Most recently updated 1/12/21

The Coming Clean series features trailblazing women and their reflections on how to live a beautiful life.

1. What do you do, and how did you get there?

I’m a General Partner at Felicis Ventures, a boutique venture capital firm. I’m incredibly lucky to spend my time investing in companies that are reinventing their respective industries. 

I started my career at Amazon where I caught the entrepreneurial bug and saw first-hand what explosive growth looks like. For the next 17 years, I led sales,  marketing, and business development functions with responsibility for scaling revenues into the hundreds of millions at Kabbage, RingCentral, and Travelocity. 

I also advised and invested in startups and found it incredibly rewarding to coach companies through the stages of growth from prototype to first customers to first revenue and then to scaling.The move to venture capital was a natural progression of my operating and advising experience.

2. So many of us feel overcommitted these days. What are your tips for holding it all together?

Here are the 3 tips I live by:

  1. “No phone” productivity time. Once a week, I plan for two hours of completely focused thinking time. I physically put my phone in a drawer, shut down email, and make sure the room I am in is free from distractions. I call it my deep-thinking chamber. I think, write, and work on anything that takes deep concentration. It’s incredible how much work I get done during these focused time blocks.
  2. A notepad by my bed. I use it to capture ideas and to jot down anything that comes to mind during the night. I find that my brain often solves problems in the middle of the night!
  3. Optimized waiting/dead time.  I keep a running list on my phone of non-urgent return calls and life management tasks I need to handle. I then use transit and waiting time (airports, ubers, doctors’ offices) to make these calls.  One time, at the end of an Uber ride my driver looked up and said, “You must have gotten through your entire to-do list in my car. I’m going to try it too, so I can spend more time with my kids when I get home”

3. How would you complete this sentence? “Makeup makes me feel…

…strong and ready to conquer the world !

Even though I wear minimal makeup, my basic morning routine makes me feel ready for the day ahead.

4. With 5 minutes for your daytime beauty routine, what products do you reach for?

I can do my makeup in 2-3 minutes with these 3 basics:

If I have time, I use Lily Lolo mascara and Lily Lolo lip gloss.

Before any of it goes on, I enjoy a moment of self-care and apply the NakedPoppy Revitalize Organic Facial Oil. It leaves my skin feeling fresh and healthy.

5. Tell us about an experience or defining moment that has influenced your outlook on beauty.

As a student in my 20’s, I visited Paris for the first time on a shoestring budget. Walking the streets of Paris, I was struck by how every woman I passed — whether she was in her 20’s or her 60’s — appeared beautiful, strong, and confident. 

I pressed my French friends to find out more about French beauty. The secret? At its core, the French approach is a natural look with light makeup, great skincare, inner confidence, and an understated elegance. Unlike American women, French women don’t obsess about their imperfections and worry about diets. 

These have become the tenets of my super simple beauty routine. I also tend to have a positive outlook on life which I firmly believe gives you an inner confidence and an outer glow.

6. Is there an aspect of your appearance you’ve struggled with in the past? How do you feel about it now?

I used to worry that my stomach and arms weren’t as toned as I’d like them to be. Now I’m too busy to think about these imperfections. Plus, running around and carrying a five-year-old has improved the muscle tone in my arms anyway!

8. Do you do anything surprising in order to feel healthier?

My 2 secrets are monthly vitamin B-12 shots and infrared sauna sessions with light therapy.  Infrared sauna is truly magical. Pre-covid, I did it any time I started to feel run down, and often the day after a long flight. I can’t wait to resume when it’s safe again. It resets your body with an infusion of energy. You walk out feeling like you came back from vacation.

9. What makes your life beautiful?

I love family walks to the park, date nights, bluebird ski days, and being with the managed chaos of teenagers and a preschooler at dinner time. I live for bedtime routine with my five-year-old which involves reading the Fancy Nancy series and serenading her with our favorite bedtime songs.

Get “shockingly accurate” clean beauty picks. Take your beauty assessment.

Shop the story: