From rural Alabama to a landmark career on Wall Street, where she was the first Black female equity stockbroker for Merrill Lynch at the New York Stock Exchange, Martina Edwards has learned the power of access, opportunity, and equity. She now delivers solid results in operations, strategy and finance as Chief of Strategic Partnerships for ACE | Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs - the largest small business-only focused CDFI in the state of Georgia. In under four years, she has helped ACE secure just over $40 million in grant funds, including the largest individual and corporate grants in its history, which supported tripling the size of its lending portfolio. Edwards has a B.S. in Finance from Tuskegee University and an MBA from UNC Kenan‐Flagler Business School, completed an exchange at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and global immersions in India and Mexico. She is also a mother of two energetic boys and keeps it all together with the support of her spouse.