Bold Ventures – Lessons from the Entrepreneurial Playbook

Jerry Varnado is an operator, investor, and strategic advisor with experience spanning venture-backed startups, institutional investing, and large-scale technology organizations. He is currently SVP of Operations at ChargerHelp!, where he leads national service delivery and operational scale for EV charging infrastructure. His career has been shaped by working at the intersection of technology, capital, and execution.

Previously, Jerry was a venture investor with South Loop Ventures and held senior operating and chief of staff roles at ChargePoint during its transition to a public company, as well as at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Meta. He serves on the board of the Houston Angel Network, supporting early-stage founders and investment decision-making. He began his career as an Air Defense officer in the U.S. Army.

Jerry holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Devin T. Adams is the Founder and CEO of WARBEVCO, “What’s A Roadblock? Beverage Company,” a beverage incubator and operating platform that builds and scales emerging brands across alcohol and non-alcohol categories, including award winning brand, Mala Mia Mezcal. He is a former U.S. Army officer and Vanderbilt Law graduate, and previously worked in M&A before transitioning full-time into entrepreneurship. Today, Devin leads brand strategy, fundraising, and go-to-market execution for WARBEVCO and its portfolio. This includes product and packaging development, distributor strategy, retail programming, and growth marketing. His work centers on a simple thesis: in today’s market, capital flows to clarity. Founders win when they can translate vision into a credible plan, strong unit economics, and disciplined execution.

Candice Morgan is a transformational organizational change expert with 20 years of experience leading initiatives at the intersection of talent, technology, and inclusivity. Most recently, Morgan served as Partner and Head of Inclusion at Google Ventures (GV), where she led an inclusive investment strategy that increased funding to women- and minority-led startups, totaling over $1 billion in capital, while advising dozens of founders on organizational design, people strategies, and C-suite leadership placement.

Prior to GV, Morgan served as Head of Inclusion & Diversity at Pinterest. There, she increased Black and Latinx technical representation from less than 1% to 10%, co-founded the Inclusive Product Team, and advised on equity and employee engagement strategy during the company's IPO. Earlier in her career, she spent nearly a decade at Catalyst advising Fortune 500 companies based on Wall Street and in Zürich, Switzerland.

Morgan currently serves as Board Chair for Venture Forward and as a board member for BLCK VC. She is also a co-founder and angel investor of BAG Collective (formerly Black Angel Group). Her leadership has earned her recognition from Fast Company, The Root, and Carnegie Mellon University, among others. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. Morgan holds an M.Sc. in Cross-Cultural Psychology from Brunel University of London and a B.S. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.