Jill Johnson

Jill Johnson has spent nearly three decades challenging who gets access to capital—and who gets to decide where it goes.

In 2002, Jill co-founded the Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL), building a nonprofit that now serves thousands of small businesses and hundreds of investors each year, with a focus on Black and Latinx entrepreneurs who have historically been excluded from traditional funding pipelines. 

In 2023, she led IFEL’s acquisition of Pipeline Angels, the investing network created to bring more women and gender-diverse people into angel investing. By bringing the two organizations together, she expanded the work beyond increasing access to capital for underrepresented founders to changing who has the power to deploy it. Her Making of Black Angels initiative pushes that work further, helping create a more diverse pipeline of investors and decision-makers.

By changing who gets to participate in the capital system, Johnson is helping expand the circle of people who can build wealth, fund ideas, and shape the economy. Her work reflects the kind of structural change that makes greater economic power possible for women and communities too often left out.