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Marisa Warren is the Founder and Managing Partner of ALIAVIA Ventures, investing in female-founded tech startups across the U.S. and Australia. Established in 2021, ALIAVIA has delivered it's first exit, Loupe Art to Stingray (TSX: RAY.A; RAY.B), and invested in 12 early stage companies.With 26 years of experience at companies like SAP, Microsoft, and Workday, Marisa brings a wealth of knowledge and a relentless drive to create opportunities for women in tech. She’s also the founder of ELEVACAO, a not-for-profit that helped 175 women raise over $120 million in funding, leading to five exits.Hosted by Vidit Agarwal, Founder of Curiosity Center and The High Flyers Podcast.It’s now time to explore your curiosity.CLICK the links below to listen and enjoy now!
Show notes
Published 22nd January, 2025.
Our guest this week is Marisa Warren in episode #191, and this conversation is packed with grit, reinvention, and inspiration.
Marisa is the Founder and Managing Partner of ALIAVIA Ventures, investing in female-founded tech startups across the U.S. and Australia. With 26 years of experience at companies like SAP, Microsoft, and Workday, Marisa brings a wealth of knowledge and a relentless drive to create opportunities for women in tech. She’s also the founder of ELEVACAO, a not-for-profit that helped 175 women raise over $120 million in funding, leading to five exits.
What our host, Vidit loved about Marisa’s story is the full circle of her life. She grew up constantly on the move—seven schools across three countries and five cities—thanks to her dad’s career as a landscape architect. That early exposure to change taught her how to adapt quickly, build relationships, and embrace uncertainty—skills that would serve her well later in life. Her mother, who worked in politics as an advisor to prime ministers, and her grandmother, a pioneering art gallery owner in Canberra, were both powerful female role models who instilled in her a belief that you could achieve anything you set your mind to.
Vidit and Marisa dive into her journey, including:
- How a career that started in high school with a job serving drinks at her grandmother’s art gallery evolved into leading sales at companies like SAP, Microsoft, and Workday.
- Moving countries multiple times from multiple cities within Australia to the UK and USA and adapting to new challenges including three redundancies.
- How she built ALIAVIA Ventures during the pandemic with an innovative “try before you buy” funding model.
- Her move to New York after a second redundancy—without a job, contacts, or even a place to live—and how she turned that risk into founding ELEVACAO.
- The highs and lows of building a career, and navigating the balance between being a mother and entrepreneur.
This is a story of resilience, leadership, and breaking barriers.
It’s time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy!
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Timestamps
About us
The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most relatable role models in business, tech, finance, government and sport in the US, Australia, Singapore, India and New Zealand.
Launched over 6.5+ years ago - our 275+ guests come from various industries around the world including:
Investing and Finance (VC, PE, Pension Funds, Family Offices)
Our guests across venture capital, growth investing, institutional capital, banking, pension funds and family offices include: Keith Rabois (MD, Khosla Ventures), Jason Collins (CEO, BlackRock Asia Pacific), Ryan Beiermeister (Partner, Founders Fund), David Haber (General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz), Kevin Hartz (Managing Partner, A*), Mike Vernal (Partner, Conviction; Ex-Sequoia), David Schneider (Growth Fund Co-Lead Partner, Coatue), Venky Ganesan (Managing Partner, Menlo Ventures), Mark Suster (Managing Partner, Upfront Ventures), Kelland Reilly (Partner, Airtree; Ex General Atlantic, D1), Niki Scevak (Managing Partner, Blackbird), Paul Bassat (Managing Partner, Square Peg), David Neal (CEO, IFM Investors), Sam Sicilia (CIO, Hostplus), Michael Kim (Partner, Cendana Capital), Beezer Clarkson (Partner, Sapphire), Gautam Chari (Head of Capital Commitments, Bank of America), David Shein (Managing Partner, OIF), Vivek Bhatia (CEO, MUFG), Rowan Simpson (Founder, Hoku) and more.
Technology, AI and software (Startups, Big Tech, Publicly Listed)
Our technology, AI and software guests include Jodie Auster (Uber’s Global Head of Travel), Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Xero), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Mel Silva (MD, Google), Jean-Michel Lemieux (former CTO, Shopify and Atlassian), Anil Sabharwal (Global VP, Google Chrome, Photos and Drive), Shiv Rao (CEO, Abridge), Jesse Zhang (CEO, Decagon), Dylan Babbs (Co-Founder & CTO, Profound), John Willett (Co-Founder & COO, Rogo), David Eckstein (CFO, Legora), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta), Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel), Cristina Cordova (COO, Linear), Elena Verna (Head of Growth, Lovable), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Tim Doyle (CEO, Eucalyptus), Andrew Fraser (President, Halter), Bowen Pan (creator of Facebook Marketplace) and more.
CEOs, Boards and Major Company Senior Executives
Our guests leading some of the world's largest and most recognisable organisations include Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths Group), Aleks Spaseska (CEO, Kmart) Michael Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), Paul Grosmann (CEO, R.M.Williams), Andrew Penn (CEO, Telstra), Vandita Pant (CFO, BHP), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica), Craig Tiley (CEO, Tennis USA), Brendan Hargreaves (CFO, Officeworks), Andrew Fraser (Board Chair, Bank of Queensland), Jaddan Cummerford (CEO, Unified Music), Ed McManus (CEO, Deliveroo) and more.
Government and Policy Makers
Our government, diplomatic and public-policy guests include Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Amit Singh (Managing Partner, Mandala), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Australia's Foreign Service), Philip Green (Australia’s High Commissioner to India), Brendan Dowling (Deputy Secretary, Australia's Department of Home Affairs), Mukund Narayanamurti (General Manager for South Asia, Austrade) and Ryan Neelam (CEO, Centre for Australia-India Relations, Australian Government).
Professional Athletes
Steve Solomon (400m Olympic Sprinter), Ed Cowan (Former Test Cricketer), Trent Cotchin (3x Premiership Winning Captain, Richmond FC), Lisa Stahelakar (World Cup Winning Captain, Australian Womens Cricket Team).
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