Dr. Sara Brand is the Founding General Partner of True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in women-led companies improving environmental and/or human health. She brings experience across engineering, semiconductor design and manufacturing, management consulting, corporate operations, and venture capital. At True Wealth Ventures, she works closely with portfolio companies on strategy, growth, operations, and governance. She currently serves as a board director for UnaliWear, Dermala, Oralucent, Aloqia, Refiberd, Dalinea, and Shower Stream, in addition to Pollack & Weitzner. She previously served as a board director for De Oro Devices and as a board observer for Aeromutable.
In addition to her investing work, Dr. Brand serves or has served on advisory and non-profit boards and councils, such as Northern Trust’s Elevating Women Advisory Board, the Austin Healthcare Council, the Texas Health Catalyst at UT’s Dell Medical School, and on the Host Committee for the Austin Community Foundation’s Women’s Fund Keyholder.She also co-founded (512) Brewing, the largest draught-only, self-distributing microbrewery in the U.S. before COVID, where her husband continues to run the company. She is also a frequent startup competition judge and speaker on topics including the outperformance of women-led companies, women’s role in advancing health and sustainability, values-aligned investing and the influence of women as investors.
Before founding True Wealth Ventures, Dr. Brand worked across engineering, consulting, investing, and technology operations. Trained as a mechanical engineer, she focused early on designing products and systems to reduce human and environmental impact. She began in technical roles at Intel and Applied Materials before switching gears and joining McKinsey & Company in San Francisco, where she did strategy consulting across the semiconductor value chain. Afterwards she moved into venture capital in the Bay Area, investing in technology companies before joining AMD.
Over more than a decade at AMD, she held senior strategy and operating roles, including Chief of Staff to two CEOs, head of the Strategy and Operations Offices, leader of major acquisitions and integrations, and VP of Data Center System Solutions.
She became one of the company’s youngest vice presidents and, at one point, its only woman vice president outside a G&A function. That experience, along with her role as executive sponsor of AMD’s global women’s forum, sharpened her view of both the inequities and the opportunity to back more women innovators through venture capital.
She founded True Wealth Ventures to combine her technical training, operating experience, and investing background with a focus on investing in women entrepreneurs—driven by the early data showing the financial outperformance of companies with more women in leadership and the persistent lack of venture capital going to women-led businesses.
Dr. Brand holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Green Design and Manufacturing, with minors in both Public Health and Energy & Resources, as well as a Management of Technology Certificate, from UC Berkeley, where she currently serves on the Mechanical Engineering Department’s External Advisory Board. She also holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UT Austin where she serves as a Senior Member on the Cockrell School of Engineering’s External Advisory Board and is in the Academy of Distinguished Alumni for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. After serving as Senior Advisor for Health IoT during the launch of UT’s Dell Medical School, she has continued to support innovations that improve environmental and human health across industry, academia, and the community.