Renee LaBran

Renée LaBran is a board director, business advisor, and investor with 25+ years of executive management experience in both start-ups and major corporations, across a range of industries including technology, consumer products, and financial services.

She is also a Qualified Financial Expert with audit committee experience. Ms. LaBran currently serves on the boards of B. Riley Financial (NASDAQ: RILY), where she is a member of the audit and governance committees, Iconic Sports Acquisition Corporation (NYSE: ICNC-UN), and Idealab (the longest running technology incubator).

She is an active investor and advisor to early-stage companies (tech and consumer products), navigating new opportunities from the perspectives of both the disruptors and the disrupted. She is also an Adjunct Professor at UCLA Anderson Business School’s entrepreneurship program, and serves on the Advisory Board of Principia Growth, a late-stage growth fund.

In 2015, Ms. LaBran was appointed by Governor Brown to the California State Bar Board of Trustees (responsible for regulation of CA attorneys) and was confirmed to two terms by the State Senate as a non-attorney public member. Ms. LaBran played a key role in the restructuring and turn-around of both the board and the organization and completed her tenure in December 2020.

Ms. LaBran has been involved in the venture capital industry since 2000, initially as a founding partner of Rustic Canyon Partners (RCP), a technology focused VC fund. RCP also served as the launching pad for RC/Fontis, a growth stage fund focused on consumer products and business services.

Prior to venture capital, Ms. LaBran held a variety of executive management positions at the Los Angeles Times and was a management consultant with Monitor Company US and Europe, working on corporate strategy projects for Fortune 500 companies.

Ms. LaBran is an honors graduate of Harvard Business School and received her BA in Economics from UC Berkeley where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.