Christa Freeland

Startup Background

Christa Freeland is an entrepreneur and Managing Director at Powershift Group, a startup studio that founds, funds, and scales tech and early stage companies between a small network of business leaders and entrepreneurs. In 2015, she created a young professional's networking app called The Dime Club.

She has also started a coworking concept, called Switch Cowork, that turns under-utilized restaurants into shared work spaces, creating an "underground" network of startups, freelancers and remote workers. She was then accepted into the NYC intensive program Project Entrepreneur, a UBS and Rent the Runway joint venture to support female founders.

Government Service

Christa has been recognized by Austin's Mayor Steve Adler for her service and work within the local government on two different occasions. In 2017 she was asked to be the first official social media ambassador for the City of Austin and was invited to join their exclusive CityWorks Academy. This is where she met with the heads of each major department in the local government and gained insider access to better understand and be exposed to how the City operations.

In 2016 she was the youngest appointment to a seven person committee for the City of Austin's Grant for Technology Opportunities Program. There she advised the Technology and Telecommunications Commission on how to use a $200k fund on nonprofits that address areas of technology accessibility.

Timeline

Showing strong intuition, ambition, and talent for communications early in her life, Christa started creating websites in 2003 and taking on leadership roles on the high school yearbook staff at age sixteen, winning awards in layout design and feature stories.

She has now worked in a variety of organizations including non-profit, lifestyle, agency, volunteer, and startup. Christa has stayed up-to-date on industry trends by regularly attending events such as World Entrepreneur of the Year, Forbes Under 30, EY's Strategic Growth Forum, Microsoft Convergence, and SXSW Interactive.

Features

Christa has enjoyed speaking at The University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University, and 3 Day Startup. She has been mentioned in print and online, national and local publications such as Entrepreneur Magazine, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, WeWork Blog, CIO, and more.