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Building Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley
Co-initiators, co-founders, and co-presidents of Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley (FFFB), Julia Daviy and Shilpa Beesabathuni, at the opening of the inaugural in-person Berkeley Female Founders and Funders Summit at Berkeley Haas on May 11, 2024.
By the end of 2024, BFFF had engaged more than 2,000 women through membership, social media followership, and event participation, with interest in wider activities as the organization envisioned expansion beyond Berkeley.
Julia Daviy co-initiated, co-founded, and co-led Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley (FFFB) with Shilpa Beesabathuni, PhD. Also referred to as Berkeley Female Founders and Funders (BFFF), the organization brought together women founders, investors, students, and alumni to expand participation on both sides of the fundraising table.
Julia served as founding co-chair while pursuing her MBA at UC Berkeley Haas. During her tenure, the community grew to more than 350 members, established programming and cross-campus relationships, and held its inaugural summit.
Historical records identify Julia as Julia Berezovska, Julia Daviy Berezovska, or Yuliya Berezovska. These names refer to Julia Daviy.
A community growing beyond Berkeley
By October 2024, FFFB had more than 350 actively engaged members, a figure also documented in adviser Rhonda Shrader’s supporting letter.
By the end of that year, its wider community encompassed more than 2,000 women engaged as members, followers, and event participants. Interest extended beyond campus, supporting the organization’s vision of expanding its activities beyond Berkeley.
Its programming included workshops, pitch training, founder and investor conversations, and mentor connections. Within Berkeley, its reach extended beyond the MBA programs to Engineering and the Goldman School of Public Policy.
FFFB began in summer 2023 with a shared ambition: to help more women build companies and participate in the investment decisions that shape which ideas reach the world. FFFB became an official Registered Student Organization (RSO) at UC Berkeley in September 2023 and an official Berkeley Haas club in October 2023.
For Julia, this continued a longstanding practice of founding ventures and building the systems around them. At Berkeley, that meant working with Shilpa and the founding team to establish a community connecting entrepreneurial ambition with practical skills, relationships, and access to capital.
The organization developed around four pillars:
- Learning and skills building
- Community building
- Advocacy and awareness
- Partnerships across the Bay Area entrepreneurial ecosystem
Its inaugural board, selected in August 2023, comprised 16 members. FFFB became a UC Berkeley Registered Student Organization in September 2023 and an official Berkeley Haas club in November 2023.
On May 11, 2024, FFFB held its inaugural summit at Berkeley Haas, bringing together more than 120 participants from the UC Berkeley ecosystem and the wider San Francisco Bay Area.
Julia and Shilpa delivered the opening and closing remarks. Julia’s opening address connected the gender funding gap to the loss of entrepreneurial capacity: excluding women founders also excludes ideas and solutions the world needs.
The program combined practical learning with conversations between founders and investors. It included:
- A fundraising workshop led by Lily Yuen Xu of AWS, addressing bias in investor questions.
- A fireside conversation with Lalitha Rajagopalan, co-founder of Oro Labs, moderated by Ashley Keyes.
- A founders’ panel featuring Ashley Zehnder of Fauna Bio, Amelia Lin of Honeycomb, and Jacqueline Cheong of Artie, co-moderated by Lauren Miller and Sharanya Reddy Charabuddi.
- A growth marketing workshop led by Sandy Diao.
- An investors’ panel featuring Yvonne Lutsch, Vivian Qu, Meera Oak, and Yulia Lalutska, moderated by Pavitraa Parthasarathy.
- A startup showcase featuring Rely, Cepanoa Health, Kaizen Intelligence & Pusula.ai, GameTree, and SwipeFund.
The organization’s newsletter, published May 14, 2024, documents the event and explicitly identifies Julia Daviy Berezovska and Shilpa Beesabathuni as co-founders and co-chairs.
Adviser’s assessment
In a letter dated October 2, 2024, Rhonda Shrader, Executive Director of Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship and the NSF I-Corps Bay Area Node, described FFFB’s practical learning, mentor networks, and cross-campus work.
She recorded more than 350 actively engaged members and called it:
“the fastest growing, most impactful student group I have worked with”
Her assessment referred to her ten years as Executive Director of Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship. The letter endorsed the organization and its student leadership collectively.
FFFB was a collective undertaking. Julia’s contribution as co-initiator, co-founder, and co-chair was shared with fellow founding co-chair Shilpa Beesabathuni and supported by a wider leadership team.
The May 2024 summit newsletter credits Ansu George, Pavitraa Parthasarathy, Anastasia Yip, Sharanya Reddy Charabuddi, Kavi Solanki, Diya Das, Ashley Keyes, Amrutha Suresh, Shweta Subramanian, Marya Unwala, Lauren Miller, Anupama Tej, John Adams, and Cam Immesoete, alongside adviser Rhonda Shrader.
It also recognizes volunteers Sarah Janjua-Alavi, Pranathi Gompa, Debapriya Pal, and Jahnavi Uday Shah, and photographer Michelle Copo.
Julia’s tenure as co-chair concluded in January 2025.
Founding archive
The following records document the organization’s early development and activities.
July 12, 2023 — Founding organization presentation
View the founding presentation on SpeakerDeck
November 2023 — Organization presentation
View the organization presentation on SpeakerDeck
May 14, 2024 — Summit newsletter
The organization’s contemporary account of its May 11 summit, identifying both founding co-chairs and recording the program, participants, and team contributions.
October 2, 2024 — Rhonda Shrader’s supporting letter
An adviser’s assessment documenting membership, programming, cross-campus engagement, and the organization’s impact.
October 6, 2024 — Award nomination materials submitted to Haas
Historical documents are preserved in their original form.
Part of a broader practice
Building Female Founders and Funders of Berkeley was part of Julia Daviy’s wider work as a serial founder and systems builder: creating the ventures, institutions, and relationships through which people can bring new possibilities into the world.
At Berkeley, that work took the form of a community helping women develop their capacity to found companies, participate in investment, and shape what gets built.
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