Deven Parekh, the managing director of New York-based venture capital firm Insight Partners, has been selected for the prestigious Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award for 2021 and four others, reported TOI.
Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award celebrates exemplary leaders across several sectors like business, government, advocacy, and entertainment who have demonstrated a commitment to social progress and advancing human rights.
Parekh has been awarded this honour because he has been advocating for opportunity and inclusion vocally since 2000 and initiating efforts to promote women and minority leaders across Insight’s internal team, portfolio, and the wider software and investment ecosystems as a whole.
The Indian-American venture capitalist is a member of the board of directors for several institutions such as the US Development Finance Corporation, the council on foreign relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Premier health centre NYU Langone. Parekh is also chairman emeritus of the board of Publicolor; a non-profit organisation focused on New York City public schools.
Parekh was named a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, which seeks to make the next generation of community-spirited leaders, in 2006.
He currently serves on the board of directors for CoreLogic, Checkout.com, Diligent, IAD, Calm, Fanatics, Within3, PDI, Community Brands, Corvus, Vinted, among others. He is also part of Chargebee, Splitwise, BharatPe, and Automattic (WordPress).
The US Senate confirmed Parekh in 2020 to serve on the US International Development Finance Corporation board. Besides, he has also worked as a member of the technical advisory council of the US Federal Communications Commission between 2011 and 2018.
Since joining Insight in 2000, Parekh has made over 90 investments across enterprise software, data, and consumer internet businesses across North America, Europe, Israel, China, India, Latin America, Australia, and Africa.
As per his official Insight Partners profile, he invested in companies like Twitter (IPO), Duck Creek (IPO), eVestment, Alibaba (IPO), JD.com (IPO), Bullhorn (sale to Stone Point Capital), Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce), Website Pros (IPO), Yext (IPO), En verus (fka Drilling Info, sale to Genstar Capital), etc.
The other winners of the Ripple of Hope Awards for 2021 are poet Amanda Gorman, Stacey Abrams, an entrepreneur and author José E. Feliciano, co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital, and Hans Vestberg, who is the chairman and CEO of Verizon.
United by their uncompromising integrity and resilience in striving for an inclusive America, the Ripple of Hope Award winners for 2021has been awarded to these personalities as all of them have championed the causes and concerns of the underrepresented and marginalised, the announcement by the New York-based non-profit organisation said.
