5 years of Rev Boston (and introducing the new cohort)
By Sarah A. Downey, Principal at Accomplice and Founder of Rev Boston
Rev has brought recognition and resources to top female talent in Boston since 2015. About twenty women per year, mostly all at the Director and/or VP level of their careers, have gone through the program. The Rev collective will be one hundred women strong as of Rev 5, which takes place this Friday and Saturday.
The founders of Rev (Diane Hessan, Jeff Fagnan, and I) had a hunch that curating and bringing together a small group of high-performing women, plus having experts teach interactively about topics that may feel out of reach, could kickstart the group to achieve even more.
Don’t get me wrong: these women are already linchpins of their companies; they don’t need to do more than they already do. But many have told us that things like angel investing, founding a company, or even asking for a career advancement they want and deserve were always intriguing but didn’t seem possible.
The results speak for themselves. Out of the first four cohorts of Rev:
- 86% have been promoted or moved to a new company with a higher position
- 19% have become a founder or CEO
- 15% have joined a board
- 31% have made an angel investment
I’m not claiming credit for these outcomes. These women were forces to reckon with before we ever asked them to be part of Rev. We gave them a network, but they amplified it by staying in touch, referring each other customers, adding each other as advisors, investing in each other, hiring each other, and becoming friends. It’s been the most rewarding part of my career to watch it happen.
I’m proud to announce the new members of Rev’s fifth cohort:
Megan Ahigian, Director of Product Management, Kyruus
Kate Alessi, Director, Insights, Planning, & Commercials, YouTube/Video Solutions, Google
Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP Marketing, HubSpot
Amy Appleyard, SVP, Global Inside Sales, Carbon Black
Lilly Bacher, Global Head of Pricing, ProfitWell
Offiong Bassey, Director of Product Development, CVS Health
Vitri Bhandari, VP People Ops and Strategy, Klaviyo
Andrea Black, Vice President, Marketplace Strategy, Catalant Technologies
Courtney Camps, Director, Enterprise Customer Success, Drift
Gina Cothey, VP Global Marketing and Product Marketing, MOO
Kate Flathers, Director of Product, OM1
Jen McGinn, Director, User Experience, CloudHealth by VMware
Elle Nurmi, Engineering Lead, BookBub
Christina Pawlikowski, Head of Product, Circle
Ella Alkalay Schreiber, VP Data Science, Hopper
Melissa Statires, Head of Client Experience, The Leadership Consortium
Cathy Zhou, Head of Regional Operations, Restaurant Innovation, Uber Eats
Of course Rev wouldn’t be as valuable to its attendees without the experts who selflessly and openly offer their knowledge to the group. Over the past five years, these topics have included board participation, angel investing, daily problem-solving, leadership strategy, modeling personality, avoiding burnout, media training, and understanding venture capital.
I want to thank every expert who’s given their time to supporting women in Boston tech through Rev: Nilanjana Bhowmik, Heather Campion, David Chang, Beth Clymer, Maria Cirino, Cheryl Cronin, Geri Denterlein, Don Epperson, Jeff Fagnan, Carol Fulp, Diane Hessan, Sonciary Honnoll, Frances Frei, Dayna Grayson, Yvonne Hao, Sharon Kan, Steve Kane, Miro Kazakoff, Janet Kraus, Jennifer Lum, TJ Mahony, Ryan Moore, Isabella Patton, Mia Patton, Diana Pisciotta, Dan Primack, Katie Rae, Amy Robinson, and Parul Singh. Also thank you to Accomplice for funding Rev entirely each year, to Liv Benger for helping execute the event, and to Zoe Anetakis for all the design and branding behind Rev.
**Names in bold above are part of Rev 5 this year
Thank you and congratulations to all one hundred members of Rev, especially those in cohort one who took a chance by trusting us and giving one and a half days of their busy lives to do something new and unfounded.
If you’re in Boston and you want a female board member, hire, advisor, or more, now you know where to look. Check out all the Rev honorees at RevBoston.org/honorees.
