Samir Mirza is a Co-Founder and former Managing Director of Fifth Star Funds - a venture philanthropy fund investing in Black tech entrepreneurs at the "Friends & Family" stage in Chicago. Previously, he was the Co-Founder and CTO of mobile advertising leader TapCommerce in New York, which was acquired by Twitter for $100M. At Twitter in San Francisco, Samir was the Head of Engineering for Mobile App Promotion and led the engineering teams that grew the product's annual revenue to $300M. He then lived in Berlin, Germany where he taught code at the ReDI School for Refugees and was an EIR for Techstars. Samir currently resides in Chicago where he also advises early stage tech startups and consults with organizations supporting underserved communities. He has a CS degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from NYU Stern.