About Jewel

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Jewel Burks Solomon is an advocate for representation in and access to the technology industry. As co-founder of Partpic, a startup designed to streamline the purchase of maintenance and repair parts using computer vision, Jewel and her team built groundbreaking technology poised to change the way people everywhere locate products. Partpic raised over $2 million in seed funding and integrated its software into mobile apps/websites of large parts distributors and retailers. Jewel successfully negotiated the deal to sell Partpic to Amazon in late 2016, where she led the integration of Partpic’s technology into the Amazon Mobile App and launched it to the 150M+ Amazon Mobile Shopping App users as PartFinder in 2018. 

While at Amazon, Jewel began spending countless hours mentoring, advising and angel investing in early stage, Black led startups. This experience led her to realize the massive opportunity that exists to be a strong partner to Black founders. As a result, she co-founded Collab Capital to capture this opportunity. Jewel is currently Managing Partner at Collab Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in the building blocks of Black prosperity. Collab Fund I was $51M and has invested in 36 promising Black led companies across the US. Jewel is currently raising Collab Fund II to continue investing in the best and brightest Black led innovation companies. 

From 2019-2023, Jewel served as Head of Google for Startups, US, where she worked to level the playing field for underserved startup founders by bringing them the best of Google’s resources, people, and storytelling. In this capacity, she created the Black Founders Fund and Latino Founders Fund, which have deployed $50M in non-dilutive funding since 2020. This position provided unparalleled access to great startups and mechanisms to support startups with the products and tools they need to run their businesses.

Before founding Partpic, Jewel served in management, enterprise sales, and strategic diversity roles at McMaster-Carr Industrial Supply and Google, Inc. Jewel is a native of Nashville TN, and a graduate of Howard University. Jewel serves on the boards of The Center for American Entrepreneurship, JP Morgan’s Advancing Black Pathways, Endeavor Atlanta, and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. She is also a member of the 2019 Class of Henry Crown Fellows within the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute. She is a regular contributor on NPR’s Marketplace Tech and The Karen Hunter Show on SiriusXM and has been featured in countless media outlets.

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