Mar Hershenson is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Pear VC, a seed-stage venture firm in Palo Alto backing companies like Guardant Health(NASDAQ: GH), Doordash (NYSE: DASH), Gusto, and Branch. Mar has been recognized in the Midas List of Top Tech Investors in 2021, 2022 and 2023. After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Mar developed a groundbreaking technique for optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Since then, she has accrued over 13 years of founder experience, co-founding three startups in mobile/ecommerce, enterprise software and semiconductor industries and has registered 14 separate patents.

Mar has received many awards throughout her career. Among them, the renowned T35 Young Innovator Award by MIT (for her technical work), and the prestigious Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award in 2010 (for her work in entrepreneurship).

Mar currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College and on the Advisory Council of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Mar is a founder of Equity Summit, the premier conference for connecting URM Venture Capital GPs to LPs, and an initial founding member of All Raise. Mar is based in the Bay Area with her husband Matt and has three children. She is an avid runner!