Felecia Hatcher

CEO, Black Ambition, Miami

Hatcher is the CEO of Pharrell Williams' Black Ambition Opportunity Fund, co-founder of the Center for Black Innovation and Black Tech Week, an author, and sought-after speaker at tech and entrepreneurship conferences. Hatcher was a C-student in high school and beat the odds and won more than $130,000 in scholarships to attend Lynn University, where she started her first business. Soon after, she launched a career in experiential marketing, product launch and social-media campaigns for tech companies such as Nintendo and Sony. She left corporate America and with her husband, Derick Pearson, in 2013 and started Code Fever, a nonprofit that teaches African American and Caribbean kids in Miami how to code. In the years after, Hatcher worked to develop the diverse tech community transforming Miami’s economy. In leading Black Ambition, she works to invest in dozens of startups and support hundreds of young people with mentors. “Access is something that I didn’t have, and it’s really important,” she says. Black Ambition now aims to open venture studios at historically Black colleges and universities, where many students lack access to entrepreneurship programs. Prior to Black Ambition, she and Pearson founded a youth entrepreneurship program called PopPreneurs that taught kids in urban areas how to become entrepreneurs selling ice cream via carts.

EDUCATION: Lynn University