My Work
The ventures, funds, books, and programs I have founded and led, in reverse chronological order. Each one is a chapter in the same story: building what was missing, then teaching others to do the same.
January 2026 to Present
Program
BUILD is Kathryn's newest program, an extension of the philosophy at the heart of Build the Damn Thing. It translates two decades of founder, operator, and investor experience into a hands-on path for entrepreneurs ready to move from idea to traction. The work draws on the same playbook Kathryn has used to coach hundreds of founders, raise roughly $100M across her ventures, and back more than 100 startups as an angel and VC.
Published 2022
Book, Penguin Random House
Wall Street Journal bestseller and number one on Amazon in venture capital and entrepreneurship. Kathryn's second book lays out her playbook for outsider founders, drawn from twenty years of building and exiting companies, investing in more than 100 startups, and scaling digitalundivided into a $5.6M social enterprise. Build the Damn Thing has become a touchstone text for entrepreneurs who were not handed the traditional roadmap.
April 2020
Micro-Investment Fund
Founded at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and named in honor of Kathryn's grandmother, the Doonie Fund distributed $250K in micro-investments directly to Black women entrepreneurs whose businesses were threatened by the shutdown. The fund's deployments contributed an estimated $8.3M to local economies, demonstrating how small, fast capital placed in the right hands compounds into meaningful community impact.
2020 to Present
Venture Capital Firm
Managing General Partner of a Chicago-based venture capital firm Kathryn founded, built, and scaled with a team of 10 investment professionals. She set the strategic direction, led fund formation and GP structure with outside counsel, and raised more than $10M for the venture fund, overperforming funds of the same vintage by 60% with a 1.6x MOIC against an industry average of negative 0.97 for vintage 2021. Genius Guild oversees a portfolio of 10 investments, including 3 LP positions in other venture funds, with a thesis focused on breakthrough technologies with global impact. Long-term backers include Meta, Impact Seat, and Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates Investment Company, and Kathryn has secured more than $20M in partnerships with Johnson and Johnson and Anthem for portfolio companies.
October 2016
Research Initiative
Conceptualized and led by Kathryn as the founding research effort at digitalundivided, ProjectDiane was the first comprehensive demographic study of Black women founders in U.S. tech. The report reframed the national conversation about who builds technology companies, became required reading inside Fortune 500 corporate venture arms and major foundations, and remains a benchmark cited by media, investors, and policymakers nearly a decade after its release.
2012 to 2020
Social Enterprise
Founder and CEO of a groundbreaking, multi-award-winning social enterprise promoting innovation and entrepreneurship for women of color. Kathryn built and scaled a team of 40+ on a 7-figure annual budget, growing the organization from $0 to $5.6M in annual revenue across four revenue streams of foundations, corporate partnerships, and brand sponsorships. She built a corporate partnership arm of more than 40 Fortune 500 and category leaders including Pivotal Ventures, Prudential, Comcast, LinkedIn, AMEX, Nasdaq, AWS, Shopify, Gusto, Silicon Valley Bank, EY, and The Surdna Foundation. During her tenure, she was appointed by the Obama Administration to NACIE, led ProjectDiane, and was awarded the Heinz Award for the Economy with a $250K personal prize, along with the French American Fellow and Echoing Green fellowships.
Published 2006
Book, Random House
Kathryn's first book, published by a Random House imprint, translated the voice and authority of The Budget Fashionista into a national print debut. It cemented Kathryn as a category-defining expert on smart spending and style at a moment when independent women's media was still finding its footing, and it laid the groundwork for the brand and audience that would later support her exit.
2004 to 2013
Multi-Media Company, TBF Group LLC
Founder and CEO of one of the first women-led online media companies, scaled from concept to a successful exit. Kathryn grew TBF Group to $1.3M in annual revenue and secured Fortune 500 and CPG partnerships with AMEX, TJMaxx, Procter and Gamble, and Federated Department Stores. She led the M&A process personally, completing one of the first acquisitions of a startup led by a Black woman to a private Midwest-based multi-media company in a 7-figure exit.