Founder
Jenny has over 25 years of experience as an attorney and advisor for mission-driven enterprises. She has helped her clients raise millions of dollars from values-aligned investors and raised over $2 million for her own businesses.
She is the author of Raise Capital on Your Own Terms: How to Fund Your Business without Selling Your Soul (Berrett-Koehler, October 2017).
Jenny earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and a masters degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.
Jenny co-founded the Force for Good Fund, an impact investment fund managed by Community Ventures, a nonprofit organization that Jenny founded in 2008. She also co-founded Crowdfund Mainstreet, a licensed portal for Regulation Crowdfunding. Most recently she co-founded Opportunity Main Street, an impact investment fund that owns a mixed-use building in Baltimore which serves as a hub for supporting under-represented entrepreneurs and providing education about community-based investing.
Jenny’s legal practice, The Kassan Group, provides legal services, coaching, and consulting for mission-driven companies, investors, and intermediaries and includes educational programs for entrepreneurs (the Capital on Your Terms program) and investors of all levels of wealth and income (Angels of Main Street).
Jenny served on the Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. She submitted the petition to the SEC that led to the passage of the 2012 JOBS Act and was present at the White House signing ceremony.
Before becoming a securities lawyer, Jenny worked for eleven years at a nonprofit community development corporation in Oakland called the Unity Council, where she served as staff attorney and managed community economic development projects including a $100 million transit-oriented development project and the formation and management of several social ventures designed to employ and create business ownership opportunities for low-income community residents.
Jenny co-founded the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal information to support sustainable economies. Jenny is also a fellow at Democracy Collaborative. She is on the board of directors for CfPA (Crowdfunding Professional Association) and formerly served as a director of Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Jenny is certified as a coach by the International Association of Women in Coaching. In 2020 she was named to the list of World-Changing Women in Conscious Business by SOCAP Global.
Michelle has over two decades of closely-held business consulting experience as an estate and succession planning attorney. She has helped her clients create legacy and philanthropic planning goals that ensure the continuation of business and community involvement for the next generation. Michelle is the founder of East Bay Revitalization, Inc., a nonprofit that addresses the scarcity of affordable housing and economic opportunities for working families. She is also the CEO of Crowdfund Mainstreet, a regulated investment crowdfunding platform.
Michelle Richardson is the founder and owner of Leverage, a boutique cloud-based accounting firm for freelancers, startups and small to mid-size businesses. A senior accountant with over 15 years of experience, she is recognized as an early adopter of cloud technology for accounting and other businesses. Her areas of expertise include software integration, systems creation, complex reconciliations and financial reporting. Before launching Leverage, she worked in a wide variety of industries including publishing, wine import/distribution, online education, technology, digital media and non-profits.
In addition to her training in accounting, she received a BA in International Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. As a French-American, she is a board member of an association for developing the local French community, Los Angeles Accueil. A proponent for women’s education, she sponsors schools in Guatemala and is an avid supporter of women entrepreneurs in the tech industry.
Rana has over fifteen years of national and international experience in finance, human resources, and operations management. Prior to joining Th Kassan Group, she managed the operations of several SMEs across several industries including sustainability consulting and software development. Rana co-founded and managed a social impact venture that aimed to provide access to books in underserved communities in Jordan. She holds an MBA from American University in Washington, DC.
“Jenny’s expertise in this space is one of a kind—nobody knows more about raising mission-aligned capital. But it’s not just about legal expertise. Jenny and her team care deeply about the change that their clients want to see in the world and about their success. When you work with her, you’re getting a broad base of expertise and support.”
“I’ve known Jenny for nearly a decade. She is among the smartest people I know. She has devoted her career to helping entrepreneurs raise capital from the crowd. No one in the industry knows more about it than she does. No one! Zero people know more than Jenny.”
“Jenny Kassan is a national thought leader in the effort to increase capital flow towards triple bottom line businesses.”
“Jenny is deeply knowledgeable about a topic most of us are not! Jenny walks you through the steps necessary for finding investors so that when you approach an investor, you feel that you’re on solid ground.”
“Jenny is an entrepreneur’s dream come true.”
“Jenny gave me the tools I needed to offer an investment opportunity to supportive investors. My team and I are well on our way to achieving our goal of raising $500,000. We’re offering equity, but we are not giving up any control. We’ve had a remarkable response, and we couldn’t have done it without Jenny’s teaching and support.”
“Jenny is, hands down, one of the most knowledgeable sources in the field today when it comes to creative capital raising for social enterprises and small businesses.”
