FYB COI 29 | Ellevate Network Podcast

 

One great way of growing your business is by growing your community. This is one of the many things that Kristy Wallace has done as the CEO of Ellevate Network. Putting women at the forefront of what she does, Kristy is responsible for executing their mission of changing the culture of business from the inside out by providing professional women with the supportive community to lean on and learn from. In this episode, Kristy shares where podcasting fits into that model of community building. With her own Ellevate Podcast: Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business, she gives voice to the different stories people have as they rise through the ranks of Corporate America. She shares some of those inspiring stories with us while showcasing the power of podcasts to build deep relationships, foster continuous learning, and raise awareness on important topics.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Ellevate Women: Growing A Community Through Podcasting With Kristy Wallace

I am talking with Kristy Wallace of Ellevate Network from the Ellevate Podcast: Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business. It’s a great show. I’ve messaged out a couple of episodes that I was inspired by as I was doing my research for this and other people have made lots of comments on it. They bring valuable and interesting conversations with women at different parts of different organizations and at different levels in the professional process, but all women in business. That’s where I find the link for me. Not every topic is all about business. Some of it trips over into the personal or into struggles. I love that it comes back to, how does this relate to your business? How does this grow your business? How does this create a stumbling block for your business? At the end of the day, raising that and helping us integrate better, our professional and our personal lives, it’s so valuable.

Kristy is a tremendous podcaster. She’s got great skills at asking questions. You’re going to love the show. I definitely want you to check it out. I also want to make sure that you understand more about her background because it’s fascinating. Ellevate Network is a community of professional women committing to helping each other succeed. They use the power of community to help take the next step in your career where you can meet a mentor, get sponsors, inspiration from other women and make connections that last. They also work with companies committed to diversity and inclusion providing them a framework for attracting top talent, retaining high performers and customizing programming to help them access career resources and top-notch events so that they can continue to get more.

Kristy Wallace is the CEO of Ellevate Network and is responsible for executing their mission of changing the culture of business from the inside out by providing professional women with the supportive community to lean on and learn from. She directs the staff and is responsible for the business growth and strategy and works closely with the chapter leaders, business partners and champions to further their impact. She’s the host of the podcast, Ellevate Podcast: Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business and is a regular speaker and thought leader on leadership, diversity, social entrepreneurship, networking and entrepreneurialism.

Kristy was recognized as a woman of influence by the New York Business Journal. She is a member of the UN Women Global Innovation Coalition for Change. She’s an Angel investor with Pipeline Angels and advisor for the 92Y Women In Power Fellowship for the Rising Female Leaders. She’s on the advisory council for Villanova University Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Institute. She’s co-chair of the Leadership Advisory Board for the Girl Scouts of The Greater New York area and a board member at the Workforce Professionals Training Institute. Prior to joining Ellevate, she was a team member at Zeel where she oversaw operations, business modeling and brand development partnerships. She served as VP of North America Ad Sales and GM of International Operations at Vault. Kristy has had great experience herself and she has been running this organization since 2013 and has taken it to a new level. Let’s hear from Kristy.

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Kristy, thanks so much for being on the show. I’m excited to talk to you because I absolutely love your podcast.

Thank you. I love your work too. It’s great to meet someone else who’s so passionate about storytelling and creating a narrative around that. It’s an honor to chat with you, Tracy. I’m happy to be here.

Thank you. We don’t often get to talk about it in quite this way. I’m fascinated about your community growth and how the podcast fits into that model of how you wanted to grow your community. Many times, we’re talking to people who are building life coach businesses or financial management businesses. They’re single businesses and they don’t have quite the community that you have. How big is your community right now?

Our community is over 150,000 women and allies in the workplace. Our growth is interesting because we have this whole community of women at work. They learn from each other, network and support one another. There are so much support, collaboration and relationship building that happens. We’re constantly hearing that they love to hear from each other’s stories. When you think about your own career and your own path forward, hearing from someone else who did it before or who overcame difficulty, who pivoted, who took a career break and came back, whatever that is, there’s so much power in that story. We started doing fireside chats and spotlights and there’s something powerful about podcasts, about hearing in someone’s own words and voice what they’re life has been like. We started the podcast and we’re fortunate enough because we already have a distribution network through the Ellevate Network community, our social channels, our newsletter to be able to tap into that and to see growth as the podcast happened pretty quickly.

