Introducing Pam Kostka, the new CEO of All Raise
It brings us great joy to announce that Pam Kostka is the new CEO of All Raise.
Our mission at All Raise is to accelerate the success of female founders and funders in tech. Since launching a year ago, our small all-volunteer army has hatched many successful programs. We’ve mentored 1000+ female founders through Female Founder Office Hours, recruited 1000+ Founders for Change, created data benchmarks for our industry, launched a VC Champions program for underrepresented investors, posted 200+ VC roles to 1300+ candidates through our VC careers program, and recently started our new blog on Medium.
As proud as we are of our first year of work, we always knew we would need strong full-time leadership to sustain and scale our impact. So nine months ago, we embarked on a CEO search. We knew this would be challenging because we were looking for a “unicorn” (sorry!). Someone with incredible intellect and the world-class operating skill to build a new playbook for a non-profit that’s never been done before. Someone who could effectively harness the energy of our community of founders, VCs, executives, LPs, and partners like TIME’S UP. Someone who identifies with the challenges of being a woman in tech and has been successful despite those challenges. And someone who is a servant leader — who builds respect and loyalty by helping others thrive rather than from a top-down, ego-driven approach.
We cast a wide net and found Pam after a long and careful search. We knew fairly quickly she was the one. Here’s what we found special about Pam:
World-class operational skills. Pam has a 24-year track record of operating excellence. She has worn many hats at VC-backed startups like Bluebox Security, Loop, VirtuOz, Sabrix, and Extensity. Pam has been a CEO, a founder, a marketer, and a product manager. She is a go-to-market expert who thrives at the early stages but also knows how to scale and navigate companies to successful exits (we’re not looking to exit All Raise, but we do hope our vision turns into reality and we become obsolete).
Despite her impressive career, Pam has kept a low profile. Instead of promoting herself, she’s been heads-down, focused on delighting customers, shipping great products, setting and beating plan, and ensuring her team is thriving. Pam epitomizes so much about women in tech. She is so smart. She is full of substance. She works hard. She has delivered great results again and again, but isn’t a well-known name. Hopefully, All Raise will change that.
Ability to plot the course. Right from the get-go, we could tell Pam was a thoughtful listener, an intense learner, and someone who would make us better. She really blew us away at the culmination of our interview process, which was a three-hour working session where Pam presented her vision of All Raise to a subset of our active volunteer group. She synthesized everything she had learned from our recruiting process, documents, and meeting minutes into a crystal clear operating plan, anchored in measurable metrics. It was clear that Pam is strategic, runs a tight ship, and understands the power of data, KPIs, and community. After she gave her powerful presentation and left the room for us to debrief, Aileen started to tear up, and others did too. It was unexpectedly emotional realizing we had found “our person” — someone to whom we could hand the keys to All Raise.
Quiet, yet confident leadership. All Raise is unusual in that it’s staffed by some of the most accomplished (and busy!) women in tech. The right leader needs to collaborate effectively, but also be a strong leader and push back on many strong voices. Pam was upfront about her approach to leadership — candor without malice, direct communication, commit and act decisively, and a bias towards solving problems. In her final presentation, she talked of helping us “get in formation.” (Steffi Wu, our amazing new head of All Raise comms in our debrief said, “Was Pam making a Beyoncé reference? If so, I’m down with that — I’d like her to be our Beyoncé!”) Pam is someone who can command a room but also simultaneously make you feel like you’re the only one in it with her active listening skills. Her many references spoke highly of her interpersonal skills, and one founder even expressed that Pam was the only person he’d ever met who he’d be comfortable handing his company over to. We feel the same and are proud to rally behind Pam as our leader.
Please join us in welcoming Pam as the new leader of All Raise. We hope you will support her and the growing All Raise team to have a positive, lasting impact on our industry. Over the coming months as Pam and our new communications director Steffi Wu get up to speed, you will be seeing more of us. In the meantime, please follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Medium. We are hiring a data strategist and adding other roles soon and would appreciate great candidates.
We’d also like to take a moment to thank folks who supported us in our first year, in particular, our financial backers, Melinda Gates of Pivotal Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, JP Morgan Chase, EY, Anchor Point Foundation, Foundry Group, and others. We’re also grateful to our CEO search team, including the team at Daversa Partners, and All Raisers who did much lifting on the search including Jennifer Carolan (Reach), Julia Collins (Zume), Felicia Curcuru (Binti), Jocelyn Goldfein (Zetta), Nairi Hourdajian (Canaan), Jenny Lefcourt (Freestyle), Sarah Nahm (Lever), Megan Quinn (Spark), and Katie Bukstein. We would not be where we are today or positioned to take our mission to the next level without your partnership.
Looking forward and excited!
Aileen Lee & Jess Lee, on behalf of All Raise
