About - New Majority Ventures

The New Majority is people of color, women, immigrants, veterans and LGBTQ. We are an audience that over-indexes across all media – and yet are unseen and under-served. To answer that call, New Majority Ventures is focused on us, the New Majority. We are committed to creating content that’s entertaining, authentic and inspirational. With advocates and experts to reflect the diversity of the audience.

New Majority Ventures is a partnership between Melissa Bradley’s 1863 Ventures and Kinetic Energy Entertainment.

“A portion of what I do is putting accurate facts out there that can ultimately change people’s minds. Even now, if I go raise money for our fund, people see me and they create a story in their mind about what they see. I want them to hear different stories with the same face and hopefully change the narrative in their head of what a CEO looks like.”

– Melissa Bradley

Partners & People

Melissa Bradley

CO-FOUNDER, HOST

Melissa L. Bradley is the Founder and Managing Partner of 1863 Ventures, a business development program that accelerates New Majority entrepreneurs from high potential to high growth. Driven by purpose and with decades of hands-on experience, Melissa understands the importance of marrying the needs of the New Majority entrepreneur with access to capital, operational training, and relevant data.

As this core community of entrepreneurs has multiplied, their need for business development information at scale has also risen. To meet this market need and expand her reach, Melissa launched media and entertainment brand New Majority Ventures, in partnership with Kinetic Energy Entertainment.

Melissa serves as General Partner of 1863 Venture Fund, Venture Partner at NextGen Ventures and as an advisor to Reign Ventures, New Voices Foundation, as well as the Halcyon Fund.

She is a board member of Ureeka, a small business platform company she co-founded and sold, as well as Eat the Change, Motley Fool Foundation, and AEO.

She is also a member of the Milken Institute Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Asset Management Initiative, Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women Advisory Council, Launch with GS Advisory Council, Fast Company Executive Board, Square & Forbes Small Business Advisory Team, as well as the Target Accelerators Entrepreneurs Advisory Council.

Melissa is the former Co-Chair of the National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and was named to the 2022 Forbes 50 Over 50 list for social entrepreneurship.

Melissa is a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University where she teaches impact investing, social entrepreneurship, P2P economies, and innovation. Over the last two years, she was commended with the Peter W. Gonzalez, Jr. Award for Excellence in Adjunct Faculty Teaching and The Ideas Worth Teaching Award which celebrates exceptional courses that are preparing future business leaders to tackle society’s largest challenges and create a more inclusive, just, and sustainable version of capitalism.

Melissa Bradley’s mission to help women and people of color build their businesses stems from the hardships she faced as a young entrepreneur. When she applied for a loan, she was told she had three strikes against her: she was Black, she was a woman and the person said she didn’t know any successful Black women in finance.

After raising $45 million to date, Melissa’s reputation as an advocate with critical insight into the challenging and rewarding entrepreneurial journey has made her an in-demand expert for morning & news-focused tv shows, print media, and as an inspirational event speaker.