Rev Boston’s 20 women in tech you need to know
By Sarah A. Downey, Principal at Accomplice
We’re launching a new kind of women’s event this week called Rev Boston. Rev finds and supports the top 20 female VPs and directors in Boston. Consider yourself put on notice that these women will create something powerful very soon. Most of them aren’t household names the same way that men at the same career levels are, and that needs to change.
Rev connects these 20 women to each other at an intimate retreat and brings them resources and expert speakers tailored to them. These people are elite as individuals, so imagine the network effect of them combining forces.
You see a lot of “leadership development” for women these days, but these women are already leaders and successes. The obstacle isn’t a lack of developmental opportunities (there are some great programs in the community and in their companies), but rather access and visibility. Our goal with Rev is to provide both.
Betting on future trends is kind of our job as Accomplices, and these 20 people are our bet on who’s going to take over the Boston tech world. Thank you to everyone in the community who gave us the names of women who impress you. We started with over a hundred names to reach these 20.
They come from a mix of large and small companies, most of which aren’t in our portfolio. They have a range of different skills and titles, both technical and not. What the 20 Rev Boston honorees have in common is that they’re women on the rise in Boston and set to be the next generation of innovation-driving CEOs, founders, and board members.
We’re proud to announce our 20 Rev honorees. You should know these names and watch out for them:
Ellen Brezniak, SVP, Customer Operations, Constant Contact
Katie Burke, Vice President, Culture and Experience, Hubspot
Janet Comenos, SVP of Sales, Promoboxx
Siobhan Dullea, Global Chief Client Officer, C Space
Nancy Go, VP of Brand Marketing, Wayfair
Di Hall, Chief Strategy Execution Officer, Bit9
Megan Hall, VP, Practice Operations, Iora Health
Sarah Hodkinson, Senior Director, Marketing Services, PayPal
Amy Jerusalmi, SVP, Customer Success and Business Operations, SessionM
Meghan Verena Joyce, General Manager, East Coast, Uber
Manjula Kandasamy, Director of Platform Solutions, North America, DataXu
Jillian Kando, CTO, Cut and Fold
Samskriti King, Chief Strategy Officer, Veracode
Shilpa Lawande, VP/GM, HP Big Data Platform, Hewlett Packard
Leslie Lewis, Director, Technical PMO, Document Cloud, Adobe
Courtney Maunsell, VP of Financial Planning, Acquia
Ellie Mirman, VP of Marketing, Toast
Jenn Nye, VP, ThinkTank Collaboration Software
Lucy Orloski, VP of Marketing, Barkly
Emmanuelle Skala, VP of Sales, Influitive
Rev honorees get an exclusive one and a half-day event from Friday, October 16 to 17 at Boston’s Battery Wharf Hotel. We’re bringing in a host of VIP guests and speakers to get to know the honorees, including local investors, journalists, professors, CEOs, and founders. Diane Hessan, CEO of Startup Institute and Chairman of C Space, is Rev’s event facilitator.
The programming, which is only open to the 20 Rev honorees, includes executive personality assessments, strategic case study analysis, Q&A with VCs, interactive media training, a panel on board and executive team participation, and facilitated problem-solving. We asked the honorees what would interest and help them and crafted the sessions around their responses.
The attendees start with a deep dive into strategy through a guided case study led by Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei. Saying Professor Frei is a legend is an understatement. She’s a bestselling author, award-winning teacher, and highly cited researcher, and is widely regarded as one of the top business strategy exerts in the world. Professor Frei regularly speaks to groups of thousands, but for Rev Boston she’s sharing her expertise with a small group of 20.
Rev’s full list of expert speakers is David Chang, serial entrepreneur and angel investor; Cheryl Cronin; partner at Cronin & Leonard; Geri Denterlein, President of Denterlein; Jeff Fagnan, founding partner at Accomplice; Frances Frei; Harvard Business School UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Planning and Recruiting; Dayna Grayson, partner at NEA; Miro Kazakoff, communications lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and cofounder of Testive; Janet Kraus, CEO of Peach; Jennifer Lum; co-founder of Adelphic and angel investor; Diana Pisciotta, Executive Vice President of Denterlein; and Dan Primack, Senior Editor at Fortune Magazine.
We brought in top-tier speakers not only to introduce business leaders and press to the Rev honorees’ achievements, but to foster real, meaningful conversations among a cohort of talented women at similar places in their careers. We hope they’ll form a bond and rely on each other’s expertise: maybe they’ll serve on each other’s boards, advise each other, hire each other, or found companies together.
But this community can’t only be women helping women: the entire Boston tech ecosystem has to pitch in to give women the accolades and opportunities that they deserve. Boston is full of talented women like these 20. Let’s not be shy about bragging about them. If you know a Rev-caliber person, invite her to speak at your event. Contact her as a source for your article. Invest in her company. Promote her. Mentor her. Invest in her company. Tell people about her.
This first Rev session is a pilot that we’ll refine based on our honorees’ feedback. It’ll be a yearly thing if it goes well. Start thinking now about the women you know who deserve this opportunity; we’ll have a public submission process where you can nominate them. Or start now by commenting their names below.
Sarah A. Downey is a Principal at Accomplice (FKA Atlas Venture). Accomplice invests in tech entrepreneurs and creates companies at the earliest stages. Our partners are Jeff Fagnan, Chris Lynch, and Ryan Moore. Located in Boston.
