Trista Van Tine has worked in the entrepreneurial space since 2009. She most recently was the Global Marketing Director of Mootral, a biotech startup based in Switzerland. She was a founding member of AXA Venture Partners first $250 million venture fund in San Francisco, where she sourced, created investment memoranda and worked with the General Partners to structure investments in early-stage InsurTech, FinTech, HealthTech, Predictive Analytics and IOT companies. She worked on investments into four companies as some of the first capital raised, and served as a Board Observer for three of them. (Limelight Health was acquired by FINEOS, Lyric/Wheelhouse raised over $160 million in a round led by Airbnb and Blockstream is valued at over $1 Billion as of 2021).
Prior to working in the venture ecosystem, Trista was a Director for the AXA Group, leading digital innovation teams to transform sales and operational processes within financial services and serving as the Operations lead for a large M&A deal.
She currently serves as the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Michigan Founders Fund, a nonprofit network of high-growth entrepreneurs in Michigan that develops unique programming to help company builders succeed with their ventures while connecting them with community needs and providing them with a simple mechanism to ensure a portion of their success contributes to the continued growth and prosperity of Michigan. Since 2020, she created and launched the state’s first Social Impact Startup Pitch Competition, first and only Founders Retreat for early-stage companies, and the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Internship Program to pair underrepresented college students with Michigan-based tech companies and VCs. In 2021 she was recognized by Corp! Magazine as one of the state’s Diversity Business Leaders.
She is passionate about the causes of access to education, the environment and social equality and has served as the LA council president of Pencils of Promise, raising money to build schools in developing countries, a tutor for the Lives of Urban Children and Youth program in Detroit, and is currently sponsoring aspiring entrepreneurs in the tech industry as a professional advisor/mentor for Built by Girls and the University of Michigan College of Engineering. Trista completed double Masters degrees in Global Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Political Science at the University of Michigan.