Miriam Rivera

Miriam earned her AB in Sociology and AM in Spanish from Stanford University, as well as a JD/MBA from Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received the 2008 Jerry A. Porras Leadership Award from the Stanford GSB. She was also awarded the Stanford medal, awarded to fewer than 1% of the alumni of the university. Miriam was voted 2006 Latina Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association, "Latina Executive of the Year" by Hispanic.Net. And was named one of the top 100 Influential Latinas in 2020 by Latino Leaders US.

Miriam Rivera is co-founder and managing director of Ulu Ventures, a top seed stage venture fund in Silicon Valley focused on IT startups. Ulu generates great financial results using a disciplined, repeatable decision-making process that analyzes risk-reward trade-offs and also reduces cognitive bias. Entrepreneurs in the current fund are quite diverse by industry standards and she is dedicated to increasing diversity in both the entrepreneurial and investment communities. Prior to Ulu Ventures, Rivera was vice president / deputy general counsel at Google, which she joined in 2001 as the second attorney. There she helped build and lead an award- winning global legal department. Her work to re-design and simplify contracts helped Google scale from $85M to $10B in revenues in five years. Before Google, Rivera worked for Ariba as counsel, after having co- founded angel and then venture-backed Outcome Software. Previously, she worked as a strategy consultant for Accenture and as an associate at the law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. Miriam is the co-founder, former co-president and on the board of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs an "open source network" of Stanford alumni investors and entrepreneurs. She is a Kauffman Fellow in venture capital and a board member of the Kauffman Foundation, a national endowment dedicated to increasing opportunity for Americans through education and entrepreneurship. Miriam serves on the Investment Committee of Acumen Fund America, an impact investment fund serving the needs of low-income Americans. She is also on the Launch with GS Advisory Council, an initiative by Goldman Sachs to reduce the investing gap for Black and LatinX founders while driving returns.

As a graduated member of Class 15, Miriam served her fellowship at Ulu Ventures under the mentorship of Susan Mason, Co-founder of Align VC and Chair Emeritus of the Board of the Center for Venture Education.