Welcoming Grace Penders to Equal Ventures
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We’re excited to announce that Grace (DeJesus) Penders will be joining Equal Ventures as our new Climate Product Owner.
Grace joins us from Energize Capital, one of the leading climate-specific venture firms, where she was most recently a Senior Associate. Born in Staten Island and raised in New Jersey, Grace went to the University of Chicago, where she studied Economics and Spanish Literature and was Captain of the Track and Field team. Her passion for climate was sparked by a personal story, and she began her career in Puerto Rico working to rebuild the electric grid after Hurricane Maria, which had severely impacted her family living there. Grace then went on to spend five years as a Strategy Consultant at Accenture in NYC, focused on Utilities, Clean Energy and the broader Energy Transition, before returning to Chicago to join Energize. While at Energize, she’s focused on climate software investments across some of the themes we’re most excited about at Equal, including accelerating electrification, dynamic energy demand management, and circularity. Despite Grace’s love for Chicago, she was seeking a way to return to the Big Apple and the team at Energize was kind enough to give us their blessing to discuss this opportunity with her given their respect for Grace and the close relationship between our two firms.
While we are incredibly impressed with Grace’s deep knowledge of these areas and impressive recommendations from her peers, bosses and founders, what put her candidacy over the top for us were the personal qualities that define Grace. At Energize, she had two nicknames: “Scrapyard” and “The Octopus.” “Scrapyard Grace” has a notable knack for finding information from the source and networking her way into customers (including scrapyard owners and operators!) to learn from them. She has tremendous empathy for these users and it was clear that she had the grit, tenacity and persistence to uncover the undiscovered insights we thrive on. “The Octopus” refers to Grace’s team-first mentality; her colleagues remarked on her willingness to help with any facet of what was needed for the better of the firm, its mission and its founders, while excelling at multi-task management.
As we think of what makes a successful Product Owner at Equal, these are the exact qualities we look for: 1) depth of knowledge and passion for the sector; 2) “scrappiness” to find unrevealed insights; and 3) a team-first mentality to build our product beyond solely investing. We think these are the qualities that enable a Product Owner to contribute to our firm and our founders from Day One and it’s clear that Grace can bring them to this role.
When we asked Grace why she chose Equal Ventures as her next home (she had multiple competing offers), she said, “There’s something special about Equal. Yes, they’ve made some of the most exciting investments in the climate space, but what stands out are the team’s relationships with founders. Equal doesn’t build trust by supporting “XYZ” initiatives; Equal builds trust by being enduring partners with their founders; building and growing with portfolio companies at every stage of the business.” Those relationships with our founders are what we are most proud of and we’re extremely confident that Grace will further embolden those relationships in the years to come.
While we are a NYC based firm, with Grace’s addition on the team, we now have five team members that have worked in Chicago (Rick, Ali and Adam at Lightbank; Chelsea at LEK; and Grace at Energize) and three that attended school there (Chelsea and Grace at University of Chicago and Ali at University of Illinois). “Hey, Chicago, what do you say?…” (I’m sure the locals will get this one!)
Please join us in welcoming Grace to the Equal Ventures family!
5 FUN FACTS WITH GRACE
Grace spent her childhood summers working at Italian restaurants at the Jersey Shore… but unlike Rick, she did not develop an affinity for Jersey fist-pumping…
Growing up, Grace was a nationally competitive gymnast. At the age of 12, she could do 100 consecutive pull-ups.
Grace effectively minored in niche languages — learning Basque, reading Hittite cuneiform, etc. Her top travel destination is to visit Ankara in modern day Turkey to view some of the unearthed Hittite tablets.
Grace does her best thinking on her long distance walks, urban hiking more than 20 miles on the weekend with no destination in mind, often just meandering through the city.
In Chicago, Grace was involved with a local community garden, and particularly enjoyed planting fruits and vegetables. She’s looking for a new community garden near Fort Greene and open to recommendations in Brooklyn!