09 Oct October 9, 2023 – Consumer VC Marcel Bens and Discrimination Disrupter Chiquita Hall-Jackson
Marcel Bens – Managing Partner and COO at Emil Capital Partners
We invest in consumer-focused products and services. Anything that
touches the end consumer, and that could be in any category such
as food and beverage, beauty, consumer tech digital media, and
health and wellness. We are early stages, right after friends and
family, investors.
Marcel Bens
Marcel Bens previously worked at a multi-billion dollar distressed private equity firm in New York City and at an independent corporate and financial advisory firm in Sydney, Australia. Prior to that, he served in various key roles at a large German automotive conglomerate in the United States, Germany, and South Africa. Marcel holds a joint master’s degree in mechanical engineering and economics from the Technical University of Berlin in Germany and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York. He is trilingual in German, English, and Dutch.
Chiquita Hall-Jackson – Managing Attorney at Hall-Jackson & Associates
You get 24 hours to be somber and to be sad and then it’s time to say,
‘What did we learn from that?’ And then go incorporate that lesson so
it won’t happen again.
Chiquita Hall-Jackson
Chiquita’s career as the founding employment attorney of one of Chicago’s Top Employment Law Firms, Hall-Jackson & Associates P.C., was kindled by her own experience of work-related racial mistreatment, inequity, and sexism. “As a female African-American lawyer, I faced adversity as I overheard rude comments by coworkers who questioned my competence. I also did not have a voice in meetings. And, I noticed that my male and other non-Black counterparts were getting pay raises, while I was not,” she recalls. Now Hall-Jackson is the creator of a social justice brand, Blow The Whistle Law, sparked after being triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement with the belief that if a colleague of Officer Derek Chauvin had intervened during the tragic incident, lives could have been saved. The advocacy brand urges workers to speak up when they see discrimination in the workplace.
SFS Minute 281: Chiquita Hall-Jackson