A Conversation with Dr. Shante Williams, CEO, Investor and Inventor

Dr. Shanté Williams is Currently The CEO Of Black Pearl Global Investments, A $25M Venture Capital Fund. She Is A Distinguished Venture Capitalist, Business Owner, Inventor, Intellectual Property Strategist, And Private Investor. In Her Career Years, She Has Used Her Wealth Of Scientific Knowledge As Well As Her Passion For Innovation To Solve Multiple Complex Problems Across The Industries Of Health, Finance, And Real Estate. Since the death of George Floyd more and more people are raising their voices to call for social justice, equity and real support of black owned businesses. Major corporations are pledging substantial dollars in the belief that in order to truly expand our economy and close the racial wealth gaps that exist in this country we have to start investing in Black businesses.

Dr. Williams has been doing just that. She has been on a mission to mobilize money to help build thriving communities and ecosystems. How she's doing it, you ask; by investing capital where it can both earn returns and have an impact.

SM: Dr. Williams tell our readers a little about yourself? Who is Dr. Shanté Williams?

SW: I always do a bad job of this and I never really cover everything, but I'll try to be brief. I am a former Neuro-oncology Experimental Therutic Scientist. which is a lot of words to say, I used to help develop new therapies and techniques to keep brain tumors from spreading through the brain. That's what my educational background is. That's where my early clinical experiences. That's where I really started to get very curious about the possibilities of what can be done in the world.

I left that career path a while ago, and I actually decided to go into finance and investment banking; mergers and acquisitions. I completely transitioned out of science and went to finance. I did that for a lot of reasons. One, was I wanted to make a lot of money. I'm kidding, but I am money motivated. I really wanted to be able to see all that hard work that people do in the clinic, and all of those discoveries get out to the people who really needed them, so logically believe it or not that goal lead me on this path. I actually went from the clinic to tech commercialization for university, and then into management or investment consulting. That was a lot of fun, I got to do financial modeling, structure deals and work with the "big boys" like Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods. etc. I also enjoyed working with those smaller companies that you may have never heard of until they develop something like a vaccine or medical device that impacts your life. So I always tell younger people willing to listen, a lot of my journey was not intentional, necessarily, but I was open to possibilities.

SM: So pause there because one would say everything you've talked about to this point seems like pretty lucrative and amazing careers. But there's more to this story right, you got out of all of that and went on to get an MBA and...?

SW: That's right I got an MBA. And then I went into mergers and acquisitions formerly as the head of M&A for a medical device company. Then I was off to the races as I like to say. I wanted to came out of healthcare and clinical all together and went into electric vehicles. I do have some patents, specifically in designing components for electric vehicles. I did that for a while, I was the head of intellectual property for a very large Japanese company. That was my last corporate gig. I jumped out, and I started a couple of companies.