Melissa L. Bradley is the Founder and Managing Partner of 1863 Ventures, a business development program that accelerates New Majority entrepreneurs from high potential to high growth. Melissa serves as a General Partner of 1863 Venture Fund, a Venture Partner at NextGen Ventures, and an advisor to Reign Ventures and the Halcyon Fund. She is a board member of Ureeka, a small business platform company she co-founded and sold, Eat the Change, Motley Fool Foundation, and AEO. She is also a member of the Milken Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Asset Management Initiative, Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women Advisory Council, Launch with GS Advisory Council, Fast Company Executive Board, Square & Forbes Small Business Advisory Team, as well as the Target Accelerators Entrepreneurs Advisory Council. Melissa is the former Co-Chair and current National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship member. In 2022, she was awarded the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Alliance Excellence Award for Impact, named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 list for social entrepreneurship and the Washington Business Journal’s Power 100 list. Melissa is a Professor of Practice at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Over the last two years, she was commended with the Entrepreneurship Faculty Excellence Award, the Joseph F. LeMoine Award for Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching Excellence, the Peter W. Gonzalez, Jr. Award for Excellence in Adjunct Faculty Teaching, and The Ideas Worth Teaching Award, which celebrates exceptional courses that are preparing future business leaders to tackle society’s largest challenges and create a more inclusive, just, and sustainable version of capitalism. Melissa has produced two major research projects, Small Business Survivability Study for New Majority Entrepreneurs and Cost of Being a New Majority Entrepreneur. Melissa's educational background includes graduation from Georgetown University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the School of Business and a Master’s degree in Business Administration in Marketing from American University in 1993.