Whitney Wolfe

CEO and Founder in Austin, Texas

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Whitney Wolfe was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, until she and her family moved to Paris at the age of 11. She returned to Utah to complete the American High School Experience and to prepare for college. She went to SMU in Dallas Texas and majored in International Relations after being rejected by the advertising/marketing school. She has since been called a "marketing genius" by outlets such as Medium.com and Bloomberg. She spent a year at La Sorbonne during university and is fluent in French. She had a passion to help people but was also business-minded.

She started two companies while in college, the first being the "Help Us Project" with partner Patrick Aufdenkam, a non-profit organization inspired by the BP oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. "Help Us" bags became a popular a line of organic bamboo totes supported by numerous celebrities, with proceeds benefitting the Ocean Futures Society. Also with Aufdenkam, Whitney Wolfe formed clothing line Tender Heart, produced in Nepal with an intent to raise awareness of human trafficking and fair trade clothing.

After graduating, Whitney spent 6 months in Asia working in orphanages in Northern Thailand and Cambodia. Upon her return, she joined the Cardify team for marketing and sales, which was part of the IAC incubator Hatch Labs. After Cardify failed to pick up, Whitney lobbied the team to run with another side project they had created, which was called Matchbox. That app is now a household name, Tinder. She Co-Founded Tinder and was the VP of marketing for two years. After her departure, she saw a missing link in online responsibility. She had hopes to create a platform for kindness. Whitney reunited with a business acquaintance, Andrey Andreev. Andreev is a world-renowned businessman most famous for his platform, Badoo, which has over 230 million users and generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Together they formed Bumble.