Sarah Chen-Spellings

Sarah Chen-Spellings is an investor, capital strategist, and entrepreneur whose career spans venture capital, private markets, and global investment communities across Asia and the United States. Earlier in her career, Chen-Spellings served as a corporate venture capitalist at a $13 billion publicly listed Asian conglomerate, where she helped establish a venture arm and developed expertise in underwriting, governance, and capital deployment. At Sime Darby Berhad's corporate venture capital unit in Malaysia, she negotiated a $30 million deal aligned with the conglomerate's investment in later-stage biotech companies. Since then, Chen-Spellings has led cross-border investments, structuring and executing commercialization plans with portfolio companies.

Chen-Spellings is co-founder of Beyond The Billion, launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women, a global consortium of more than 100 venture funds and limited partner investors that have pledged to invest and are actively deploying over $1 billion toward women-founded companies. As an investor and strategist, she has mobilized over $1 billion in venture capital to fund more than 1,300 women-founded companies, 16 of which have achieved unicorn status. Notable unicorns backed by the consortium's partner funds include Canva, Airwallex, WeLab, ClassPass, EverlyHealth, Maven Clinic, FIGS, Spring Health, Guild Education, and The RealReal. The initiative's DecaBillion+ program has brought together chief investment officers of major foundations and endowments, including Rockefeller, Kresge, and W.K. Kellogg, to mobilize capital by enlisting institutional and private investors.

Chen-Spellings is the creator and host of "Billion Dollar Moves," a HubSpot-backed platform featuring long-form conversations and private convenings with billionaires, unicorn founders, and leading capital allocators. "Billion Dollar Moves" explores the strategies, challenges, and pivotal moments that shape the world's most prominent companies, such as YouTube, Canva, and Vimeo, and provides insights from capital leaders at firms like Sequoia and Lightspeed. Chen-Spellings also serves on multiple boards, including 131 & Counting, a bipartisan initiative supporting women in the House and Senate and encouraging more women to run for office in the United States, as well as Lean In Malaysia, which she co-founded to promote women in leadership in Malaysia.

Chen-Spellings has been recognized as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, a King's College London Distinguished Alumna, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Venture Capital. She is a speaker, strategist, and commentator on venture capital, startups, and women in leadership, with features in Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, Der Spiegel, and at the United Nations. On stage, she delivers insights on wealth creation, drawing from her work with founders, investors, and family offices, as well as her interviews with billionaires and capital allocators. Chen-Spellings has served as host and moderator alongside figures such as Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank, sharing her expertise in investing in innovation and women-led ventures with audiences of entrepreneurs, business leaders, and global investors. She holds a Bachelor of Laws from King's College London.