Candice Matthews is a General Partner at Lightship Capital who built her fund after experiencing firsthand the barriers facing founders of color, including being among the first 88 Black women to raise venture capital nationally. She operates an integrated system that includes both Lightship Capital and Lightship Foundation, running accelerators, acquiring and relocating Black Tech Week to Cincinnati, and sitting on advisory bodies like NASA's Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium to influence how institutional dollars are allocated to underrepresented founders.

• Championing underrepresented founders and facilitating access to capital through structured opportunities. She actively promotes pitch competitions and events organized by her firm, such as a recent call for applications for a New York event where previous participants successfully secured millions in funding.
• Practical operational advice directed specifically at startup leaders. She shares wisdom on decision-making, encouraging entrepreneurs to stop guessing and ask stakeholders directly to cure analysis paralysis, and advises caution when hiring by noting that prestige on a resume does not always translate to performance.
• Advocacy for fair media representation and racial equity in storytelling. She utilized her platform to critique a major news publication for using an image of a Black athlete in a story about a white quarterback's arrest, emphasizing the responsibility media outlets have to eliminate bias in both human choices and algorithms.
• Strong regional pride centered on the Ohio ecosystem and local culture. She frequently expresses enthusiasm for the Cincinnati area, cheering for the Bengals with local fan chants and humorously noting the unique dedication residents of her state have compared to others.
• Engagement with pop culture and lighthearted personal topics to balance professional insights. She connects with her audience through shared interests in music icons like Beyoncé and jokes about using holiday movies as a source of joy and stress relief during busy news cycles.