Packard and the Kyoto Shinyo Bank (in Kyoto, Japan).

Fern received an M.B.A. from Stanford and a B.A., Economics from Brown University. She enjoys running, cycling, yoga, and going on walks with her family, friends, and colleagues. She is married, and has two children, Miles, 16 and Skylar, 23.