Cynthia Billops has spent the last 3 decades building and practicing a variety of skills including developing, optimizing, and scaling programs, people processes and business systems in order to help organizations set and reach impactful, measurable, human-centered, short and long-term goals that center equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. Currently Director of Direct Services at ICA Fund – an Oakland-based non-profit with a mission of closing racial and gender wealth gaps by providing coaching, capital and connections to early-stage businesses owned and operated by individuals who have been systemically marginalized and/or excluded from traditional avenues of funding/investment; Cynthia also serves as VP of Justice, Equity. Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) at One Step Closer (OSC), a member organization that supports activated CEOs in the Natural Food and CPG space who are committed to embedding DEI and environmental sustainability into the DNA of their organizations. Additionally, she has served as the Director of Programs at /dev/color – a global career accelerator for Black software engineers, technologists, and executives with 600+ professional members; working to bring Black engineering leaders together as they surface and solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Cynthia’s North Star – her “Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)”, if you will – is creating a society that is equitable, inclusive and supportive of individual agency/aptitude so we as a group can develop and benefit from everyone’s individual strengths and use that combined energy to overcome our individual (and group) limitations.

About ICA Fund

ICA Fund accelerates great businesses through mentoring and investments to close the racial and gender wealth gaps. We work with entrepreneurs who are from systemically underrepresented backgrounds, and since 2016, we’ve intentionally teamed with 103 Bay Area businesses by investing over $10M with 90 cents of every dollar going to women and/or people of color.