Leigh Marie Braswell likes a game of risk, particularly if it’s a game of math.
Braswell grew up in rural Alabama, and wasn’t introduced to poker until she was an undergrad at MIT. And it wasn’t until she was an intern at Jane Street, the famed quantitative trading firm, that she was hooked on the game.
“We didn’t go out and party in New York—we stayed in and played poker,” said Braswell. “So, that’s how I really learned by playing every day against people at Jane Street.”
Braswell immediately joined the MIT Poker Club, where she reunited with Alexandr Wang, who she’d first met at a competitive math competition in her junior year of high school. Braswell went on to be an early employee at Scale AI, at the time knowing nothing about venture capital.
“I barely knew what VC as a concept was,” she remembers. “Alex told me ‘oh, we’re signing a Series A term sheet.’ And then I went off and Googled: ‘What’s a Series A term sheet?’”