The power of podcasting is in gaining inspiration from other places. Click To Tweet

I’m very sure you have a bigger list than most people do and an active one at that. It makes for a faster launch, but it’s the engagement in the community later. What are some of the feedback that you got early on from your community that made you say, “We’re on the right track?”

I love it when I’m at an event and I might be speaking in a conversation. All of a sudden, I hear someone behind me go, “Is that Kristy?” They say, “I listen to you on the podcast all the time and I heard your voice in the background and I’m excited you’re here.” That’s always funny, sweet and endearing. I love meeting people that way.

You’re known for your voice and not just your face. I love that.

Growing up, I had a speech impediment. I couldn’t say the R sound. I’ve always been self-conscious about my voice. It’s one of those things you always think you sound weird when you hear your own voice. It’s exciting when people say that, but in terms of the stories that resonated, it’s across the board. Part of what I’m proud of with the Ellevate community and our community of guests on the podcast is this sheer diversity. You have someone who is in the military, someone who is a cancer survivor, someone who grew up in Harlem with her grandmother who was her inspiration.

There are people who started their own businesses, people who have risen through the ranks of Corporate America. The power of that is that we each have our own story to tell and they’re all different and unique. We don’t stop and recognize our own grit, our own resilience, our own uniqueness of the trajectory we’ve taken. I am proud and honored to give voice to those different stories and oftentimes help our guests see the power in their own story that maybe they hadn’t recognized in the past.

That is powerful. Thinking about the story itself is one thing, but the lessons they’ve learned from it, the lessons they take away or the little pieces that they take that relate to them and what they do with that, the impact you’re having is tremendous. It ripples beyond your organization.

It’s exciting. For some of our guests, I had Morra Aarons-Mele on the podcast and she’s an introvert and wrote the book Hiding in the Bathroom. She’d been a member for a long time and we talked about that being an introvert and what that had meant to her. We also oftentimes have my children on the podcast. We love to weave them in when we can. We had Jas Boothe who was in the military and when she transitioned out was homeless. She’s a single mom who found out she had cancer and she fought that. She was able to get a job, take care of her health and to beat cancer. She started her own nonprofit to support other women and veterans. They are two totally different stories, but they’re stories of powerful women who are forging their own path.

How long had the Ellevate Network been in place before your podcast started?

FYB COI 29 | Ellevate Network Podcast

Ellevate Network Podcast: Businesses are understanding their societal impact while also raising money, driving innovation, being competitive, and doing all of these exciting things.

 

Ellevate has been around for many years. It’s been around for quite some time. This woman, Janet Hanson was working at Goldman Sachs at 85 Broad Street in Manhattan down on Wall Street and realized that there’s such a need for a community where a woman would leave the bank. You lose track of her. She was like, “There are so few of us. We need to band together. We need to support each other.”

It’s across industries, not just the one you’re in.

Janet started the Ellevate Network. We expanded across the industry, across function, across geography, women at all career stages. In 2013, a woman by the name of Sallie Krawcheck brought up the network and brought me in to run its day-to-day. I’m the CEO of Ellevate Network. We are formerly 85 Broads. We rebranded after I came in and it’s an honor. My background is more in a technology startup. The network is based on this tried and true formula of building relationships to help get ahead in life and business, provide that support. When you can marry the two, how do we take networking and make it more robust and more impactful in person, but also in this digital age? We’re no longer centered around these small main streets of the city, the local businesses and industry. Our influence has grown. Being able to tap into that community and build those deep relationships both in-person and online can be powerful, particularly power for women and underrepresented populations who want to see get ahead and create a more just and equal world and workplace.

You’re bringing to mind something that I hear again and again from those that are unsure about starting a podcast or whether or not they should bring it into their corporation or their community, their nonprofit, whatever that might be. As the CEO, as the person running all of this, they think that the podcast in itself becomes an added job. Have you found that in podcasting, you’re networking? What has podcasting become for you that makes it easy to do?

