For more information, contact:
Michele Money-Carson
michele.money-carson@cancer.org

ATLANTA, July 6, 2022 – BrightEdge LLC, the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) impact venture capital arm, today announced that Lyda Hill Philanthropies and Resonance Philanthropies have joined its Founders Circle, an exclusive member-only society comprised of funders who make minimum contributions of $500,000.

Like traditional venture capital funds, BrightEdge invests in for-profit, early-stage companies developing cancer-focused therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and technologies. As an evergreen fund, investment gains are fully reinvested in the fund’s portfolio companies and ACS research and programs.

“We’re rapidly expanding our Founders Circle membership – a select group of trailblazers who share a common belief in patient-centric innovation and market-based approaches to advance science and reduce cancer mortality,” said Alice Pomponio, BrightEdge’s managing director. “Through such generosity and our portfolio performance, we expect to grow the BrightEdge fund to $100 million in the near future.”

Lyda Hill Philanthropies invests in projects on the cutting edge of scientific and medical discovery. One of the organization’s highest profile projects is Dallas’ Pegasus Park, which is transforming north Texas into a hub for biomedical innovation.

“We’re excited to deepen our relationship with the American Cancer Society and help BrightEdge spread entrepreneurship and innovation across the cancer-care continuum to accelerate our shared mission of driving game-changing science to transform communities and improve lives of patients and their families,” said Lyda Hill.

Resonance Philanthropies is a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. It invests primarily in innovation in healthcare and sustainability.

“BrightEdge is uniquely positioned to harness the American Cancer Society’s unparalleled knowledge networks to identify and propel startup companies working in areas of greatest impact,” said Sheri Sobrato Brisson, co-founder of Resonance Philanthropies. “I’m delighted to join BrightEdge’s Founders Circle to combine my passion for fighting cancer with my love for entrepreneurship and impact investing.”

ACS created BrightEdge in 2019 to diversify its income base, build financial resilience, and accelerate ACS’s mission through entrepreneurial approaches. BrightEdge oversees a fund with a net asset value of $77 million, which includes recent donations and an additional $40 million investment from the American Cancer Society. The fund invests alongside the country’s most prominent VC firms – serving as a value-added syndicate partner to determine opportunity and need and validate a third party’s investment decision.

Since 2019, BrightEdge has made 15 mission-aligned investments, two of which have gone public. BrightEdge is stage-agnostic but particularly active in Seed and Series A funding rounds.

The American Cancer Society is the largest non-governmental funder of cancer research in the U.S. Since 2019, two-thirds of all Series A-C venture capital oncology deals of greater than $10 million involved investments in companies founded or advised by recipients of ACS grants.