Announcing the women of Rev Boston’s 4th year

By Sarah A. Downey, Principal at Accomplice and Founder of Rev Boston; originally published on BostInno

Since 2015, Rev Boston has brought recognition and resources to top female talent in Boston. We built Rev after many of us in the tech world noticed we were always asking the same question:

Why are there so few women _________

on boards?

in VC?

angel investing?

executives?

on panels?

advisors?

household names in the tech community?

We thought that curating and bringing together a small group of high-performing women and removing any mystery, doubt, or opaqueness around these topics was the way to start. And we didn’t want to merely give clarity around concepts that are often black boxes, but also actionable advice to get more involved in them, should the attendees want to.

Since then, Rev has recognized ~20 of the top women in Boston tech at the VP or Director level of their careers each year. They are operators and executives who are essential to their companies, yet most of whom don’t get the recognition that we think they deserve (or that their male coworkers might).

This small group spends a day and a half at a retreat where we gather some of the top experts in their fields to speak openly and teach interactively on the topics that drove us to create Rev in the first place: things like board participation, angel investing, problem-solving, avoiding burnout, and understanding venture capital.

The 60 women in Rev’s first three cohorts were already incredible talents when they went through our program, but the leaps they’ve made since then are significant. 74% have gotten a promotion, 30% have joined a board, 20% have made an angel investment, and 10% have founded their own company or became a CEO. They have invested in each other’s companies, been official and unofficial advisers to each other, referred big enterprise companies to each other that ended up becoming sales, hired one another, and used each other to vet job opportunities and candidates.

We’re excited to welcome the women of Rev 4 into the network:

Alison Aldrich, VP of Partnerships at Privy

Susan An, Senior Director of Corporate Sales at Carbon Black

Veronica Armstrong, Head of Marketing at Mayflower Venues

Elizabeth (Liz) Borowsky, VP Platform Engineering at Akamai Technologies

Sara DeBrule, International Marketing Recruitment Team Lead at Hubspot

Kristen Fortino Gill, Senior Director, Product Management at Salsify

Karla Goodreau, Data Architect at Devoted Health

Jess Jacobs, Director of Marketing at Wayfair

Justine Jordan, VP Marketing at Litmus

Matisha Ladiwala, General Manager and VP of Product at InsightSquared

Ashish Larivee, Chief Product Officer at Onapsis

Netia McCray, CEO/Founder at Mbadika

Cory Munchbach, SVP Strategy at BlueConic

Ellen Nussbaum, Senior VP of Services at Veracode

Isabella Patton, Director of Product Management at Hopper

Caroline Sherman, SVP at Quantopian

Mikell Taylor, Senior Director of Program Management at Veo Robotics

Rebekah Valberg, VP of Brand Sales at Soofa

Kristen Yerardi, SVP of Customer Success at Wordstream

Rev is a private event taking place this Friday and Saturday, 11/2 and 11/3. Special thanks to the experts who share their time and enthusiasm around their crafts with the group, in order of the agenda: Amy Robinson, Chief People Officer, Carbon Black; Frances Frei, Former SVP, Leadership & Strategy, Uber and Professor, Technology & Operations Management, Harvard Business School; Jeff Fagnan, Founder and General Partner, Accomplice; Maria Cirino, Founding Managing Partner, .406 Ventures; Yvonne Hao, COO and CFO, Pillpack; Don Epperson, Principal, DigitalTrek; TJ Mahony, Partner, Accomplice; early-stage founders Maddy Karolian, Chris Tolles, Adam Vartikar, and Amir Bousany; and Miro Kazakoff, Senior Communications Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management.

One former Revver said we’re building a coven. I sometimes say it’s an army. Whatever you call it, it’s a whole lot of women in Boston tech that you need to know. See all the former Rev honorees at www.revboston.org/honorees.

You can nominate a woman for next year’s Rev at www.revboston.org/nominate. We look for A+ talent and drive, diversity of skills and backgrounds, the right career level (not yet founders or CEOs except in rare circumstances), and working in greater Boston. Thanks to everyone who made a nomination for this Rev or any in the past. It means a lot.