Brianne Kimmel

Brianne Kimmel is an Angel investor and the founder of Work Life Ventures and SaaS School.

Brianne graduated from Kent State University, School of Journalism and Mass Communications in the top 1% of her class, and was nominated by staff and peers for Student Leader of the Year and Junior Leader of the Year. Kimmel heavily participated in student entrepreneurship activities on campus and developed multiple entrepreneurship opportunity programs.

Kimmel pioneered a program, for women, in low-income communities while at Kent State that was adopted by student-run non-profit organizations. Initially, she taught the program herself in: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; New Orleans, Louisiana; and various locations throughout Northeast Ohio before graduating.

Kimmel went on to found Work Life Ventures in 2019, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on investing in tools and services for improving the work lives of employed individuals. The firm makes investment decisions within 24-48 hours for startups that are actively raising.

itiswhatitis.fm can be found on mobile browsers using these emojis followed by ".fm."

Kimmel also describes herself as a "#1 fan, proud mom, old grandma" of the internet meme, "It is what it is." The meme, represented by a lips emoji with two eyes emoji surrounding it, originated on TikTok. It eventually transitioned to Twitter and was popularized by a "diverse, ragtag group of young technologists tired of the status quo tech industry." Those who included the emojis in their Twitter profile became members of a private group.

Attention from the meme generated attention to raising money for causes benefiting racial injustice. Itiswhatitis has a unique URL, which seems to be represented by jumbled letters, numbers, and symbols on a traditional computer browser. However, the domain is the result of a Punycode converter, which converts characters like emojis into text. Itiswhatitis.fm raised over $200,000 for three causes: Loveland Foundation Therapy Fund, The Okra Project, and The Innocence Project. Other notable publications and figures endorsing itiswhatitis included Forbes, Andrew Chen of Andressen Horowitz, and The Independent.