Everyone in Balitmore’s tech scene knew Pava LaPere.
“When you can be known in a town just by your first name, that says something,” one mentor, Delali Dzirasa, told The Daily Beast. “It’s like Madonna. When you say ‘Pava’ … everyone knew who you were talking about. Everybody loved Pava.”
Another adviser, Mac Conwell, said the 26-year-old tech CEO’s “goal was to help as many people as she could, to be a champion for those who were forgotten and not given the chances they deserved.”
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The Johns Hopkins University grad so believed in supporting entrepreneurs—especially those from underrepresented communities—and cheerleading for Charm City that she quickly became a fixture in the field. Her unflagging dedication helped usher in $8 million in funding for her company, EcoMap Technologies.
“She was full of light. When she was around, you felt her energy,” said Dzirasa, founder of Baltimore-based digital services firm Fearless.
Now her family and colleagues are grappling with a senseless and unimaginable loss.
On Monday, police reportedly discovered LaPere’s body on the roof of her apartment building soon after she was reported missing. Police held a press conference the next day announcing a manhunt and arrest warrant for 32-year-old Jason Dean Billingsley, whom they described as “armed and dangerous” and with a criminal record that included attempted rape. On Wednesday night, authorities announced Billingsley’s arrest, which they are set to discuss in more detail later Thursday morning.
“Every single police officer in Baltimore City, the state of Maryland, as well as the U.S. Marshals, are looking for you,” Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said in a direct warning to Billingsley, who was released last October.
The news of LaPere’s death was especially shocking to friends who saw her Friday at Artscape, a three-day art festival in the city. Councilman Mark Conway wrote on Facebook that he met LaPere at the event, where the two “geeked out over Anderson .Paak and environmental data.”
On Saturday, LaPere was unreachable.
Karina Mandell told The Daily Beast that friends and family tried to contact LaPere—who this year made a Forbes 30 Under 30 list—throughout the weekend.
“She is not the kind of person who goes missing. She doesn’t just ‘poof’ and vanish into thin air. You’re always able to get a hold of her,” Mandall said. “So that was the part that was immediately shocking.”
On Sunday, Mandall learned the news that her friend had vanished. The next day, she was informed that LaPere had been found dead at her apartment building. She said she had never heard of Billingsley’s name before and was shocked to find out that he was connected to LaPere’s death.
“This was an awful, awful crime that should have never happened,” Mandall said. “It just happened to strike a person who was so committed to the community.”
“Right now, we are all just waiting for answers.”
Mandall was just one friend who planned to attend a vigil for LaPere on Wednesday night, on the steps of the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon.
While loved ones mourn, Baltimore police are releasing more information on Billingsley. Earlier on Wednesday, cops revealed he is wanted in connection with a Sept. 19 attempted murder, arson, and rape that occurred about 20 minutes away from LaPere’s murder scene. A $6,000 reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.
“Multiple warrants have been issued for Billingsley, and detectives continue to work with all of our law enforcement partners in apprehending him,” police said in a press release. “Additionally, detectives are now reviewing all cases since October 2022, to the present day in order to determine any other connections.”
Billingsley’s mother also spoke out, telling NBC News she urged her son via text message to surrender because she does not want “police to shoot him because they think he has a gun.” Scarlett Billingsley said that she last saw her son on Monday, when he came over for a few minutes and showed her a gun. She added that she does not know whether Billingsley knew LaPere or how he got into her apartment.
The 72-year-old mother added that she does not know where her son is hiding and is sorry for the LaPere family. “I’m very sorry if he did it,” Scarlett Billingsley said. “I won’t know until I see some evidence if he did it. Where is the truth at—show me some evidence.”
While LaPere’s family has requested privacy as police work to track down Billingsley, her father took to Facebook on Tuesday to share how the tech CEO was an “inspiration to so many people.” A spokesperson for the family did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
“She was driven, creative, hardworking, and relentless in her efforts, with her wonderful team at EcoMap Technologies,” Frank LaPere shared online. “Pava made an impact in every endeavor she undertook and on every life she touched. She will be forever missed as a daughter, sister, grand-daughter, niece, cousin and loyal friend.”
Conwell, the founder of pre-seed fund RareBreed Ventures, said he's known LaPere since she was a college student. They met while he worked at TEDCO, Maryland’s economic engine for tech firms, and LaPere was launching an intercollegiate entrepreneurship conference.
“She was a champion for those who were underrepresented,” Conwell told The Daily Beast. “She was a champion for women, for diversity, for DEI. She truly believes in equity and equitable spaces. And she loved Baltimore; she loved the city, and she loved the community. And the community lost the shining star.”
Conwell last saw LaPere about a month ago at a get-together of about 15 people in the tech community, which was held at a mutual friend’s house. He said it was “a chance for us to break bread, let our hair down, take a breath from day-to-day rigors.” LaPere left early to prepare for the next day of work. But before she did, he offered her some advice.
“Make sure you're taking care of yourself,” Conwell recalls telling her. “Entrepreneurship’s a long journey, it can be lonely. Make sure you're keeping up with your hobbies. When’s the last time you went to a movie?”
He says LaPere laughed and replied, “I’m working on that, Mac, but work is what I love to do. And you know, maybe one day when I’m a billionaire, I’ll be able to help more people and do more things.”
