A year after settling its DEI lawsuit, the Fearless Fund has returned with a brand new initiative: the Fearless Global Initiative.
On Monday, September 22, Fearless Fund CEO and founding partner Arian Simone was joined by more than 100 attendees at the inaugural Fearless Global Summit in New York, where she launched the initiative, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“My heart is full,” she wrote in the caption of an Instagram post about the event.
“Thank you to everyone who came out for the inaugural Fearless Global Initiative event under @fearlessfreedommedia,” she continued. “This gathering was more than an event; it was the beginning of a global movement rooted in economic inclusion, equity, and justice.”
The summit brought together a diverse group of notables, including U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and CNN journalist Abby Phillip, alongside entrepreneurs, investors, and advocates. Guests participated in panels on access to capital, the global diaspora economy, and policy frameworks needed for equity. The triumphant meeting of the minds was a far cry from where the Fearless Fund found itself just a year ago, when its first iteration came to a screeching halt under the weight of a landmark lawsuit.
The original Fearless Fund launched in 2019 in Atlanta to close the gap in investment for women-of-color-led ventures. By 2023, it had made multimillion-dollar investments in Black women founders and helped bring national attention to disparities in venture capital. But in August of that year, the conservative group American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the fund, claiming its grant program for Black women entrepreneurs was discriminatory. The case led to an injunction and a lengthy legal battle, before a 2024 settlement forced the fund to permanently shut down the grant program.
“It was really unnecessary, you know, just because we decided to be audacious and cut million-dollar checks to Black women, it caused a serious disruption in this country,” Simone told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But the legacy of the lawsuit isn’t in what the fund lost, she insisted, but in what it sparked. Its true impact, she said, lies in “the work that we plan to get done in order to improve the right to fund marginalized communities.”
That work is now embodied in the Fearless Global Initiative. The new effort combines investment with advocacy and policy change. Its mission is centered on what Simone calls “demographic equity” — ensuring that opportunities and capital flow is in alignment with the true demographic makeup of communities and markets.
“The Fearless Global Initiative exists because economic inclusion is not charity; it is justice,” Simone wrote on Instagram. “By centering bold conversations, courageous leadership, and a collective vision, we are designing a future that is deeply inclusive and unapologetically fearless.”
While the first fund primarily focused on writing checks to founders, this new model aims to transform the system itself by opening doors at the policy level and establishing global infrastructure for equity. Soon, Simone plans to take the mission international with an upcoming trip to the United Nations.
“I knew that it wasn’t just as simple as having a fund,” Simone told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was literally, we’re going to have to get policies to change. We’re going to have to get different doors to open so that more people can even do what it is that we do.”