Podcasting is pretty spectacular for me. Some of the challenges that can come with a podcast, we’ve been able to overcome. We have a ready supply of amazing guests. We’ve been fortunate to not have to struggle with that. We have a good marketing engine through our social channels and our community and our newsletter. That’s been great. I enjoy it so much. Our format is a conversation, an interview. It’s very similar to this. We’re not doing deep research. We’re listening to the stories and we’re responding to them. For me and for this format, why I love that is because I’m having a real one-on-one conversation.

I’m able to drill deep into the questions and the experiences that are meaningful and unique. Every single conversation leaves something new and unique to me. I’m better and I’m stronger because of it. If you hear me speaking at events, if you meet me, chances are I’m going to pull out some facts or some insight or some story that I heard through the podcast into our conversation because you realize the depth and breadth of experiences and insights that you receive from listening to people and listening with the intent to listen and not just the intent to respond. I love it.

Your experience and my experience sound very similar. I feel like you and I have not run across each other at an event yet, but now I have this great opportunity to learn what you’re working on and learn what you’re doing. The next time I meet the perfect woman for your organization, I can recommend it. That puts me in service to my larger community and it allows me to fit this into my daily job.

Especially in the work that we do, you always in the back of your mind have the Rolodex of who do I connect you to or who should you know? I’m constantly doing that when I meet our guests, when I meet others. I say, “You should talk to her. You should even listen to this podcast because you’ll learn so much.” It’s a great way to make those connections and to feel like I’m building relationships. I tend to be a little bit more introverted. I don’t love going into a huge room and networking. I will absolutely do work to see the value. It’s being able to sit down with someone and have that meaningful conversation.

The rising tide lifts all boats. Click To Tweet

I’ll say one other quick thing that’s great about it, which in business oftentimes there are the conversations you have with others. I’m trying to think how to say this without making it sound manipulative, but there’s always some agenda. You’re having a meeting because someone wants something from you or they need something or you’re trying to maybe create a strategy for something. When you have the podcast and you’re there to listen from someone, to have an organic normal conversation, that’s pretty special. You don’t get to do that much in business. I’m beyond honor that I get to do it.

I happened to be prepping myself because that’s what I do. I like to have as much research as I can. I was listening to your show and one of the shows that I messaged out both on LinkedIn and Facebook was about your interview with Kiersten Barnet, the global head of Gender Equality Index at Bloomberg. I was fascinated by it and the part that people responded to, which I found fascinating. It wasn’t the facts of what I learned because I learned something new as I was listening to that show. I message that and a part of it, but they’re responding to the fact that I said that this is my favorite part of my job, of what I do every day. I get to learn something new from someone that I didn’t know before. That’s my favorite part of getting to research and interview new great guests. That’s what I got the most responses from. I thought that was so interesting. I was like, “How do we build a marketing process, say a network, in a way that we can be continuously learning?” That’s what drives me. It sounds like it drives you as well.

It does. That’s the power of podcasting. I love articles and newsletters that are outside of my sphere of normal life and work. It’s like learning. It’s inspiring to gain inspiration from other places. With podcasts you can often go deep on a very specific topic and feel like you’re learning so much in that 20 or 30 minutes or however long it is. That’s what makes podcast exciting. It’s that thirst for knowledge and creativity.

As I was mentioning Kiersten Barnet here and what you’re doing with gender equality and all of that, you have an influence. The company as a whole, Ellevate Network, is having an influence on talking about diversity, attracting talent, gender in the workplace. You’re having an influence on that in the greater discussion. How has that happened for you?

I’m trying to think of the best way because there’s been the successes and failures. Meaning we as a business do a series of events. We do about 1,000 events a year. One of our big capstone events is our Mobilize Women Summit. It’s a daylong event in New York City focused on mobilizing empowered women to create change in the world. We have our podcast. We do webinars. We have a whole host of other data, tools and resources. Whenever we do something new, like when we started the podcast, it ends up feeling like an add on. It’s hard to figure out how to fully integrate everything across all the business lines so that it’s a collective rising up of the voice and the impact of that.

