🔒2025 Innovator: Stamford’s Rocha builds a nonprofit to help founders turn ideas into sustainable businesses

Marie Rocha was advising a couple of entrepreneurs who seemed poised to make lucrative exits, and it got her wondering what she would do if she came into life-changing money. Rocha has yet to win the lottery. But her musings led her in 2022 to create Realist Lab, a Stamford-based nonprofit that has helped nearly 150 entrepreneurs shape and solidify their business plans. She worried at first that no one would apply for the nonprofit’s services. But three years after Realist Lab was born, there’s so much demand that it recently removed language that sets a time limit on its replies to applicants. “The needs are there,” Rocha said. “I think people are inspired to build. They just don’t have support.” Rocha has been offering support to entrepreneurs for more than a decade, as an entrepreneur, investor and adviser. Before launching Realist Lab, Rocha helped craft a program designed to help women entrepreneurs hone their pitches to investors. In 2018, she founded a venture capital firm after informally helping people with business plans navigate the pitfalls of fundraising. “Rather than fixate only on funding, I focus on access, visibility, legitimacy and connection,” she said in summarizing the common threads of her endeavors. “The work is less about individual transactions and more about constructing durable bridges: between people and capital, ideas and markets, untapped voices and opportunity.” Backed primarily by a $5 million grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development, Realist Lab employs eight people, including engineers, marketing experts, wealth advisers and a go-to-market strategist. The organization’s annual budget is about $1.2 million, Rocha said. The lab’s team is “amazing,” said Claudia Zimmermann, co-founder and CEO of Fairfield-based startups Everneat and Neatlist, which offer products and services for the cleaning industry. She and her husband, Angelo, went through a Realist accelerator program in early 2025. But it was Rocha’s involvement and engagement with entrepreneurs that stood out. Rocha continued to help the Zimmermanns make connections, the couple said. “She always has great input, and you notice that she really cares, which is rare for a founder of these startup accelerators,” Claudia Zimmermann said. “That’s what makes Realist different.”

‘That nerdy, curious kid’

Born in Haiti, Rocha emigrated to New Jersey with her parents when she was 12. Like most Haitians, she already spoke English, a language she picked up, in part, through listening to public radio and reading The New York Times. “I was fascinated with the science section,” Rocha said. “And then, I would spend a ton of time in the library learning more about the topics I didn’t understand.” One of those topics was assembly language, a relatively simple computer coding tool. She picked up a book on it, taught herself to code and, at around 14, convinced her parents to let her build a computer. “For as long as I could remember, I was just that nerdy curious kid,” Rocha said. “It was easy for me to get into tech.” Her first job, however, was at a call center selling books in the early 1990s. A self-described introvert, she acknowledges she was not good at it. But she hung onto the job because of her ability to troubleshoot and repair the call center’s computer hardware and software. “I knew how to swap out motherboards, and all of that,” said Rocha, who gleaned tips from books but also from hanging out at Radio Shack and listening to the engineers who congregated there. After realizing she had no future in book sales, Rocha turned back toward technology. “I didn’t know one Black person or even a woman in tech, but it just seemed appealing to me anyway,” Rocha said. “And I don’t even know that I called it tech. I was just curious about how computers work.”

