Deena Shakir

Shakir earned a joint Bachelors of Art with honors in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard and an MA from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.

Shakir was born to Iraqi immigrants[6] and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area[7] before attending Harvard for her undergraduate education. She self-funded her undergraduate and graduate degrees. Shakir was elected by her peers to deliver the Harvard 2008 Class Day speech: "From Baghdad to Boston: Dropping the Global H-Bomb".[8]

After a brief career in journalism anchoring[9] a bilingual Arabic-English news show for Al-Arabiya and interning with the BBC, Shakir served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. State Department under Secretary Clinton, where she led public-private partnerships and helped launch Global Entrepreneurship Summit. She was previously an Aga Khan Fellow at The Aspen Institute and an advisor at USAID.

Shakir joined Google in 2012, leading product partnerships for civic innovation at Google.org. From 2012-2017, she led product partnerships for early-stage products in healthcare, machine learning, Fiber, jobs, and search at Google, and also directed social impact investments at Google.org before joining GV as a Partner in 2017.

Shakir joined Lux Capital as a Partner in late 2019. She has led Lux’s investments in H1,[10] Shiru,[11] Mos,[12] and Neo.tax,[13] among others. She is a founding VC member[14] of the Valence Funding Network for Black entrepreneurs, and a public commentator on diversity and inclusion in venture capital and technology. Shakir's investment interests are mainly in emerging technologies with a focus on digital health and AI for analog industries.

Shakir currently serves on the Boards of Directors of H1,[10] Allstripes,[15] and Shiru.[11] Shakir also serves on the Boards of several non-profits including Tarjimly,[16] TechWadi, Technovation[17] and AMIDEAST. She has also previously served on the boards of the Arab Film Festival, the Asian University for Women, and The Harvard Arab Alumni Association.

Shakir is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 23), a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, a member of the Leadership Now Project,[18] a founding VC member of the Valence Network[19] for Black Entrepreneurs, and a VC Champion for All Raise.[20] She was the first Arab-American to be accepted to the Mellon Mays Fellowship[21] at Harvard.