With Kiersten, the reason I’m telling this story is she was a speaker at our Mobilize Women Summit. She was on a panel talking about the ways that businesses create change, the way they are advocates for gender equality. She came in specifically for the podcast to go deeper on that story and her own personal story. We talked about using our platform to create change. Part of it is how we’re looking at Kiersten and what she’s doing, looking at many of these thought leaders, professional women and individuals who care about issues impacting women.

How are we sharing their voice and story in many different ways across multiple platforms? The power of communication and power of community is that we hear differently, we communicate differently, we like to get information differently. How do you keep repeating it and keep showcasing it in different ways across different platforms for the greatest impact? You’ll see if you listen to the podcast, we have a whole host of different episodes that are focused on the speakers from our Mobilize Women Summit and some of their powerful stories and insights.

I’d love that you talked about that, integrating it into your systems and how things work. There are many benefits to using your podcast to promote the speakers and get people to say, “I want to show up at that event,” especially for many people, they run these events that have multiple tracks at the same time. You have no idea which one you should attend, but if you heard them on the podcast, you’re not going to miss them. You’re going to make sure you’re there in time for that keynote. That’s a powerful marketing tool to start to figure out the way to integrate that. It sounds like you as an organization has managed to do that.

FYB COI 29 | Ellevate Network Podcast

Ellevate Network Podcast: The power of communication and community is that we hear differently, we communicate differently, and we like to get information differently.

 

Yes, we have. It takes time. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s easy because one piece of advice is to keep doing an assessment of your business, yourself, your podcasts and course-correct. How is this working for us? Why are we doing it? We think we’re achieving that, how can we do it better? In businesses, you have limited resources and you’re moving fast. It keeps going forward. If you’re not shoring up that foundation and ensuring that the foundation is strong and continuing to grow, you might lose sight of that. Stay true. Why you’re doing what you’re doing and keep checking in with yourself and your podcast to make sure it’s meeting those objectives.

There are a lot of women’s organizations that are popping up left and right. There are women in tech and there are all sorts of niches and areas. How has the podcast helped you express the uniqueness that is the Ellevate Network?

We have had many founders from other women’s networks and companies on our podcast. It’s fascinating to me. When I started at Ellevate a few years ago now, everyone assumed we were a nonprofit. We are for-profit. We’re a B-corp. B-corps are companies that have certification that they are driving the business for multiple stakeholders. They’re driving it to be good for the environment, to be good for underrepresented populations, local communities. Some B-corps you might know would be Warby Parker, TOMS Shoes, Ben & Jerry’s, Athleta. There’s a number of companies that have made this commitment to put people over profits and to think about their business and its impact. When we started, I started here a few years ago, there wasn’t a lot of competition.

Everyone assumed focusing on equality and specifically gender. It was nice to do for nonprofits. Don’t get me wrong, nonprofits are driving huge change. What we’ve seen in the past few years is businesses are understanding the societal impact you can have while also raising money, driving innovation, being competitive and doing all of these exciting business things. There’s been a number of companies that have come onto the scene, some focused on specific niche communities, some focused on different solutions if that’s helping women get on boards or helping women raise money or providing a co-working space.

With us at Ellevate, we’re that hub that connects to all of that because we have the largest community. It’s across-industry, across function, women at all career stages with a myriad of different goals. We’re all supporting each other. What we do is if you want to run for office, we love She Should Run. Erin, the Founder or CEO of She Should Run has been on our podcast. If you want a co-working space in New York City, we love Luminary. Cate, the founder of Luminary has been on our podcast. I believe in the rising tide lifts all boats and how we can best support our community and making sure that they have the resources they need all the time. That’s the inspiration in the podcast, but it’s also the connection to the people and the companies and the resources that can help them get ahead.

