Chelsea Zhang

Chelsea Zhang

Chelsea is an investor at Equal Ventures, where she focuses on supply chain and ecommerce. Previously, she was at L.E.K. Consulting, a strategy consulting firm, where she focused on advising corporations and private equity firms on growth and M&A strategy within consumer retail. On secondment from L.E.K., she worked on the Museum team at the Obama Foundation to help build the new Obama Presidential Center. Chelsea first encountered venture in college, when she took a year off to work at a VC-backed company in the kids’ media space.

Chelsea started her Equal journey as an MBA intern during her first year at Wharton and graduated from the University of Chicago with an Economics BA. She splits her spare time between lurking on sports Twitter, consuming sci-fi novels, and getting to Inbox Zero.

Retail in 2023: Back to Basics

Over the last several years we’ve seen a tremendous boon in direct-to-consumer (DTC) and e-commerce strategies for retail. Venture capital flooded into the category leaving incumbent retailers feeling pressured. 2022 started to see a reversal of some of these trends. The first half of the year saw consumers back in stores to the detriment of…