Carrie Colbert excels at the crossroads of creativity and commerce. With nearly two decades in the energy industry, she now focuses on empowering women by breaking down funding barriers for female founders and demystifying venture capital for potential investors.

Hailing from a small Texas panhandle town, she became the first in her family to graduate from college, graduating at the top of her class in petroleum engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. While working, she also received her MBA from UT. She spent over a dozen years at Hilcorp, the largest privately owned oil and gas producer in the US. She embraced the energetic, entrepreneurial environment at Hilcorp as the company scaled from millions to billions in enterprise value. Having equity in the company proved life-changing, as she was able to "retire" from that industry at age 38 to pursue other interests and passions.

Embracing her creative side, Carrie built a following of 85,000+ on @carriec Instagram and a popular blog. Fortuitously, building an online presence proved pivotal for Carrie’s next professional adventure. Through life as a social media influencer, Carrie began connecting with women-owned brands, advising them, and investing her own money into these female-founded businesses. After five years of angel investing, Carrie realized the arbitrage opportunity for investing in female-founded consumer brands was great! Women-led businesses are underfunded, yet overperforming, so that creates an opportunity to earn outsized returns.

With that thesis in mind, Carrie launched Curate Capital in 2021 to support female-founded consumer brands. Carrie and team closed fund 1 in 2022 at $15 million - 50% oversubscribed, with nearly 80% of investors being women, including influencers with over 10 million followers. As an influencer herself, Carrie realized the power of influencers investing and has been a pioneer of the #influentialinvesting concept. Curate plans its second fund in 2024.

Aside from her role at Curate Capital, Carrie serves on the Cockrell School of Engineering advisory board and actively attends The Story Church. She also dedicates time to serving the homeless community weekly. She's a sought-after speaker for female entrepreneurs. Above all, Carrie takes pride in being a devoted mother to her six-year-old daughter, Elle, and three-year-old son, Luke.