Ernestine Fu Mak

Ernestine completed her B.S., M.S., MBA, and Ph.D. at Stanford University. Graduating with Tau Beta Pi and Phi Beta Kappa honors, she was awarded the Kennedy Prize for the top undergraduate thesis in engineering and the Terman Award as one of the top thirty graduating seniors in engineering. Her doctoral thesis focused on human operator and autonomous vehicle interactions with system bias and transitions of control. Her work has been published in top-ranked academic journals and conferences hosted by ACM and IEEE. She is an inventor on numerous granted or in-process technology patents.

Ernestine is Managing Partner at Brave Capital. Over the past decade, she has worked across the startup ecosystem, from negotiating merger and acquisition agreements, to organizing SPVs for later-stage companies, to angel investing in and advising companies that have since been acquired, to advising banks on venture debt. Alongside her role at Brave Capital, she is also a Venture Partner at ALP, where she started her career and has guided founders as they navigate the journey to product-market fit and scale their businesses and teams. She was recognized on the inaugural Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 list, Vanity Fair Next Establishment list, and Business Insider Silicon Valley 100 list.

Ernestine is a member of Class 17 and served her fellowship at Alsop Louie Partners under mentors Gilman Louie and Stewart Alsop.