Aerica Banks
United States
MSc Nature, Society and Environmental Policy, 2013
Mansfield College
Funding: Arcadia
In 2020, Aerica founded Shiso, an intersectional equity consulting firm. She is working with companies and organisations internationally that seek to improve their social impact and advance human and civil rights.
Aerica is part of the patent strategy team at Google in Washington D.C., where she monitors the legislative and legal patent landscape and integrates diverse initiatives into Google’s patent strategy. She also leads Google’s sponsorship of BEACON, the campaign to make Washington D.C. the most supportive ecosystem for women entrepreneurs in the United States, and she sits on the advisory boards of TechWeekDC, Project 500, and Black Girl Ventures. She is also the COO of the Asian Google Network, one of the largest employee resource groups at the company.
She was named a Tech Titan by Washingtonian Magazine and a Forbes 30 Under 30 for Social Entrepreneurs.
Aerica graduated from Oxford with a MSc. in Nature, Society, and Environmental Policy and from Seattle University with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Public Affairs. She has also worked as a political appointee in the Obama Administration, worked in government relations for The Pew Charitable Trusts, and advanced environmental justice policies in Washington state.
Aerica is based in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
