Claire England

Fund(s): FemTech, Food & AgTech
Location: Austin

A seasoned investor with executive experience, Claire England is Investment Partner with GPG Ventures, a healthcare venture capital firm that invests nationally in biotech, digital health, medtech, and B2B consumer health. With offices in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, GPG was established in 2011, has 105 portfolio companies, and is built on decades of deep healthcare and investing expertise. GPG opens venture-ready opportunities in the massive U.S. healthcare market — almost 20% of GDP or $4.9T annually — to individuals and family offices, who invest alongside the firm's partners.

At Portfolia, she's a partner in two fully-invested funds, Food & AgTech and FemTech I, where she led four deals and served on the investment committee for 20 more. She's an LP in FemTech II.

Claire is also a Kauffman Fellow, a top postgraduate innovation program and network of 940 VCs and LPs worldwide. She serves as Board Observer at Affineon Health; Operating Partner for an impact investing advisory firm, LOHAS; and Advisory Board member to the Munday School of Business at St. Edward's University.

Previously, she developed Central Texas Angel Network into the #1 most active angel group in the U.S. and an international angel investing model with 200 individual and family office investors. In her five years of leadership, investors deployed $75M into 95 companies, with a 9x average return-on-investment, far exceeding VC return averages.

Prior to that, she directed a large-scale founder and investor conference, RISE, that was pivotal to evolving Austin’s entrepreneur ecosystem into what it is today. She developed her passion for entrepreneurship as the first full-time employee of a social media services startup. Before startups, she spent a decade leading marketing, communications, and fundraising in the nonprofit sector.

With extensive public speaking experience, Claire's a skilled panelist and moderator and has spoken at national and international innovation conferences. She's also taught undergraduate and postgraduate business school classes as a guest lecturer at several universities. She graduated college with honors and Dean's List recognition and was a national journalism honor society inductee. Her work has been recognized with the 2018 Kauffman Fellows Leadership Award and Austin Business Journal’s 2013 Women in Business Finalist Award.