JOANNA DRAKE

Innovator, Investor, Imagineer

Joanna has been creating next-generation consumer experiences at the intersection of media, technology and commerce for almost twenty years. The common thread across her experiences—with big companies and start-ups both—is a passionate belief that innovation and an underlying social mission can not only create companies people love to work for, but products and services that can actually change the way we think and engage with the world.

Joanna is a General Partner at seed stage venture fund Core Ventures Group.  Joanna is an active member of female executive groups, including C200 and AWESOME (Advancing Women Excellence in Supply Chain Operations, Management and Education), and a Board Member of C200 and DSC Logistics.

Joanna was previously the Chief Operating Officer for DeNA West, where she oversaw operations for this leading Japanese public mobile entertainment company outside of Asia, working closely with the female Founder and Board on international expansion. For almost ten years prior, Joanna served as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Current TV, the fastest growing cable and satellite network in the history of the industry, where she was the first executive to join co-Founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt and ran much of the business for nine years. Current TV was sold to Al Jazeera in 2013.

During the first wave of web start-ups in the late 90s, Joanna held executive positions at leading start-ups at the intersection of technology and media, including MOXI (now Digeo, sold to Paul Allen) and ReacTV. She started her career as a Senior Associate in Booz Allen & Hamilton’s media and entertainment and technology consulting practices.

Joanna holds a Masters degree focused on Japanese business from Stanford University, and a BA in Political Economy from University of California at Berkeley.