A SORENSON IMPACT FUND
The Team
Building an Inclusive Economy and Workforce Through Disability Investment
Regina "Gina" Kline
Founder and Managing Partner
Regina “Gina” Kline is an investor, entrepreneur, widely recognized civil rights lawyer, and thought leader dedicated to building the future of work by advancing the rights and interests of people with disabilities as innovators, workers, business owners, and consumers. As Founder and Managing Partner of Enable Ventures and Founder of SmartJob, Gina is singularly focused as a leader on closing the disability wealth gap through impact investment. Gina was one of the earliest players in the global disability technology ecosystem to advise, coordinate, and invest in companies through an impact investing lens. She successfully sought and secured backing from Jim Sorenson/Sorenson Impact to launch Enable Ventures, and has since sourced, led, and supported Seed through Series A investments across the spectrum of disability in a portfolio that includes digital SaaS, consumer-facing neurotechnology solutions, and wide-ranging applications of Artificial Intelligence. Prior to launching Enable Ventures, Gina founded SmartJob LLC, the world’s first impact investing platform dedicated to ecosystem building and scouting the earliest stage companies in the disability technology market and advancing evergreen impact investing opportunities. Through SmartJob’s advisory to DAF capital, Gina built an investment strategy and portfolio in the early-stage disability technology market to drive impact and support more investable companies entering the market. SmartJob was selected by the Clinton Global Initiative as a commitment to action, as it leads a global Moonshot of 10 disability technology accelerator programs in 6 countries to further collaboration, support, and capacity building within the programs. In her civil rights legal career, Gina worked to challenge and end some of the most exploitative practices in the country affecting workers with disabilities, and has built meaningful, long-term relationships throughout the disability community. For nearly 15 years as a civil rights attorney, Gina led efforts to dramatically improve working conditions and the employment of people with disabilities. As a Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Gina successfully fought for workers with disabilities in segregated workplaces, where they were often paid pennies per hour, helping secure court orders to support and move over 11,000 workers to competitive integrated employment. Gina filed and resolved the nation’s first cases under the ADA to challenge these segregated and often exploitative work settings. These landmark cases set a new standard in American law impacting millions of students and adults with disabilities. Gina received awards from Attorney General Eric Holder and Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her work. During the Obama administration, Gina also served as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she provided legal and policy counsel regarding efforts to implement the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court’s landmark Olmstead v. L.C. decision. She then represented students and workers with disabilities in civil rights matters across the country as a Partner at the law firm of Brown, Goldstein and Levy, LLP. While at the firm, she was the Co-Leader of a national disability consulting practice that she co-founded. Gina received her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law where she graduated cum laude and her B.A. from Columbia University. Gina is the author of multiple government reports and evaluations of the U.S. disability employment system, has provided public testimony in front of federal and state government entities and commissions including the U.S. Congress, and has advised numerous public and private leaders and organizations on disability employment.
Charlotte Magee
Principal
Charlotte Magee is an early-stage investor with a background in neuroscience who is passionate about technologies and businesses that elevate people’s quality of life. Before joining Enable Ventures, Charlotte was a Principal at the Joan and Tim Fenton Founders Fund and also served as Manager of Venture Capital & Impact Investing at Sorenson Impact Institute. In these roles, she crafted and executed investment strategies, managed portfolio operations, and played a pivotal role in every stage of the investment process from sourcing to negotiation, closure, and portfolio support. With a track record of leading or supporting market rate impact investments, Charlotte’s Pre-seed to Series A portfolio spans B2B SaaS to groundbreaking neurotechnology solutions to disability-focused workforce skilling products. Prior to her career in venture capital, Charlotte received her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Utah. Her scientific background instilled a rigorous and analytical approach to underwriting and due diligence. At Enable Ventures, Charlotte is eager to drive forward promising ventures that deliver strong financial returns and close the disability wealth gap.
Margaret Knowles
Vice President
Margaret Knowles is an early-stage impact investor. Prior to her work with Enable Ventures, Margaret Knowles worked with Regina Kline through SmartJob to support investments into early-stage disability technology companies and to develop the disability innovation ecosystem. She has deep operational and financial experience from her background in Social Enterprise startups, with a focus on workforce development in underrepresented populations. As Head of Operations at MINNA, an early-stage social enterprise, she worked to develop and implement operational and financial procedures from the ground up, and she brings with her experience and enthusiasm for building and growing early-stage companies. She also has experience in building deal pipelines and performing due diligence on impact-focused enterprises, as well as monitoring and measuring impact. Margaret received her MBA with honors from Columbia Business School, with a specific focus on Impact Investing, Early-Stage Investment, and Social Entrepreneurship. Margaret works on the Enable Ventures investment team to source and diligence deals, provide operational support to portfolio companies, lead fund operations, and track and measure impact outcomes.
Enable Ventures is a part of the Sorenson Impact Platform of Funds and is supported by Jim Sorenson and Sorenson Impact’s vast, world class experience in impact and market-rate investments.
Jim Sorenson
Founder and Executive Chairman, Sorenson Impact Group
A world-renowned entrepreneur, business leader, and societal innovator, Jim was raised in a family of entrepreneurs. He grew up with a belief in the power of business to help solve problems in sustainable, scalable ways to improve the lives of the poor and the emerging middle class around the world. Jim took the lessons he learned in his childhood and and applied them to his career where he learned early on to proactively pursue investments in new markets where he was able to see business opportunities in previously non-commercial fields—a skill that he would later put to work in his impact investing career. In 2002, after a decade of development and tens of millions of dollars in investment, the company he had built — Sorenson Media — was primed for commercial success just as the dot com bubble burst and halted the markets. Jim found himself leading a company that had a monthly burn rate of $1 million and whose market demand had all but evaporated. Jim went back to the drawing board and in collaboration with a hearing-impaired family member realized that they could transition the company’s products to enhance communication for the deaf and hard of hearing. Sorenson Media was well positioned to offer a better service than major telecommunications companies resulting in the successful turnaround of the company (later spun off as Sorenson Communications) while also improving the quality of life for millions of deaf people. That company went on to be the largest private equity transaction in the state of Utah. On top of that, the company was estimated to have increased employment opportunities for the hearing impaired population by approximately four times. Jim was inspired by this company’s ability to not only make a very positive impact on an often underserved population but also operate with an effective business model and profit that ensured ongoing sustainability. He was intrigued with the idea of finding market solutions to meet the needs of underserved communities and since then he has established the Sorenson Impact Foundation, which invests in scalable, innovative social entrepreneurs, as well as the Sorenson Impact Center at the University of Utah, which is a “think and do tank” focused on social impact and policy. Today, Jim spends most of his time and energy in the impact investing field through three key elements: 1. investing in early-stage enterprises that lack access to commercial capital and are developing products or services that improve livelihoods for people in poor or marginalized markets; 2. investing in creative financial structures that unlock greater flows of capital to scalable innovations and; 3. building a vibrant impact investing ecosystem. Impact investments are only part of Jim's impact investing work; recognizing that building a robust impact investment market requires a healthy supporting ecosystem. Impact investors, just like conventional investors, depend on the work of researchers, advisors, wealth managers, entrepreneurs, industry experts, and others in order to make well-informed, successful investments.
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Enable Ventures is led by Regina “Gina” Kline and partnered with SmartJob. Gina founded SmartJob, a disability impact scout at the end of 2020, assembling a 14-person advisory board that brings together skills and lived experience from disability policy, disability advocacy, investing, technology and the impact economy.