Christie Pitts

Christie Pitts is an early-stage investor at Backstage Capital and co-founder of Backstage Studio. In her current role, Christie leads Backstage’s global Accelerator program, which operates in London, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit. In this position, Christie’s team is responsible for Accelerator operations, program facilitation, company selection, and investment.

In addition to her role leading Accelerator, Christie is an Investment Partner at Backstage Capital. She joined Backstage in August 2017 and went on to assist in sourcing and investing in 50 startups led by underrepresented (women, people of color, and LGBTQ) founders, helping to bring the firm’s total investment portfolio to 100 startups by summer of 2018.

Previously, Christie had a multifaceted career at Verizon. She began as a part-time retail customer service representative and worked her way up through the company, becoming the Associate Director of Marketing and Sales Operations for the Northern California – Nevada – Hawaii region of Verizon Wireless. In this role, Christie led operations and marketing teams, supporting more than 5M wireless customers with annual revenues in excess of $4B. From that role, Christie identified a passion for working with early-stage companies, which led her to work on the Verizon Ventures team as a Venture Development Manager.

Christie is an inventor and has a patent for a connected IoT device. She has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, BBC, and TechCrunch. She concepted and launched the Verizon Ventures podcast, appears regularly on Backstage’s The Bootstrapped VC podcast, and is the co-host of 0G: A History of Forgotten Phones, with fellow VC and phone aficionado Peter Rojas.