Cocktails & Conversation
Cocktails & Conversation
Friday, October 18, 2024
Los Angeles, CA
Our 6th annual Cocktails & Conversation event was another intimate gathering of prominent, professional women and business owners hosted by BRA Network. The theme this year is Power, Purpose, and Profit: Female Entrepreneurs Redefining Impact and we curated a powerhouse panel of successful entrepreneurs featuring Meymuna Hussein-Cattan, Pocket Sun, Ellen Chen, and Diipa Büller-Khosla to inspire and educate!
Watch highlights from Cocktails & Conversation 2024 here. Read the event recap here. See event photos online here.
Photography by Rachael B. Photography. Videography by Tamiah Bantum.
Our 2024 Speakers
Meymuna Hussein-Cattan
Born in an Ethiopian refugee camp in Somalia, Meymuna relocated to the US with her family when she was three. She turned her early life challenges into a force for change, becoming a grassroots community organizer in California. In 2010, she and her mother started Tiyya, which means love in their native Oromo language. The nonprofit provides critical resources to refugees, immigrants, and low-income immigrants in Southern California, helping them find housing, livable wages, and connections to their new community.
Six years ago, Meymuna founded Flavors From Afar, a refugee-run social enterprise restaurant. It hosts Tiyya’s culinary program featuring refugee cooks and celebrates cultural exchange through food.
Meymuna has been named a L’Oréal Paris Woman of Worth in 2024 and a Top 10 CNN Hero in 2022. She has said “All refugees are alchemists and transform a sense of loss into something beautiful.
Pocket Sun
Pocket Sun is Co-founder and Managing Partner at SoGal Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm backing world-class women and diverse entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley. She founded SoGal to solve the deeply rooted inequity in VC and to deliver superior, consistent returns by investing in underrepresented founders, undercapitalized geographies, and underserved problems. Since 2015, Pocket and co-founder Elizabeth have invested in 150+ startups worldwide, managed $45M LP capital, and built a track record of picking five $1B+ unicorns from the earliest stage.
Shortly after receiving a master’s degree from the USC in Entrepreneurship, Pocket became one of the youngest to be on the cover of Forbes. As a disruptor in VC and advocate for DEI, she is frequently invited for keynotes and panels by Fortune 500 companies and high-profile conferences including the Microsoft CEO Summit. She has been recognized with awards and features including Entrepreneur Magazine 100 Most Powerful Women, Forbes Under 30 in VC.
Ellen Chen
Ellen Chen is the force behind Mendocino Farms — a premium fast casual gourmet sandwich and salad concept she co-founded in 2005.
Since stepping down from the “day to day” of running of the business, Ellen has focused her time, energy and passion supporting female and minority founded businesses. Ellen is using her twenty years of experience growing food brands to help early-stage founders understand their purpose, operationalize their values, get the resources they need and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes she made. Ellen continues to offer the restaurant group a big business perspective with an entrepreneur’s passion.
In 2015 Nation’s Restaurant News included her on their annual Power List, and 2020 Nation’s Restaurant News named her the 50 most influential women in foodservice.
She sits on the Board of Directors of Mendocino Farms and Sugared + Bronzed as well as Advisor to Zitti, Curbit, Womaness and Vibrant Funds. She believes strongly in a need to give back to her community and is also a Founding Board Member of Teach AAPI and AAPI LA, an initiative launched by the Mayor’s office in Los Angeles.
Diipa Büller-Khosla
Born and raised in a small town in India, Diipa Büller- Khosla is breaking down barriers across multiple industries and utilises her platform as a beacon of social good and support with a following of over 2.3 million.
In 2021, Diipa co-founded Ayurvedistry beauty brand indē wild with the aim to revolutionise and transform the skincare industry with a conscious beauty ecosystem that combines Ayurvedic rituals with revolutionary modern day technology and conscious chemistry.
Across her social career, Diipa has been featured on fifty plus magazine covers, and has been an ambassador for global brands and has represented India on multiple red carpets at Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. Diipa is a source of influence and ignites social change and movements to empower women, and most importantly, act as representation for South Asian women around the world.
Thank You to our 2024 Sponsors!
Lunch was provided by Mendocino Farms. Wine was provided by Generational Wealth Wines.
Previous Cocktail & Conversation Events