That’s our mission here. We’re not a B-corp, but it is our mission here as well to be very podcaster-centric and to grow a community that empowers the voices that are our brands underneath all of what we do. Our job is to power those. I love how you’ve managed to find a place in which to amplify that. Every time I do these interviews, we do our five tips. They’re super simple, some of them may not apply completely to you because you’ve got a team in an organization, but maybe you have some insight into what you’ve shifted to. As you pointed, you’ve pivoted a bit. We already talked about some of the best ways to book great guests for you. It seems that they are a part of your speaker tracks, your organization and those that you’re in touch with partners as well.

The only other thing I would say about that, particularly for our format is to seek out the people that aren’t raising their hands. We get a lot of inbound requests and people who want to be on the podcast and that’s fantastic. There tends to be some lack of diversity in that. We are very deliberate and intentional about making sure that our guests and voices and stories for amplifying are representative of a diverse array of individuals. If you want to touch on the topic, if you hear someone’s story and they’re not raising their hand to get on the podcast, bring them in. Invite them, encourage them, give them that support to get out there because those stories are the ones you’ll find are the most meaningful.

As you were saying that right then and there, I was thinking of a comment that we’re a women-owned and operated company. The operated by part is not myself, it’s also my daughter. My 25-year-old daughter is a significant part of our organization and builds all of our systems and our entire 55-person team. She says to me so often, “Mom, the guests are not young enough. There’s not enough age diversity in guests.” Probably they aren’t raising their hands. If you do want to have that diversity, you better seek that out.

Seek out the people that aren't raising their hands because it is often their stories that you'll find most meaningful. Click To Tweet

We had a special episode around a campaign that Ellevate is doing called Raise Our Voice. It’s amplifying the untold stories of women in the workplace. This is part of how you connect the podcasts to other parts of your business with the special campaign. We are going to be doing events in 30 different markets where women nominate themselves or someone else to get up on stage and to share their stories. We’re excited about that. When I was taping the podcast episode for that, I pulled in Raquel on my team who has been a driving force behind this campaign. She’s younger, less experienced. She’s like, “No, I don’t want to be on the podcast.” I said, “Raquel, this is your thing. You should be out here talking about it. I want you on the podcast.” She shared a personal story of hers and it was meaningful. It reminded me how we have to keep inviting people in and encouraging them to share it. Definitely, some confidence comes with experience and encouraging others is powerful.

It’s highlighting what they’re great at. Sometimes we are not so good at recognizing that we’ve had this contribution. Having someone else point that out is wonderful so thank you for that. What are some of the ways that you find to increase listeners and expand your community?

I love watching your guests as always. It’s huge regardless of how big their social footprint and following is. People always want to share when they’ve been on a podcast or in the news or whatever it is,but make it easy for them. If you send someone an episode and you’re like, “Here, you share it.” Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It takes work. Sometimes the message is weird. We try to make it easy. Here’s the image, here’s the tag, here’s the blurb that you can edit. That’s a great way of getting it out there in an authentic way. I would do a lot of podcast swaps. Other podcast hosts can be your best friends. Having each other as guests on the podcast is a great way to cross-market across audiences and to share some of what makes your podcasts unique and different.

Afterwards, you can chat and learn something about how they’re being successful. I get new tips all the time from all of you. That’s why I love what I’m doing here. Are you producing internally? How do you produce it in a professional way? Maybe if that’s not your area, what is the characteristic of a professional production?

Ours is surprisingly simple. A lot of people think it’s going to be more complicated. I do have a conference room in the office. You can’t see me as soundproof except for when loud walkers walked by outside. We have the equipment and we purchased the sound, mixing board, microphones and the headsets. We have our producer, Katharine Heller, who’s great. She’s got two of her own podcast called Tell The Bartender and The Struggle Bus. She’ll come in and help with the taping and post-production editing. That’s pretty straight forward.

How do you encourage engagement between the community and your guests and you?

It’s always tricky because we have encouraged on the podcast, “Please tweet at us or share your best tidbit. Do you have any questions? Email us.” It was always an ask where we want to hear from the community. That can sometimes be hard depending on how someone’s listening to the podcast. They then go to log into a social platform and send you a message or send you an email. Sometimes it happens. That’s something. I would love to hear your other guests here because I love engagements and we struggled. The one thing that does work is when we do some live events and in-person activation. You tend to get a lot of the fans will come in for some live tapings and get excited about asking questions. I’m always surprised by how much they get out of the different conversations.

