Zehra Naqvi

Zehra Naqvi is a New York City-based investor and community builder at Republic, a startup crowdfunding platform with a two percent acceptance rate. She graduated from Columbia University in 2020 with dual degrees in Financial Economics and Art History, having previously worked with fifteen startups during her undergraduate studies. Before joining Republic, where she pitched and launched the firm's first undergraduate internship program, Naqvi founded the Hong Kong-based apparel company GLO at age twelve and scaled it to ten thousand social media followers. In her current capacity, she evaluates early-stage ventures by conducting up to forty weekly founder calls and curates the weekly Z-List newsletter to distribute startup insights to investors. Naqvi focuses on democratizing venture capital access and facilitating founder-investor introductions, frequently organizing events for the Asian Founders Club and underrepresented technology entrepreneurs.