Entrepreneurship

Chris Gray

Founder & CEO Scholly

After winning $1.3 million in scholarships himself, Christopher Gray founded Scholly, an app that helps students easily find scholarships for college and graduates pay off their student debt. Scholly was featured on ABC’s Shark Tank, landing a deal with Daymond John and Lori Greiner and sparking the biggest fight in Shark Tank history. Scholly maintains over 5 million users and has helped students raise over 100 million dollars. The company was acquired by consumer banking corporation, Sallie Mae, in 2023.

Porter Braswell

Co-Founder & Executive Chairman Jopwell

Porter Braswell is the founder and CEO of 2045 Studio, an exclusive network focused on the retention and upward mobility of influential professionals of color, which has been featured in Crain’s, Essence, Fast Company, Financial Times, Inc., The New York Times, among other publications. He co-founded Jopwell, an HR tech platform that helps diverse students and professionals unlock opportunities for career advancement. Under Porter’s leadership, Jopwell formed partnerships with more than 400 of America’s leading companies and has facilitated tens of thousands of connections between the Jopwell community members and its clients. In 2021, Jopwell was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Porter served as a GroundBreaker at the 2023 New York Times DealBook Summit and has received numerous awards for his thought leadership, including Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People In Business," Inc. Magazine's "30 Under 30," Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year New York Winner and National Finalist,” Vanity Fair's "Future Innovators Index," Adweek's "Young Influentials," and LinkedIn’s “Top Voices.” Porter is the author of Let Them See You, published by Penguin Random House in 2019, and the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Race at Work. Additionally, Porter is a Trustee of the Lawrenceville School and also serves on the boards of DREAM charter school and CFES Brillant Pathways. He started his career at Goldman Sachs on the foreign exchange desk after graduating from Yale in 2011, where he was a four-year member of the men's varsity basketball team.

Ryan Williams

Founder & CEO Cadre

Ryan A. Williams is the Founder, CEO and Executive Chairman of Cadre, a next generation real estate investment platform with more than $6 billion of assets closed or managed since founding in 2014. A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Ryan has built businesses in multiple industries over the past 20 years, and has multiple successful exits, including a merger with YieldStreet, the largest merger in the wealth-technology industry in more than 5 years. Williams led the close of the merger in 2024 bringing the combined business’ assets to $10 billion. The ventures Ryan has built have mainly focused on leveraging technology to enhance previously offline, inefficient industries and processes. He has been recognized as a leading entrepreneur and advocate for social and economic justice while being featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine in 2019, named Crain’s New York 30 under 30, The Commercial Observer 30 under 30, more recently named a member of Forbes 30 Under 30 and Fortune’s 40 under 40. His company, Cadre, is a leading technology-driven real estate and alternatives investment platform. Cadre’s portfolio is primarily comprised of multifamily and industrial real assets around the U.S. His firm has generated a ~28% Net IRR to its investors having returned more than $500 million in capital to its investors across multiple funds and separate accounts. Cadre has also raised more than $175 million in corporate funding, being backed by institutional investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Harvard Management Company, Soros Fund Management, David Rubenstein (Founder of Carlyle), Khosla Ventures, Ford Foundation, Goldman Sachs, General Catalyst, and others. Cadre’s LP’s include institutional investors such as foundations, endowments and corporate pensions along with a network of more than 50,000 high net worth investors globally. Prior to founding Cadre, Ryan worked at The Blackstone Group as an investment professional focused on real estate private equity where he helped invest in more than $5 billion of real estate assets. Prior to working at Blackstone, Ryan worked at Goldman Sachs in its technology, media, and telecom investment banking group. Ryan graduated from Harvard College in 2010 with honors. Ryan is a member of the Real Estate Executive Council, an Ambassador for All Star Code, a not for profit aimed at creating economic opportunity for young men of color by providing them with the tools to succeed in today’s innovation economy, specifically through technology and coding internships and classes. Ryan also serves as a Co-Chair for First Chance Campaign / Concordance, an organization focused on breaking the cycle of prison re[1]incarceration and promoting re-entry to society. Ryan is an advisor to the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship a member of Bridge Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, NY and advisor to Bridge Street Development Corp

Dapo Ogunfeitimi (Moderator)

1Y Student Columbia Business School