We hosted a panel on the state of e-commerce in 2020 on Cyber Monday. You can watch the recorded event here.

I’ve been working on the committee planning the celebration of 50 years of coeducation at Phillips Exeter Academy since early in 2019. Many of our original plans and events have been changed since then, but I did have the pleasure of hosting a “Her Voice In” fireside chat with Veronica Juarez, Class of 2000. Our discussion was titled “Her Voice in Leadership” and we covered topics including creating access, DEI, non sibi (meaning “not for oneself,” one of the school’s core values), and meaningful relationships formed at Exeter.

It was a pleasure to interview Veronica who is AVP of Social Enterprise at Lyft and a venture scout for Lightspeed Ventures.

Despite all of the major systemic changes that have taken place in the past few years and months, venture capital investment in female and Black/Latinx-founded companies is still incredibly low. We were pleased to see Ilene Lang, Former CEO of Catalyst and a mentor/friend of the firm, along with Reggie Van Lee, Former EVP at Booz Allen, discussing this important issue in an HBR article this week.

We hosted a female founders panel with Material (a new venture studio based in New York focused on co-founding and building companies alongside outstanding entrepreneurial talent) last week, and our goal was to inspire entrepreneurial risk-taking, especially during times of uncertainty.

Our all-star panel included:

• Jenny Fleiss // Co-Founder, Rent the Runway & Jetblack

• Annabel Liu // Co-Founder and VP of Engineering, Curated

• Shan-Lyn Ma // CEO and Co-Founder, Zola

• Lisa Skeete Tatum // Founder and CEO, Landit

We really enjoyed serving as a panelist at Wharton’s WAFFA event: What Will Work Look Like Post Pandemic?

It was lovely to share the stage with: Madison Kempf, Executive Recruiter at SPMB; Nicky Kamra, Seed Investor at Streamlined Ventures; and Vivian Chen, Founder & CEO of Rise.

1) Make yourself and your product a necessity to your customer
2) Cash is king, so do what you can to keep it on hand
3) Always stay creative in how you approach the market

Last week I had the honor of moderating a panel with three fantastic HR and talent leaders in Denver:

• Josh Ashton - Chief People Officer, Trineo

• Karson Humiston - CEO, Vangst (the top hiring platform for the cannabis industry)

• Alison Meadows - SVP People, Evolve Vacation Rental

I'm having a hard time celebrating some of the newly released statistics on women in leadership. Two examples of what I see as false positives here are:

1) The promotion of women into executive roles without true P&L responsibility

2) The promotion/recruitment of women into partner roles at VC firms without the ability to sit on portfolio company boards or make investment decisions

According to their 2019 study of private company boardrooms, only 7% of board seats were held by women and 60% of the companies did not have a single female board member. The gender gap stems from a lack of female representation in both founders and funders.

NYC has double the amount of VC investments in female-founded companies than Silicon Valley. The diversity of the city's industries, along with the diversity of the population, are both contributing factors.

Both Nike and Under Armour’s CEOs stepped down last week and two new men have taken the helm at these notoriously male dominated companies. According to Bloomberg, both companies have added females to their executives teams in recent years to address systemic inequality issues.

Imagine a world in which there was diversity of opinion in meetings where investment decisions took place. Perhaps someone would ask the question, “When will this company be profitable?” or even “Can we trust their leadership team as they continue to build and grow?”

September carries with it feelings of renewed energy and a fresh start. Over the past few months we have been preparing for some exciting changes that we’re thrilled to share today: we are rebranding as Precita Placements and expanding into several new markets.

"The results from these studies were what we had predicted: When there were two minorities or women in the pool of finalists, the status quo changed, resulting in a woman or minority becoming the favored candidate."

We had an unexpectedly intimate conversation covering leadership, ambition, and success. It was great to connect and converse with the other panelists Sinda Allen, Jackie Bavaro, Shyna Zhang, and Kerri Corley, as well as the audience that came armed with thoughtful questions!

According to Quartz, Zoom Video Communications is among the rarest of 2019's tech unicorns (and not just because they're profitable!) but because they have more women than men on their executive leadership team.