Female Funders: 7-Eleven Ventures' Marisa Bertha on the Need for Financial Education, Diverse Talent, and 'Collective Responsibility'

Marisa Bertha is an expert on how brands succeed within the 7-Eleven ecosystem. The senior director of New Business Development and 7-Ventures at 7-Eleven is responsible for selecting the portfolio of brands in which 7-Eleven invests. The 7-Ventures group invests in early-stage food and beverage businesses and convenient services to anticipate and respond to an ever-changing consumer.

Bertha was recently featured in Dallas Innovates magazine along with 11 other women shaking up the future of startup investment funding in Dallas-Fort Worth. Here are her thoughts on collective responsibility and the need for financial education.

BERTHA ON FINANCIAL EDUCATION

Greater opportunities for female founders and founders of color start with the general partners and limited partners. The investors themselves, and the people putting the money to work should also be females and minorities. But if there are currently few female and minority GPs and LPs, then we must engage young women in high school and college about careers in finance. I learned early that being smart, ambitious, and independent were characteristics that would serve me well.

ON “COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY”

Studying finance in undergrad and grad school gave me the tools to be successful professionally. I knew about VCs and PEs, but even with my background I was less familiar with family offices, institutional investors, and venture groups. We have a collective responsibility to foster more exposure in this space to women and minorities—we can do that by attending career days, volunteering for classroom visits, offering internships, or job shadowing.

ON DIVERSE TALENT

We must seek—and retain—talent from diverse backgrounds to join our teams, which will improve opportunities for investment for founders who represent diverse backgrounds themselves.

For more on female funders, go here to read about the 12 women shaking up the future of startup investment funding in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Interviews, as told to Jasmin Brand, are edited for brevity and clarity. A version was originally published in Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue.

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The 12 female funders were featured in our fourth annual magazine, Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue, highlights Dallas-Fort Worth as a hub for innovation.