Key Takeaways
- • Mariana Gonzalez, a Baruch College Zicklin School of Business student, is working as a Summer Analyst at Thomson Reuters Ventures through the NYC Venture Capital Internship Program, focusing on sourcing and mapping the startup landscape across legal tech, finkoch, risk, fraud, and compliance.
- • Gonzalez brings an early entrepreneurial background—selling toys, lemonade, and homemade sweets as a child in Caracas before immigrating to New York at age 12—that informed her attraction to venture capital and cross-border business opportunities.
- • Her summer internship responsibilities span sourcing, due diligence, event planning, research production, and AI workflow tools, covering verticals including agentic wallets, the creator economy, sanctions technology, and nearshoring infrastructure.
- • Gonzalez represents Baruch College in the NYC VC Internship Program, which places 30 students across 20+ venture capital funds to build talent pipelines in the city's startup ecosystem.
Summary
Gonzalez's path to venture capital reflects a lifelong entrepreneurial orientation. Growing up in Caracas, she operated informal businesses—selling toys, running a lemonade stand, and producing homemade sweets—before her family relocated to New York when she was 12. That early business instinct carried forward; by 8th grade, she was selling quesillos to teammates before practice. At Baruch College, campus startup competitions crystallized her focus on entrepreneurship, but it was the intersection of business-building with international markets and cross-cultural dynamics that pulled her toward venture capital as a career path.
At Thomson Reuters Ventures, Gonzalez has taken on a wide scope of responsibilities. Her work includes identifying and mapping startups across the firm's focus areas, conducting research on emerging technologies and market trends—including agentic wallets, the creator economy, global trade, and nearshoring infrastructure—and building sourcing pipelines within specialized verticals such as sanctions technology. Beyond research, her role encompasses deal support through due diligence preparation, event coordination that brings founders and investors together, deck production, and collaboration on internal AI tools designed to enhance the team's workflow efficiency. This variety has given her exposure to early-stage founder conversations, venture fund networks globally, and the day-to-day operations of a corporate venture capital office.
The NYC VC Internship Program, which places students across 20+ venture capital firms, serves as a talent development pipeline for the city's startup ecosystem while providing interns like Gonzalez direct immersion in professional venture capital practice. Her participation connects her background in international business and entrepreneurial instinct with institutional VC infrastructure and capital allocation processes.
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