Carmen Palafox
Partner @ MiLA Capital (Make in LA)
Los Angeles, United States
Carmen Palafox is a seed investor at MiLA Capital (Make in LA) in Los Angeles focused on Energy and FinTech. Carmen Palafox graduated from the Executive MBA program at Berkeley-Haas with a focus on entrepreneurship, new venture finance, and strategy. While in the program, Carmen consulted to small businesses and startups in Consumer Package Goods, Cleantech, FinTech, and Software as a Service. Her projects focused on operations, fundraising, growthstrategy, product pricing, and customer segmentation. She was formerly Vice President, Investment Operations, at Dimensional Fund Advisors LP. Carmen joined the firm in 1996 when the company was relatively small employing 50 people and managing $30 billion in assets at that time. Over the course of 15 years she scaled operations into new markets, including Latin America, Canada, and Europe. She managed and negotiated vendor and partner agreements for the company, and oversaw investor relations.Carmen is active in her community, and served as President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Latinos in Finance and Accounting (ALPFA). She currently is a board member of CCEO YouthBuild, and on the Advisory Board of Santa Monica Business College.In addition to an MBA, Carmen holds a MA in sports management from the University of San Francisco, and a BA in economics from the University of Southern California.At Make in LA, she’s focused on coaching entrepreneurs in finance and investment, managing fund operations, and developing investor relationships.
- Total investments:
- 2
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 0%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Carmen Palafox invests in
Stages Carmen Palafox invests in
Countries Carmen Palafox invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
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Investment Focus
Industry
- Energy 1 (50%)
- FinTech 1 (50%)
- Oil and Gas 1 (50%)
- Internet of Things 1 (50%)
Stage
- Seed 1 (50%)
- Pre-Seed 1 (50%)
Country
- Mexico 1 (50%)
- United States 1 (50%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| SUMA is a revolutionary financial wellness company with the mission to engage, educate, and empower the Latinx community via a holistic approach of Digital Media, Experiences, and FinTech. By creating culturally relevant content, virtual experiences, and providing financial tools that demystify and reimagine financial wellness throughentertainment, we aim to become the trusted source to help Latinos own their economic power, overcome financial challenges, and better prepare for a more prosperous future. | $1.3M / Pre-Seed / Oct 19, 2020 | ||
| We provide moments of warmth for everyone, everywhere. We are the bridge that connects people to a more reliable and comfortable energy consumption experience. We created an IoT gas management platform, starting with propane that empowers people to have a better and fairest consumption experience.There are 3B people around the world who usepropane as their main source of energy (cooking, hot showers and heating). The propane gas industry was worth 122B in 2015. Our go to market strategy is Mexico (the biggest propane consumer per capita in America), representing an 8B industry. There are 6 million stationary tanks within residential users and SMBs.Our device connects stationary propane tanks to the internet. Our platform connects the three main stakeholders; on one hand to the end user (Residential and SMB’s), later to the gas company and finally to the dispatchers. We have a device for the stationary tank, an application for the end user, a control dashboard for the SMB’s and a management dashboard for gas suppliers. | $75K / Seed / Sep 01, 2017 |
Co-Investors
MiLA Capital is a high-touch Venture Capital firm based in Los Angeles, CA. The team believes that (1) hardware can be brought to market more frugally than in the past and that (2) Los Angeles has the expertise and best resources to support founders who play in the physical world.Since 2015, MiLA Capital has seen a gap in SoCal’s startup hardtech ecosystem; talent was incredible but fragmented while capital was plentiful except for seed stage hardware founders. We addressed that by raising an early stage venture fund, building an innovation lab known as Toolbox LA, recruiting a values-driven community of founders and mentors, and connecting hundreds of talented founders with the resources they need to impact the world. We also operate the Make in LA accelerator to find, nurture, and invest in promising hardware companies at the earliest stages. We believe that undiscovered hardware founders are too often overlooked, and we are the right team to fund them at the significant inflection point of pre-manufacturing.
MiLA Capital (Make in LA) Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Shaun Arora
Managing Partner
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Carmen Palafox
Partner
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Marta Wojcicka
Director of Operations
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Noramay Cadena
Co-Founder and General Partner
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Sandeep Shroff
Advisor
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FAQ
What does Carmen Palafox invest in?
Carmen Palafox invests primarily in Energy, FinTech and Oil and Gas startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 2 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Mexico. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Carmen Palafox?
Public channels for Carmen Palafox include LinkedIn and X (Twitter). For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Carmen Palafox last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Carmen Palafox closed in Oct 2020. Shizune tracks 2 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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