Saamra Mekuria-Grillo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Formation Ventures, a startup social venture that aims to accelerate emerging Black youth and young adult entrepreneurs as they build their visions into wealth-creating ventures. Prior to founding Formation Ventures, she was the founding Chief Operating Officer at the Pahara Institute, and was a facilitator for Pahara’s leadership programs. Previous to Pahara, Saamra spent time at Bain & Company, and at Google, where she focused on training and growth of Google’s customer service sales and operations team. Saamra currently serves on the board of Instruction Partners, and is a Cambiar Education Fellow and a Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow. She holds an MBA with a certificate in Public Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University. She is also a proud graduate of the Boston Latin School, the first public school in the United States.