Fran Seegull serves as Venture Partner at Funk Ventures. She joined the firm in 2006 as Managing Director and was named COO and Board Director in 2008. Funk Ventures is an early stage venture firm, engaging in venture capital investing and enterprise acceleration. The firm invests in clean technology, sustainable living, health & wellness and medical technologies—industries where it seeks to achieve market rates of financial return, as well as social and environmental impact.
With her BS in economics from Barnard College at Columbia University, Seegull became Program Officer at the Santa Monica-based Peter Norton Family Foundation.
After earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, Seegull was a management consultant in the corporate strategy practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. She also served in PwC’s global strategic ventures group, investing firm capital in nascent technology companies.
From 2000 to 2002, Seegull was VP of business development at Novica United, a venture-backed social enterprise that retails and wholesales home decor products made by artisans in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In 2002, Seegull founded a management consulting practice, providing strategy and business development services to businesses, non-profits and family foundations. She conducted strategy engagements for mid-market media companies, including National Geographic, MediaNews Group and NPR West, as well as multi-channel retailer Blair Corporation and Nestle. Seegull also has partnered with many entrepreneurial clients to create and implement growth strategies and has advised family foundations on high-impact grant making and asset management.
Seegull serves on the boards of Lucky Earth and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. She is Senior Advisor to the Social Financial Innovation group at Ashoka and Senior Fellow at the Society & Business Lab at USC’s Marshall School of Business.