Lori Wachs is a venture capitalist, fund manager and consumer analyst, with over 30 years of investment experience. She is the Founder and Managing Partner at Penultima Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in women-led growth stage companies in the consumer sector. This work builds on her successful investments as a partner at Springboard Growth Capital.
Through her 17 years at Delaware Investments, where she helped oversee the investment of $4 billion in various institutional and mutual fund products in the consumer sector, and her own fund, Cross Ledge Investments, she has demonstrated a record of identifying companies that transformed their industries by capitalizing on emerging trends, and supporting these companies’ growth into dominant industry players. Lori started her career in finance as an analyst in the Equity Risk Arbitrage department of Goldman Sachs.
Active in marketing the investment products she manages, Lori has been featured regularly on ABC Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, CNBC, Bloomberg News and Fox News Channel as an expert on retail and consumer investments, fashion trends, buying behavior and retailing best practices.
Lori was selected as an inaugural member of DealMakeHers, as one of the most impactful female dealmakers in the retail and consumer space. Private equity investments while at Springboard Growth Capital include The RealReal, ClassPass, Hint, and Aquis, and at Penultima Capital, Alchemy 43, Safely and The 7 Virtues.
Lori is a Magna Cum Laude graduate and a Benjamin Franklin Scholar from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in finance, and minored in East Asian studies. She graduated with honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Currently, Lori is the Chair of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. She is the immediate past Chair of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women, which is an international network of accomplished University of Pennsylvania alumnae. Additionally, she is on the boards of Biomimetek, a science-driven clean hair care company known for its K18 line of haircare products (acquired by Unilever in Feb. 2024), and The Soufan Center, a nonprofit organization working on global security issues and emergent threats. She is also a board observer to Alchemy 43, an aesthetics bar specializing in cosmetic micro treatments, and is an advisor to Digital Village, a technology platform that enables the creation of 3D immersive worlds.