Laura Montoya
General Partner at Accel.AI
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolLaura Montoya is a venture investor and operator who leads Accel Impact Ventures, backing pre-seed and seed AI and deeptech startups that aim for measurable social and environmental impact without sacrificing returns. With a decade of hands-on experience spanning software engineering (including migrating QuickBooks Online to React) to founding Accel.AI and leading Latinx in AI, she blends product-level technical chops with mission-driven venture strategy. Her research and program leadership at institutions like the Berkman Klein Center and major ML conferences (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, FAccT) focus on ethical AI, data sovereignty, and bias mitigation in model representations. She advises accelerators such as IBM’s Hyper Protect and has helped shape AI curricula and community initiatives at Udacity, Stanford, and Google, reflecting a rare mix of academia, industry, and nonprofit impact work. Trained in biology and human development, Laura often parallels biological systems with synthetic neural networks in her research — an interdisciplinary lens that informs both her technical perspective and investment thesis. Based in the Bay Area, she is a visible speaker and network builder who consistently advances inclusion and practical governance in AI ecosystems.
10 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree Biology Physical Science and Human Development, Bachelor’s Degree Biology Physical Science and Human Development at Eastern Michigan UniversityExecutive Education Certificate Venture Capital, Executive Education Certificate Venture Capital at Stanford University
English, Spanish
Github Skills (38)
artificial-intelligence7
machine-learning7
python7
firebase6
deep-learning6
tensorflow6
matching6
cli5
react5
redux-thunk5
nodejs4
redux4
geo4
redux-observable4
reinforcement-learning4
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
AccelAI/Mentor-Matching
Dec 2020 - May 2022
Research Mentor Mentee Matching Program
Contributions:6 reviews, 17 commits, 13 PRs in 1 year 4 months
menteematchingmentor
quickresolve/C-practice
Jul 2016 - Mar 2020
Contributions:18 PRs, 21 pushes, 2 branches in 3 years 8 months
learning-c
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