We Salute Alana Hewitt, Vice President of Commerce at Essence Ventures for our women’s history month campaign HERstory in the making.
Alana Hewitt has built her career at the intersection of her passions- Retail, Technology, and (Intra)Entrepreneurship. An expert in the ecommerce space, Alana specializes in infusing innovation and technology to build, disrupt, and invest in Retail businesses.
Alana is Vice President of Commerce for Essence Ventures, a company focused on investing and developing the next generation of entrepreneurs of color. In this capacity, Alana’s role is multiple fold: 1) identify, evaluate, and guide startups on the path to investment, 2) create commerce opportunities for startups to grow, and 3) launch/grow all ecommerce channels within the Essence Ventures portfolio. Alana is also a stakeholder for the company’s investment fund, the New Voice Fund, a $100M fund focused on female entrepreneurs of color.
Prior to Essence Ventures, Alana was an Amazon intrapreneur where she launched various news-worthy business across the Amazon ecosystem: business strategy and execution for Amazon’s largest acquisition, Whole Foods Market; growing Amazon Fashion to become the largest apparel retailer in the US, and business development for Amazon’s Marketplace where she was responsible for investing and developing new brands through Amazon’s venture investing group “Born on Amazon”.
Prior to Amazon, Alana launched new streams of business for various ecommerce companies and was Co-Founder of a NYC based fashion start-up.
Alana is a founding board member of the Black Venture Capital Consortium, with the mission to create path to Venture Capital for people of color.
Alana is a graduate of Spelman College and received her MBA from The Wharton School of Business with a concentration in Finance and Entrepreneurship.
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