By Kori Hale

SVB’s Catalyst 2045 on Martha’s Vineyard delivers rare access to deal‑flow, networks and legacy with Black Ops VC, BLCK VC, BWiVC

In Q2 2025, Black-founded startups in the U.S. raised $290.7M, representing just 0.42% of the total $69.9B

SVB’s Catalyst  2045 program is leading innovation by providing unparalleled access to ecosystems that have historically excluded emerging founders and fund managers. By bringing these groups together on Martha’s Vineyard, the island’s deep cultural resonance, its history as a Black summer haven, juxtaposes the concentrated cultural capital and economic mobility on offer. 

Why This Matters: Martha’s Vineyard has long served as a symbol of generational wealth and elite social capital, a safe Black enclave for vacation spotters in the 19th century, to the Kennedy era. The average home price on Martha’s Vineyard is around $2.3 million, according to The Martha’s Vineyard Times. Former President Obama and his family are now permanent homeowners on Martha’s Vineyard, after completing the purchase of a nearly $12 million home, situated on nearly 30 acres in the coastal perimeter of Edgartown.

Its reputation as a site of generational wealth and legacy dovetails powerfully with SVB’s programming here. To place an innovation activation on Martha’s Vineyard is to intentionally insert emerging diverse capital into this cultural lineage. The symbolism is potent: emerging fund managers and founders, many of them women, Black and Latinx, sharing boardrooms once reserved for old‑money families. Now, SVB’s Catalyst  2045 reframes the Vineyard not as an enclave of exclusion, but as a curated space for reshaping whose voices matter in innovation.

Building Ecosystem Equity: This experiential architecture is only possible because SVB invests strategically in relationships. Moreover, Catalyst  2045’s resonance is amplified by aligning with leading organizations including BLCK VC, Black Ops VC, BWiVC, demonstrating that ecosystem equity must be anchored in community infrastructure, not surface optics.

CultureBanx spoke with Black Ops VC Managing Partner, James Norman, who described the lasting impact of true partnership with SVB Catalyst  2045. “It’s always just good to have partners who are truly aligned in some of the work that we’re doing. We are building a fund that delivers top down style performance that has a certain amount of impact in our community, and some of the brightest minds in our community, vacation or spend time here, he said.”

Veronica Reaves, Founder of BWiVC echoed similar sentiments and stated, “we are building more than a fund, we are building a movement.” Her funds retreat on Martha’s Vineyard included their SVB Catalyst  2045 partnership that is focused on taking “action and creating a legacy of impact that transcends generations.”

Curating Capital: In Q2 2025, only a small percentage of overall funding went to Black-founded startups in the U.S., they raised $290.7 million, representing just 0.42% of the total $69.9 billion, according to PitchBook. A report from the Founders Forum Group last year, stated that female-only founding teams globally received $6.7 billion of the total $289 billion invested in venture capital, which amounts to 2.3%. However, mixed-gender founding teams received 14.1% or $40.7 billion.

This is not philanthropy disguised as marketing, SVB Catalyst  2045 is staking a claim that the next generation of fund managers, founders, and investors, particularly emerging leaders, deserve access to the same ecosystem once gate‑kept. They are actively pursuing change so that the emerging leaders can have a bigger piece of the total venture capital raised in the United States, which is forecast to reach $140 billion in 2025, according to Statista. Their curated access through thoughtfully sized programming, historic spaces, and elite partners reveals how economic mobility and cultural capital intersect.

Intentional Access Infrastructure: Tosh Ernest, head of SVB’s Catalyst  2045, is spearheading the substantive ecosystem work with her sales team focused on emerging segments that have been long-time champions of this data‑driven equity work. “We really wanted to turn what seemed like sporadic knowledge into infrastructure. And that sporadic knowledge typically comes from attending the right schools, the right B (business) schools, 96% of all capital allocators in America, attended either MIT, Stanford, or Harvard. So that leaves only 4% that are not part of the sporadic knowledge, she said.” 

For SVB, this time on Martha’s Vineyard is about creating a shared infrastructure so that the underestimated could become unstoppable. Ernest asked Catalyst  2045 partners “to create a shared space for learning and communication, along with a shared way for us to build together to deploy capital into these emergency segments.”

Catalyst 2045 has been very intentional about how they curate spaces and making sure there is diversity or thought across all partners and vendors. Founder Aneisia Williams, the Chief Impact & Venture Officer of Dreambloc, is one of those vendors who expressed the importance of “making sure we are creating the right ecosystem spaces, for the right founders and making sure that folks have equitable distribution.” 

What’s Next: Martha’s Vineyard symbolism of American Black leisure and generational privilege has become a backdrop for new cultural capital that can co‑exist, in the form of emerging funds, and ecosystem networks. SVB’s programming on the Vineyard transcends traditional finance activations, it marries historical context with modern inclusion, uniting underrepresented fund leaders in settings built for legacy. With strategic partnerships, intentional curation, and hard work behind the scenes, Catalyst  2045 now stands as an industry reference point: unparalleled access to capital, community, and cultural authority.

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