Rani Langer-Croager

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Rani Langer-Croager is our Founder & Chief Executive Officer. Rani is a social entrepreneur, educator, and business advisor focused on redefining how business support is offered to entrepreneurs of color. Rani’s superpower is futurecasting, seeing the opportunities and risks in your business before they arise and helping you prepare for them in advance. 

Rani grew up in an immigrant family that leveraged entrepreneurial activities and cooperative economics as a means for financial stability. She is passionate about creating pathways that truly support entrepreneurs of color in building resilient, thriving businesses where we can make a sustainable living and be in service to our communities. Rani founded Uptima to address the challenges of traditional entrepreneurship programs and accelerators in providing holistic and culturally relevant education, advising, and community to entrepreneurs of color. 

Rani has drawn on more than 20 years of experience advising organizations on strategic and financial planning, capital raising and mergers and acquisitions to develop the model for Uptima. Prior to founding Uptima, Rani was a member of the founding team and vice president at Altius Education where she raised over $30 million of capital to fund development of the company’s educational ecosystem. Rani began her career as a successful investment banker and has led and participated in over 30 financing, merger, acquisition, and joint venture transactions, representing over $15 billion in value.

Rani sees entrepreneurship as part of the movement for social justice. If we understand how money moves and how business works, we have more leverage in shifting economic and political power to ensure our communities thrive.