CyDeploy

We’re thrilled to celebrate the success of our second annual pitch competition at Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent! 🎉 This incredible event, hosted in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) URF and the Accenture Founder Development Program, showcased the power of innovation and entrepreneurship. Thank you Rich Green for being an amazing advocate and working to make this event and our previous webinar series so impactful. Your partnership means the world to the work we collectively do. Special thanks to Venture Backed, whose generous cash grants supported our top three startups. Congratulations to Feno (Dr. Kenny Brown), CyDeploy (Tina W.), and Glass Health (Dereck Paul, MD) for taking home 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place honors! 🏆 We are so proud of all 10 phenomenal founders who dedicated their time and energy to join us this week—your passion and brilliance inspire us all. Huge gratitude to Andy Tay, Adam Burden, Jennifer Jackson, Felipe Paranhos for their unwavering support, and a big shoutout to Dominique F. Rougeau and Shamar Waterman for bringing this vision to life. To Kathryn Ross and Fredrick D. Scott—thank you for making our prizes even more impactful than last year! Here’s to fostering innovation, building community, and supporting underrepresented founders as they transform industries and the world. 🚀 Sanna Gaspard, PhD, Erik Thomas-Hommer, Dereck Paul, MD, Sharon Obuobi, #MaureenSimmons, Tiffanie Stanard, Dr. Kenny Brown, Tina W., Leander Howard II,Joseph Rogers

What an incredible day at the "Race to a Trillion" event at the Cisco Experience Center in Atlanta during NMSDC! 🚀 Mike Anguiano and I witnessed firsthand how powerful the Supplier Diversity and Venture ecosystems can be when they collide. I’m thrilled to share that each of our five supplier partners— Julia Collins (Planet FWD), SaLisa B. (COI Energy), Tai Alegbe (Qonstrue), Myk ("Mick") Rambus (Hush), and Tina W. (CyDeploy)—secured next steps with corporate customers. Some critical conversations from the room: - Diverse-founded, venture-backed, AI-enabled startups are typically invisible to Supplier Diversity professionals; but there's huge will to connect and close that gap; - Networking, mentorship, and collaboration across the Venture Capital and Supplier Diversity ecosystems are crucial to address the kinds of complex challenges corporations are facing in areas like sustainability, risk and cybersecurity; - Venture capital firms are vetting firms they invest in in ways that are hugely valuable to Supplier Diversity professionals; - Supplier Diversity is ready for an AI-enabled approach to sourcing from the venture world. Huge thanks to our Corporate Buyers Maria Prince, M.B.A., NACD.DC (DuPont) and Kendra Burris-Austin, MBA, PMP, CPSM (Centene) for be our leading Supplier Diversity professionals, our Investor Champions Jewel Burks Solomon (Collab) and Luke Cooper (Latimer) for encouraging this cross-industry partnership. Thanks to sponsors Centene, The Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE) and host Cisco for making this event possible... and thanks to the 50+ Supplier Diversity professionals, Investors and Suppliers who took part in this event. It's clear we’ve tapped into something important here, so let’s keep the momentum going! Share your experiences, insights, and learnings using #RaceToATrillion Onward to a trillion-dollar impact! 🌍 www.racetrillion.com #RaceToATrillion #SupplierDiversity #AIInnovation #VentureCapital #Centene #RICECenter #Cisco #NMSDC #MBEs

"Every child deserves a safe childhood." I learned about the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) site (missingkids.org) earlier this week, and am sharing here for your awareness, and to leverage as a resource in making our children aware. It takes a village to raise AND protect children. Those of us who are cybersecurity professionals can further contribute through sharing our knowledge and doing our jobs well. #onlinesafety #childsafety #cybersecurity