Susan Preston to Keynote Seattle Angel Conference VI

Leading Angel Investing Educator and Consultant to speak on Angel Investing

Susan just received the Small Business Person of the Year for 2014 from the Small Business Council of America.  She was honored along with five Congressional representatives in the nation’s capital.  

 Susan Preston is manager of the newly founded Seattle Angel Fund, and is the General Partner for the CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund. The Angel Fund is focused on seed/start-up stage investments in clean energy technology.  Susan is a world-recognized expert in angel financing and angel organizations. Susan has spent most of her career in senior management positions in public and private companies, from general counsel to CEO.  She has also been a partner in two national law-firms and is a patent attorney.  Susan is also the Buerk Endowed Fellow for Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington.

Susan is the author of numerous articles, white papers and books on angel financing. Her most recent book, Angel Financing for Entrepreneurs, Early-stage Funding for Long-Term Success was released by Wiley Publishing in March 2007, and her first book, Angel Investment Groups, Networks and Funds: A Guidebook to Developing the Right Angel Organization for Your Community, a comprehensive guidebook on the establishment and operation of angel investment groups, for which she has received numerous accolades, was published by the Kauffman Foundation in 2004.

She has been and continues to be a national and international consultant and speaker on economic development, angel and venture financing for numerous countries and NGOs including the EU, OECD, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Industry Canada and EBAN. She was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for 6 years and continues to serve as a consultant, specifically focusing on initiatives related to angel investing and angel organizations.

Susan has held several board positions with public and privately held corporations, and has served on numerous non-profit boards. Ms. Preston has been profiled in Red Herring, Inc. magazine, Smart Money, Worth and other local and national publications; and has contributed to numerous nationally published articles on angel investing. Ms. Preston is the founder of Seraph Capital Forum, the first all-women's angel investment organization.

She is the architect of the Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs Act, a bi-partisan federal income tax credit bill for private equity investing, which was introduced in the House and Senate in 2006 and 2007, and has been re-introduced in the current Congressional session.

Ms. Preston received her JD, cum laude, from Seattle University School of Law and her BS, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in Microbiology and Public Health from Washington State University.