Having grown up in a family that emphasized giving back, she also felt computers could help make the world a better place. “I was like, ‘Oh, if I am part of this, one day, we’re going to change the world by automating stuff so everybody can eat,’” she said. Her first tech job was more practical. She worked for a small software company that built backend systems and trading platforms for banks — and met her now ex-husband there. After their first child was born, Rocha stayed home and looked for more flexible work. “I didn’t want to go back into tech,” she said. “So, I thought the next best thing was something that dealt with numbers and data and community, and real estate made sense.” Her career move came during the boom years for home sales before the Great Recession of 2008-2009. But, Rocha said, she could not always close the deal. She recognized when transactions made no financial sense for buyers and would end up talking them out of it. “People were finding all sorts of ways to get approved,” she said. “And I was not that kind of Realtor.” She and her family were living in northern New Jersey at the time, but they had begun vacationing in Cape Cod after a storm canceled a trip to the Caribbean, their usual destination. But one year, the drive from Jersey City to the Cape took nine hours. The Rochas began to reimagine where else they might live in order to be closer to places they liked to travel, and their daughter suggested Connecticut. A family friend showed them around Stamford, and their daughter was sold, Rocha said. The move allowed Rocha to escape the real estate business. But she struggled with the change of scenery and even drove back to North Jersey on occasion for groceries and other shopping. But as her two children grew more independent, she started taking on volunteer work for local nonprofits, helping them build websites and databases and other tech tools. “This was a moment when they weren’t leveraging tech at all,” said Rocha, who recalls a neighbor struggling with stacks of papers after starting a nonprofit. “That was just mind-boggling to me.” Rocha eventually started a company that consulted for both nonprofits and small businesses. She also teamed up with a friend to start an online jewelry business called Casanova Atelier. Her friend designed and made the jewelry, which incorporated sustainable materials. Rocha focused on social media, business development and establishing an ecommerce presence. Health problems eventually sidelined her partner. And while Rocha harbored dreams of becoming an artist herself, she realized she would be better at helping more people like her friend — people with good ideas who needed assistance getting them to market. “That’s essentially what kept leading to all the little things that I did before Realist Lab,” Rocha said. Check out other 2025 Innovator profiles

Creating a sustainable nonprofit

As Rocha worked with more would-be entrepreneurs, she found they often shared a critical need: guidance through the world of raising capital. But she also met a lot of investors making what she believed were bad investments. She repeatedly talked one friend out of those bad bets, and the friend eventually suggested Rocha start her own venture capital fund. Rocha had trepidations. “I honestly didn’t think anyone was going to give me money to do that,” she said. She was aware that very few Black women were active in venture capital. But she chalked it up to money rather than gender or race. “It’s expensive to raise a fund,” she said. The reality turned out to be different. Nonetheless, she convinced enough individuals to raise $8 million and started investing in companies ranging from supplement maker AG1 to canned beverage company Liquid Death.

“I really truly think that it’s an underservice to America that we are not investing in more R&D and entrepreneurship as an economic tool." — Marie Rocha

Another is Career Karma, an online platform that matches people with career training programs. In September, the company sold a portion of its business to Climb Credit, a student payment platform focused on career training. Based on the success of her first fund, Rocha is contemplating creation of a second. But she also is deeply engaged in her current work of advising and mentoring entrepreneurs. Before starting Realist Lab, for example, Rocha co-founded HAYVN Hatch, a pitch contest and program for coaching women entrepreneurs on making stronger cases to potential investors. “It’s hard out there, and women don’t get much of the funding,” said Felicia Rubinstein, the program’s co-founder, who also leads HAYVN co-working spaces in Darien and Greenwich. “So, we wanted it to be more than just a night of pitching, but a supportive community all around.” Rocha recruited both judges and participants for the program, Rubinstein said. “She’s very connected and kind and thinks about things, and if she sees some potential, she’ll help grow it to the next level,” Rubinstein said.

Economic tool

The next level for Realist Lab? Rocha sees several paths ahead. One is for the nonprofit to run incubator and accelerator programs for corporations, a service that could generate revenue in addition to grants. Companies often want to start their own programs. But they may lack the infrastructure or connections to investors, Rocha said. “Some companies have reached out to us wanting to get involved in this space,” she said. Realist Lab also expects to generate revenue from the small equity stakes it takes in the companies it assists, Rocha said. “I wanted that model because I wanted to create a nonprofit that had some sustainability, that wouldn’t rely on grants in perpetuity,” she said. And she still occasionally mulls the potential of life-changing money. Rocha said she and a friend once joked about retrofitting a Sprinter van to travel through the U.S. creating opportunities and connections for diverse entrepreneurs who are often overlooked and underfunded. “I really truly think that it’s an underservice to America that we are not investing in more R&D and entrepreneurship as an economic tool,” she said. Check out other 2025 Innovator profiles