Founding Team

Shondra Washington

As a former investment banker and current on-demand CFO for VC-backed companies and small businesses, Shondra has leveraged her knowledge of corporate finance, business development, and corporate strategy to build high-impact Web3 companies.

In 2022, Shondra Washington became a co-founder and CEO of Black@, one of the first all-black Web3 communities of creators, artists, investors, and engineers working to increase exposure for Black creators and build products and tooling for Web3.

Through her work with Black@, Shondra oversaw the development of Gated, a software platform empowering Web3 communities to streamline communication with their members. In September of 2022, Gated was among the first cohort of Web3 companies accepted into the CPG Club Pop Incubator.

Harold Hughes

Harold Hughes is the founder & CEO of Bandwagon, a South Carolina-based live experience technology company. Under his leadership, Bandwagon has raised over $3M in venture capital — including investment from SC Launch, and GLDC — and successfully acquired IdealSeat, Inc. in 2020. Their customers include Fortune 50 brands, entertainers, as well as professional and collegiate athletes. As a first-generation American, Harold prioritized education, receiving two Bachelors degrees (Economics and Political Science) from Clemson University and later received his MBA from Clemson while he led business development at a Fortune 1000 company based in Greenville, South Carolina. As a web3 builder and community leader, Harold published "A Kids Book About Blockchain" to help educate people "from 6 to 60" about the revolutionary technology that Bandwagon specializes in.

To that end, Harold is also an active angel investor, primarily investing in women, people of color, and Black founder-led companies. Most notably, he has invested in Partake Foods, the Jay-Z-backed CPG company making allergy-friendly snacks, and companies like Goodr, Chipper, Athletic Greens, Republic, Stix, and the National Cycling League. Harold has been honored by Google as South Carolina’s Small Business of the Year and DivInc’s Startup Leader of the Year.

Audrey Taylor-Akwenye

For over two decades, Audrey Taylor-Akwenye has been an entrepreneur and builder in the education space. She started out by creating a nanny placement agency to provide free training for unemployed women—and then place them in homes. This agency was later acquired.

She went on to found a private school in Windhoek, Namibia—which employs over 42 staff members and provides private education to over 400 students at a fraction of the costs of other private education institutions in the region.

Because of her work as an entrepreneur, she co-founded a co-working space for aspiring entrepreneurs in the Windhoek area of Namibia. This space was a place where young entrepreneurs can network, find mentors, and attend training workshops. In 2018, the project was converted to an NGO under the Ministry of Industry and Trade for Namibia. Audrey went on to build ClassPlanit, a free application that helps teachers plan more engaging lessons for students using data analytics and ai. Currently Audrey works as a technical consultant and fractional CTO focused primarily on SaaS platforms being built on blockchain technology.