He described LaPere as “the consummate optimist” about her company, her life, and the city.
Conwell said LaPere’s apartment was above her company in the historic Congress Hotel building. “She literally woke up, walked downstairs, and was at work,” he told us, adding that her work hours were “whatever needs to be done whenever it needs to be done.”
Mandell, who met LaPere in 2018, called the tech founder one of the “most passionate people” she has ever known. “She would wake up at 5:30 in the morning and lived upstairs from her office in the same building,” Mandell said. “She was passionate and driven, and she was intense. It’s like everyone else was going 40 miles an hour, and she was going 70 miles an hour. Like everyone’s driving a Buick and she’s driving a Ferrari because she wanted to go faster, she wanted to see results.”
LaPere’s firm curates data for companies and organizations. “She literally built a company to help other people,” Conwell said. “EcoMap is a company that aggregates resources for local communities, for broader communities, for entrepreneurs, small businesses, or for whatever the community has asked them to aggregate resources for.”
Dzirasa told The Daily Beast that he’d been in touch with LaPere throughout last week, including during a Friday Zoom meeting related to a project they were working on together.
When he called her last Monday, she was speaking at an economic development conference. He recalls LaPere telling him about how much of the tech industry was top-down when it needed a bottom-up grassroots approach to economic development. She argued that the “good old boys network” needed to shift. “She was looking to shake this industry up,” Dzirasa said. “I remember leaving the call, kind of laughing and [thinking], ‘They better watch out.’ When Pava sets her mind to things, it is going to happen.”
“Pava was a force,” Dzirasa told us, adding, “I tell people all the time that Pava was stubborn in all of the amazing founder and entrepreneur ways. The fact that her company is here is a testament of her greatness.”
“Most people are not running a multimillion-dollar company and figuring out how to be a grown-up and CEO at the same time,” Dzirasa added. “There’s challenges and ups and downs in the startup world, period. But while you’re figuring out who you are, it’s a lot.
“She did it with a smile. I’ve never been around Pava and not gotten a hug and not felt better after our interaction.”
Dzirasa said LaPere would send him random encouraging emails, and was someone who spoke with confidence but never tore others down. In one recent email—with the subject line “50/50”—LaPere told Dzirasa, “A while ago, I was on the Fearless website for inspiration, and we saw the 50/50 goal.” She was referring to Fearless aiming for a workforce that was half made up of women and half people of color.
LaPere wrote that she realized her company had just hit this same target. “That’s how the ecosystem shifts,” she said. “One company inspiring the next. Thanks for leading the way.”
“She’s one of my mentees but she’s telling me good job keeping going, being this cheerleader,” Dzirasa said. “This gives you a little sense of her spirit.”
He was in disbelief when he learned she was gone.
“The whole thing was so sad and pointless,” Dzirasa told us. “What hurts the most is… she was just getting started and already accomplished so much.”
Cindy Wright of Animal Allies Rescue Foundation—where LaPere fostered cats—said she and her volunteers are horrified by what happened to the tech rising star.
“She championed everything that would make the city a better place and this guy comes along, who was let out on a 30-year sentence,” Wright said of LaPere’s alleged killer. “It boggles my mind.”
Wright said LaPere fostered four cats for Animal Allies, including during COVID. One of LaPere’s rescue cats, a black stray named Bean, became a “foster fail.”
“She was warm, compassionate, and loving. She just wanted to make the city a better place and what better way than to help with the animals that were abandoned on the streets of Baltimore City? She made such an impression on our folks.”
“She made an impression on everyone.”
In a 2019 TEDx talk, LaPere said she originally wanted to become a surgeon, a dream that brought her to Johns Hopkins University. “I had my life entirely mapped out, a blueprint for how I was going to make a change in the world,” LaPere said on stage. But after watching news coverage of bombings in Syria, she said she was forced to “reckon with the fact that despite that we all inhabit the same world, we live in entirely different ones.”
After some soul searching, the Tucson, Arizona native decided that if she wanted to make change on a large scale, she should go into business. She opted for a computer science degree and befriended a small group of student entrepreneurs. They called their group chat “The Crazy Ones,” after a poem that was part of an Apple ad campaign.
There was no incubator, maker space, or entrepreneur club at the university, so she and fellow students took it upon themselves to build one called TCO Labs.
“I realized that crawling up the corporate ladder at some big company or selling my soul to the highest bidder on Wall Street was not actually going to make a difference,” LaPere said. “You see, big business has its hands so tied by profit and politics that it can be nearly impossible to make meaningful change from within those systems.
“That’s when it hit me. If we wanted to make change in the world, we needed to make more entrepreneurs.”
LaPere was open about her struggles to juggle straight As, a social life, and her business and spoke of enduring panic attacks and sleep deprivation to pursue her goals. Two photos flashed on a screen during LaPere’s presentation, one showing her in a medical bouffant and mask and another wearing a TCO Labs shirt. “Instead of leaving Hopkins with a medical school acceptance letter, I’m leaving it with three ventures,” she said.
“So don’t worry right now if you don’t have a plan, and don’t worry if you suddenly find that your well-crafted life plan collapses in front of you,” LaPere concluded before receiving applause.
“Survey all of the new opportunities that you have. Slowly connect the dots, and you’ll find your own way towards making a change.”
