Renata Akhunova

Biography

Renata G. Akhunova was born on 4 November 1981. She is one of the founders, and managing partner, of the venture fund FormulaVC, formed in 2012. Akhunova is the only Russian female venture capitalist mentioned Forbes.com's list of the Top Women in Venture Capital and Angel Investment.

In 2004, she graduated from Kursk State Medical University with specializations in economy and management. The same year she graduated from Kursk Institute of Management, Economy and Business with specializations in government relations.

In 2002 she was a chief commercial officer of the Kommersant publishing house, its regional branch in the Central Federal District of Russian Federation.

She established The First Publishing house in 2003, which published several lifestyle magazines. In 2007 Renata Akhunova was nominated for a Russian Media Manager Award for the creation of the magazine 'Stiletto' – an effective media franchise.

In 2009 Akhunova started working in the Agency For Innovation And Development, where she participated in the creation of the long-term regional targeted program "Development of Innovation Activities in the Voronezh Region in 2011–2015", which was approved by Alexey Gordeyev, the Governor of the Voronezh region. The main goal of the program is the creation and development of the regional innovation system, which will ensure the planned socio-economic development of the Voronezh Region, overcoming the existing technological gap in a number of industries in the Voronezh Region, and support for innovation activities at all the stages of the innovation cycle.

In 2010 Akhunova took a position as Deputy to the Head of Zworykin Project, a long-term Russian government program named in honor of a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology Vladimir K. Zworykin, whose aim is to support young Russian scientists and entrepreneurs. The same year, she became a board member of FutuRussia Community, another Russian government initiative aimed at developing a Russian "Silicon Valley" Skolkovo Innovation Center.

At Global Innovation Symposium, held in Menlo Park, in 2011, Akhunova announced the launch of the company Global Innovation Access to develop Russian companies in the United States and worldwide. Akhunova became a member of a founding team to establish a new smart city for IT professionals Innopolis-Kazan. The development of Innopoplis-Kazan started with capsule laying by Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister of Russia. Afterward, Innopolis-Kazan opened a Silicon Valley office, headed by Renata Akhunova, who filed a trademark application for "Innopolis". On April 30, 2013, the Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev signed a resolution to officially name one of the areas in Tatarstan Republic as Innopolis, thus establishing a new city as a separate geographical unit.

Akhunova works and lives in the United States.

In 2015, Ms. Akhunova was appointed as the Head of the US Office of Life.SREDA venture fund. She was featured on the list of 20 Women Millennials In Venture Capital in the United States, which was also published on Forbes.com.

In 2016, she joined Zenmen venture fund (with head quarters in Singapore) as a Managing Director. Renata changed her last name (due to marriage), and is now known as Renata George.

Ms. George led a first of a kind research on women's venture capitalists investment performance with a team of Women.vc Community that she had founded in 2014. In partnership with PE Hub and Venture Capital Journal, she announced that the performance of women venture investors is above the average in the industry.