Saamra Mekuria-Grillo is the CEO and Founder of Kindred, an AI-powered social venture that is dedicated to increasing human connection and economic opportunity through the development of social capital infrastructure. Prior to Kindred, Saamra founded and led Formation Ventures, a nonprofit focused on supporting emerging entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of their journeys with scalable and affirming learning products.

Earlier in her career, she was the founding Chief Operating Officer at the Pahara Institute, where she oversaw Program and Institute Operations. Previous to Pahara, Saamra spent time at Bain & Company as a consultant and at Google, where she focused on training and growth of Google’s customer service sales and operations team. 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. Saamra is based in New York with her husband and two sons.