Claire England

Claire England joined GPG Ventures in 2023 and serves as Investment Partner. She's building the firm's new Austin presence, helping GPG become the first VC firm with offices in three major Texas cities.

Through 2023, Ms. England will continue some existing commitments in a limited capacity, all additive to her work with GPG: deploying the remaining capital as a Partner in Portfolia's Food & AgTech Fund; supporting Techstars Tulsa portfolio companies as Executive-in-Residence; and advising investors on deploying philanthropic capital into for-profit impact as a Partner with LOHAS. She's also a Kauffman Fellow, a leading innovation post-graduate program and global network of 880+ values-based VCs and LPs, where she remains active in alumni groups.

Ms. England has experience investing in all sectors, but in particular brings a healthcare investing background to GPG, having served as a partner in Portfolia’s FemTech Fund I from 2019 to 2020 before launching the firm's Food & AgTech Fund in 2021. Portfolia was the first firm ever to focus solely on women’s health and wellness and has both the first FemTech unicorn in Fund I and the largest FemTech portfolio in the nation. At Portfolia, she's participated in evaluating and investing in 20+ investments at all stages, seed to pre-IPO.

From 2014 to 2019, Ms. England led Austin-based Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN) to become the #1 most active angel investing group in the U.S. The group’s second largest investing vertical under her leadership was healthcare. During her five-year tenure, LPs deployed $75M into 95 new startups and numerous portfolio companies, while far exceeding VC return averages.

Before CTAN, Ms. England directed a large-scale founder and investor conference that was pivotal to evolving Austin’s entrepreneur ecosystem into what it is today. She developed her passion for entrepreneurship as the first full-time employee of a social media services startup. Prior to startups, she spent a decade leading marketing and fundraising in the nonprofit impact sector.

Ms. England has extensive national and international public speaking experience and has taught university business school classes as a guest lecturer. She mentors founders at accelerators, such as Capital Factory and Techstars, and she serves on St. Edward’s University’s Business School Board of Advisors. Kauffman Fellows honored her with the 2018 Kauffman Fellows Leadership Award, and her accomplishments in Austin's startup community were recognized with the 2013 Austin Business Journal Profiles in Power Finalist Award.