Bio

Angela Steele is an Operating Partner of Kinzie Capital Partners and serves on the Board of Chelsea Lighting, a Kinzie portfolio company. As CEO of Carat, one of the largest media agencies in the world, Angela brings more than 20 years of experience in transforming companies. Her expertise includes business strategy, building diverse leadership teams and developing new products to capitalize on marketplace trends. Angela has guided strategies to drive growth leveraging B2B and B2C marketing, product innovation, corporate culture and broad vertical expertise working with companies ranging from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her experience spans consumer packaged goods, technology, QSR, auto and retail, including direct to consumer and ecommerce. Working with brands such as Pfizer, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, The Home Depot and Goldman Sachs, Angela’s focus has been on empowering companies to harness emerging digital technologies to scale their businesses and drive their marketing strategies. As CEO of Carat, Angela expertly navigated the health, social and economic crisis in 2020-21 and pioneered a first of its kind strategic partnership with minority-owned Hero Collective to bring differentiating diversity to Carat’s offering. Prior to CEO, Angela was the Chief Strategy Officer of Carat where she focused on transforming the company’s workforce and product offering to be digitally centric and data enabled. Prior to joining Carat, Angela served as CEO at Ansible, Interpublic Group’s (IPG) full-service mobile agency. The industry has recognized Angela’s contributions with numerous awards including Campaign 2020 Female Frontier, MediaPost All Star 2018, Business Insiders Most Powerful Women in Mobile 2012 and Advertising Age’s Media Maven 2011 honors. Angela serves on the Board of the 4A’s (the American Association of Advertising Agencies), a U.S. trade association for advertising agencies serving over 700 member agencies across 1,300 offices. She also serves on the board of 212NYC, a 5,000-person organization designed to support the digital advertising community through education, programming and philanthropy. Additionally, she serves as an advisor to Pluie, a startup recognized by Fast Company as a 2021 World Changing Idea. Angela holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and Management from the University of Michigan. She earned her B.B.A. in Marketing/Advertising and Economics from Northwood University.