Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan is Professor of Practice, School of Engineering, Brown University and Academic Director of the IE Brown EMBA program. At Brown University, she founded the Venture Capital Inclusion Lab--a data-driven research lab focusing on understanding and solving funding inequities in the VC industry. Her research interests are mainly in the areas of diversity and inclusion in organizations and in entrepreneurial ecosystems. In 2016, she was the recipient of a research grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for her research studying the opportunities and challenges for women entrepreneurs in St. Louis, MO and Boston, MA. The findings from this research led to her working with the City of Boston Women Entrepreneurs initiative, start-ups, and entrepreneur support organizations in order to make Boston an inclusive city for all entrepreneurs.

More recently, she has contributed her expertise on gender and inclusion to the 2018 UN Report on “Gender Lens to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Rights” (see RMIT 1, 2 and 3 reports). Prof. Ozkazanc-Pan’s research has been covered in CBS Boston, NPR All Things Considered, NBC News, and Boston Magazine among other media outlets. Her piece in The Conversation, focusing on the intersections of gender, inclusion and tech, has over 21,000 reads and offers ideas and steps that are necessary for the tech sector to become inclusive. She is an invited expert speaker for Women Business Owner’s Day on April 30th at the Connecticut State House. In June this year, Prof. Ozkazanc-Pan was invited to testify at the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship hearing to re-authorize the SBIC program to speak about the importance of women and minorities as investors and as entrepreneurs for the economy.