Portrait No. 001
Liesel Vaidya
Co-Founder & CEO
Imera
Raised — Currently in a raise
Imera is AI-native infrastructure for workforce mobility—automating immigration operations for essential industries stuck managing everything manually for decades. We replace 200+ hours of spreadsheet coordination per employee with AI, reducing employer costs from $8,000-23,000 to $1,500. We're the first platform built for employer-side immigration operations in a billion dollar market that's never been digitized. I moved to the U.S. from Nepal at 19 for college. I built my first company on a student visa and raised venture capital, but I nearly lost everything because of immigration complexity. I have lived through visa uncertainty, time pressure, and the quiet fear that one administrative mistake could erase years of work. At one point, I was close to being forced to leave the country I had built my life in. That experience changed me. It showed me how fragile opportunity can be for immigrants, even the high-performing, rule-following ones. Immigration today is fragmented, opaque, and outdated. People rely on Google searches and group chats to make life-altering decisions. Employers struggle to manage international pipelines at scale. I started Imera because I have personally felt the cost of this system failing. And now, with AI and better infrastructure design, we finally have the tools to rebuild it correctly.
In her words
“I've never been great at accepting the world as given.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
I moved to the U.S. from Nepal at 19. The distance between where I grew up and the venture ecosystem I entered at 23 was enormous. Right out of college, I founded my first startup, building digital health solutions for survivors of sexual assault. It was a deeply high-trust, high-stakes space. I raised over $9M in venture capital and grew the company into a internationally recognized startup, with recognition from Forbes 30 under 30, Fortune Change the World, and Crain’s 20 in their Twenties. From the outside, it looked like rapid momentum. Behind the scenes, I was building on temporary visas that could expire at any moment. My legal right to stay in the country was tied to systems I did not control. I was solving one of the most sensitive problems in healthcare while quietly navigating my own instability. At one point, immigration uncertainty nearly forced me to leave the U.S. entirely. Professionally, I had traction. Structurally, I had fragility. Choosing to build again meant betting on myself without a safety net. With Imera, I have raised capital again, built an AI-native immigration infrastructure platform, secured enterprise pilots, and grown a community of thousands navigating life and work in America. As an immigrant founder, failure is not just financial. It is existential. And I kept building.
Chapter II
Your vision.
I'm obsessed with the fact that in 2026, the process of moving to build a life in a new country is still managed in spreadsheets. 1.5 million workers move through US employment immigration annually. Nurses staffing rural hospitals. Construction workers building critical infrastructure. Teachers in underserved schools. Their ability to contribute depends on a system designed in the 1990s, run on email chains and paper forms. The change I want to enable: Workforce mobility should be infrastructure, not an obstacle. When a hospital needs a nurse, immigration shouldn't take 18 months of manual coordination. When a brilliant engineer wants to build in America, visa uncertainty shouldn't force them to leave. When essential industries can't function without global talent, the system should enable that, not prevent it. Imera makes workforce mobility work like it should: fast, transparent, and accessible. That's the world I'm building. One where opportunity isn't fragile, and immigration is infrastructure.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Thirty years from now, I want immigration to be invisible infrastructure. Not because the process disappeared, but because it works. I want a generation of immigrant founders, workers, and builders who never had to choose between opportunity and stability. Who didn't lose years to bureaucratic chaos. Who could just build and live up to their full potential. And I want the next generation of women and immigrant founders to see what we built and think: \"If she could take on a $15 billion industry stuck in the '90s and win, so can I.\" Legacy isn't just fixing immigration. It's proving the system can be rebuilt by the people it failed.