our team
The Orchid Capital Collective team is a mixture of leaders from organizing, philanthropy, academia, impact investing, venture capital, and clinical care coming together to build a holistic investment firm centering reproductive justice.
Team
FOUNDER & CEO
Tenesha is a Black Feminist strategist and the Founder and CEO of Orchid Capital Collective. She brings over 15 years of experience in reproductive health, rights, and justice, working in direct service, organizational development, coalition building, venture capital, and philanthropy. Tenesha is committed to truth-telling and responsive leadership, creating pathways for healing, connection, and resource sharing.
tenesha duncan
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Tenesha founded Orchid to drive sustainable and inclusive funding toward how families are developed and nurtured, how we make decisions about our families, and how our communities are structured to live in and raise families.
DIRECTOR OF INVESTMENTS
Ola is an accomplished executive and strategist with nearly two decades of experience advancing equitable investment, real estate development, and systemic change across education, climate, and capital markets. As Director of Investments, she leads strategies to deploy capital into projects that generate both strong returns and lasting community impact.
Olabayo Allen-Taylor
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For years she’s seen how capital can move in ways that are extractive and benefit only a few. She joined Orchid because its integrated approach to investing focuses on creating lasting impact and nurturing the ecosystems that help communities thrive.
DIRECTOR OF INVESTOR ENGAGEMENT
Reetu is a lawyer, organizer, researcher, investor organizer, policy analyst, facilitator, and artist. Her multidisciplinary knowledge bases include integrated staged capital for community ownership, health equity, housing rights, criminal justice, sanctuary policies in immigration, digital and on-the-ground organizing strategies for campaigns, disability rights, and culture shifts through narrative.
Reetu Mody
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Her work has taught her that for every single person in the United States to have good health outcomes, community owned, designed, and governed infrastructure is crucial. It is this belief, and the vision of collaborative capital organizing that brought her to Orchid Capital Collective.
Board & Advisors
BOARD CHAIR
Crystal Pirtle Tyler PhD, MPH serves as the CEO of the Illinois Public Health Institute, an organization whose mission is to advance health justice through equitable policy, systems, and institutional change. Crystal brings over 20 years of experience leading research, evaluation, and programming that advances health equity for underserved communities and communities of color.
Crystal Tyler, PHD, MPH
VICE CHAIR
Deborah Frieze is an author, entrepreneur and professor with a focus on community-based investing, blended finance and economic democracy. She currently serves as Senior Economic Advisor to Principles for Peace, a Geneva-based organization that embodies a new approach to peace and security at the global, regional and local level. Through her work at P4P, she has created the Palestinian Impact Initiative (PII), a catalytic impact investing fund in the West Bank that serves as a source of economic stabilization and recovery.
Deborah Frieze
TREASURER
Stephanie McLemore Bray has over 35 years of experience in the nonprofit sector having served in executive roles in local, regional, and national organizations as a fundraiser, philanthropic advisor, community-builder, and advocate for social change. As a founding board member, she is proud to support Orchid’s work is changing philanthropy by investing in innovative solutions to Black maternal health and well-being that build wealth and ensure the future of birth justice for generations to come.
Stephanie McLemore-Bray
STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Known widely as The Black Doula, Sabia is a published author, full-spectrum doula, non-profit leader, and accredited investor with deep experience at the intersections of reproductive care, leadership, and capital. As a strategic advisor to Orchid, they support the organization’s long-term vision, partnerships, and strategy, ensuring Orchid’s work remains grounded in liberatory values.
Sabia Wade
STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Avary is a People Operations executive and social impact strategist with over 15 years of experience driving organizational transformation through the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and currently serves as Director of People for the Americas at Dalberg Advisors. They are an advocate for reproductive justice and passionate about the power of impact investing to direct capital in innovative ways that can build long term wealth for communities of care.