Theia Smith

Founding Executive Director, Atlanta’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative

Atlanta

Theia Smith is the Founding Executive Director of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative (WEI) – the only city-funded initiative of its kind in the nation, aimed at empowering women entrepreneurs for economic mobility and inclusion. Entrepreneurs selected for the WEI cohort are equipped with unprecedented access in three areas: financial capital, human capital and thought capital - to accelerate them from ‘solopreneur’ business models, to viable high growth ventures, providing employment opportunities for in-need Atlantans. Theia's board involvement includes serving on the leadership committee of Startup Runway, a funding initiative for the top 10% of high performing minority and women-led startups in the Southeast and on the board of Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs’ Women Investing in Successful Entrepreneurship (WISE). Theia is the recipient of the League of Black Women’s 2018 ‘Black Rose’ award, for championing for black women’s empowerment and economic prosperity and is recognized as a 2017 ‘40 Under 40’ honoree by the Atlanta Business Chronicle and one of ‘17 inspiring Women to Watch in 2017’ by Inc. Magazine. Theia is an alumna of Spelman College and a member of the 2018 class of Leadership Atlanta.