Vaish Shastry

Vaish joined A Better Chicago in 2020 and serves as the portfolio manager for the Catalyst Fund supporting grantees on the South and West side of Chicago. Prior to joining A Better Chicago, Vaish worked as an investment banking associate on the Consumer & Retail team at William Blair. She also has served as Executive Director of the Sunflower County Freedom Project, a civil-rights-based education nonprofit in the Mississippi Delta. Earlier in her career, Vaish worked at KIPP: New Jersey as a data analyst and as a middle school math teacher in Greenwood, Mississippi through Teach For America. Vaish holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems & Information Technology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.