Draft:Morgan Mercer

Early Life and Education

Morgan Mercer is an American entrepreneur, investor, and educator. She is best known as the founder of Vantage Point, a virtual reality-based enterprise training company that aims to educate people in the workplace about anti-sexual harassment, bystander intervention, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.^[1] Her achievements have been recognized by TechRadar as one of the Top 10 Female Tech Innovators,^[2] by UN Women as a “Champion of Change in the Era of Equity,”^[3] and by Best Startups as one of the United States' 101 Top CEOs in the Education Space.^[3]

Growing up biracial in North Carolina, Morgan often experienced flagrant racism daily, exposing her to racial bias from a young age.^[4] Additionally, she experienced familial tension at home due to political conflict between her father, a conservative Republican, and her mother, a liberal Democrat.^[4] Later on, she studied at East Carolina University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts with a double major of Business and Political Science and a Minor in Russian Studies. Before founding Vantage Point, she served as Head of Digital at an e-commerce startup and as an Analyst at a digital agency focused on behavioral change around complex social issues.^[5]

Career

Being a two-time survivor of sexual violence, Mercer understood the pain point of society's lack of education around sexual violence.^[4] According to an interview by Marija Butkovic, in November of 2016, after Mercer attended a good friend's TED talk in Monaco, about women as weapons of war, at the speaker dinner, the keynote speakers began discussing the lack of education around responding to sexual violence.^[6] Then, three weeks later, Mercer said she woke up with the idea for Vantage, aiming to educate people in the workplace about sexual violence and how to handle situations even as a bystander.^[6]

Additionally, Mercer had become increasingly interested in how people who would never experience racism or sexism could understand the impact it has on others' lives.^[4] She knew how difficult experiences like this were to talk about, so rather than trying to describe a feeling to someone who had never experienced it, she strove to foster empathy through shared experiences from the virtual reality training.^[1] Since traditional training sessions through seminars and manuals on sexual harassment in the workplace had a knowledge retention rate of only 20%, compared to the increased retention and empathy rates of immersive training at 90%, Mercer was further motivated to encourage human resource departments to seek real results from the training.

Vantage Point was founded in 2017 in Los Angeles, California, and uses virtual reality combined with machine learning and AI to create immersive experiences in workspace environments to educate people about the impact of sexual harassment and racial discrimination.^[7] During the simulation, the program starts by placing the user in the game and prompting them to pick an avatar who then witnesses a fellow employee being harassed. Based on how the user responds to the simulated situation, they will continue to be given a range of choices that will affect the outcome they witness, each with a consequence.^[7] The simulated workplace scenarios, inspired by true events and by witnessing and being placed in realistic situations, aim to teach people how to act accordingly when faced with uncomfortable situations.^[8] Mercer told Vogue that, after undergoing the training, male participants have approached her to say that they’d had no idea what harassment felt like until now – showing the success of her innovation.^[9]

Initially, Vantage Point was aimed at providing educational training experiences on sexual harassment to build empathy and develop a tangible relationship to the problem. But it has since expanded to include training modules on racism, anti-bias, diversity, equity, and inclusion.^[1]

Due to her success, Mercer has been featured in over 160 global publications, including Forbes, Fortune, WIRED, British Vogue, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, and The Economist.^[3] She has also delivered over forty global keynotes, including SAP Sapphire, UN Women, and Fortune Brainstorm Design.^[3] Mercer has developed courses through Oxford University for Emerging Markets and Emerging Technologies, and Designing with VR.^[3] Additionally, she has been named a Top 101 CEO in Education by Best Startups and a “Person of the Month” by WIRED.^[3]

Since founding Vantage Point, Mercer has moved on and, since June 2025, has been the founder and CEO of Caire, a healthcare infrastructure for employers and the public sector.^[3] Despite moving on from Vantage Point, the company has scaled globally and delivered impactful change across Fortune 500 companies and global institutions, including Google, Hyundai, Saks, and IKEA.^[3] More broadly, since the start of Vantage Point, virtual reality workplace training has continued to grow as a category, with Mercer helping create a space that organizations worldwide have adopted.

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