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Britney Robbins

2018 Speaker

BRITNEY ROBBINS is the founder and CEO of The Gray Matter Experience, a non-profit organization founded in 2016 to help Black high school students start businesses that impact underserved communities. Robbins hails from Quincy, IL and graduated from The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, where she earned a BA in rhetoric with an English minor. She has worked within Chicago’s entrepreneurship and tech community for the past five years working within some of Chicago’s top venture capital firms and incubators including Sandbox Industries, Lightbank and 1871. She has been recognized as one of Ariel Investment, BMO Harris and WVON’s 40 Under 40 Gamechangers, Essence Magazine’s Woke 100, a finalist for Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 People’s Choice Award, featured on Fox32, Chicago Inno, BlackEntrepreneur.com, DNAInfo Chicago, Chicago Tribune, and Essence Magazine. Robbins is passionate about the intersection of entrepreneurship, education and youth, and believes in empowering others to use their passions and strengths to create opportunities for themselves. In 2015, she authored and published her first children’s book, The Adventures of Buster & Duval, and is working to release the second in the series this fall. @bask_n_robbins