Even after a 13-month-long legal battle, the Fearless Fund founder isn’t giving up on race-based funding.

BY SARAH LYNCH, STAFF REPORTER

There wasn’t an aha! moment when the word “fearless” took on a particular resonance for Arian Simone. Perhaps it’s been core to her since birth, she says. But now, the word is nearly synonymous with her brand, enshrined in the titles of her three books, her podcast, the magazine she founded in 2010, the school she opened in Ivory Coast in West Africa, and the venture capital firm and the foundation that she now helms.

And yet, the last year and change have put that fearlessness to the test.

In August 2023, Simone, 44, was thrust into a new kind of national spotlight when her Atlanta-based venture capital firm, Fearless Fund, was sued by the conservative nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights. The allegation? That one of the fund’s grant programs was racially discriminatory.

It was a fight that........

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