They can be listening there live and starting to tweet away. I know that does work better. We’re always testing out new things, new apps and new ideas here. There have been some that we’ve been listening to platforms that do work better because you can make comments within them. It’s not frictionless and that’s what everyone’s striving for. We’ll see someone’s going to solve the problem coming up. We’ll see what happens there.

FYB COI 29 | Ellevate Network Podcast

Ellevate Network Podcast: Podcasting is a great way to stay in touch with and stay top of mind with your customer base because you’re giving them value and showcasing your insights or expertise.

 

That’s an opportunity. You should come on the podcast and we can talk about it.

Some of the best ways you’ve found, do you monetize the show or do you look at it as increased membership? Do you have a measurement that you use for the success of the show?

We will sometimes have ads or sponsored content on the podcast. We see the value of it as threefold. Oftentimes, it’s raising awareness about what we do at Ellevate more broadly and drive membership in our community. It’s a great engagement for those that are already an Ellevate member in the community, to see and hear their peers or for them to be on the podcast. To me, it’s a broader societal impact. We’re curating the stories and the voices that we think matter, that oftentimes isn’t given the platform to be heard when you look across the podcast stories. It always starts with share something about your career, how did you get to where you are? We always love to hear those stories. We end with many different themes and insights. That is part of a bigger conversation that we can have and the impact we can have around the power of women’s voices and the power of creating change.

That is some of the power, but the second one you mentioned though that retention and that engagement for providing continual value for your membership is often overlooked by many community groups and even coaches who have past clients and other things. They overlook the value of that. I’m glad that that’s one of your metrics.

If you think about whatever your business model is, if you want to stay in touch with and stay top of mind with your customer base or your potential customer base. It’s hard to do that in a very authentic way, which you’re giving them value at the same time showcasing your insights or expertise. The podcast is a great way to do that.

We’re starting to see a shift in influence and authority. We’re seeing a lot of authority growth happening through podcasting. What has your position as a podcast host and CEO of Ellevate Network, a person of high authority, helped you elevate that for yourself into making sure that you’re seen as a woman CEO in an organization worldwide? Has it gotten you speaking engagements and other things that you think have helped both your organization and you in your own personal growth?

It has. I’ve been on others’ podcasts quite a bit, which is great. I love being on podcasts. It’s fun to talk and have these conversations. I’m a regular speaker in person at events or webinars. A lot of that comes through the podcast. It’s coming through the guests on the podcast who we build a relationship and they bring me into another opportunity that comes from our listeners who might go to either company and say, “This woman who has a podcast, she’s interesting. Can we bring her in to do a presentation at our company?” It comes from other events to hear some of my thoughts, my voice and the impact that Ellevate is having and wanting to engage with us on that level. It’s a powerful means with which to share your voice. I try hard to blog or to post on social and there are many ways to get your brand and your message out there. To me, podcasting feels the most authentic because it’s when I’m the most real. It’s when I’m in my element and where I can share my opinions, my views, and my thoughts in a way that is very genuine to me. I love podcasting. It’s certainly opened up doors that I never imagined possible.

Kristy, I’m glad you’re podcasting. I enjoy your show. I’m glad you came here to talk about how important it is to elevate your voice and others.

Tracy, thanks so much for having me. Thank you for the great work that you’re doing. The more we’re building the support for fellow podcasters and listeners alike in showing the power of this medium, the greater the world will be. I appreciate this.

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Wasn’t that fascinating? Kristy has a whole different perspective on how do you use a podcast for an organization, for a membership community. It’s different from many of the other Centers of Influence podcasts we’ve been going over. I love the new perspective and taking this perspective on how you bring value to your community, how you raise the value, how you raise the influence for an entire community, the influence and impact. Be sure to tune in and check out the Ellevate Podcast: Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business and be sure to check us out next time. You can find us on FeedYourBrand.co and everywhere on social media at Feed Your Brand. We’ll have another Center of Influence in a different area. I look forward to bringing you that. Thanks again everyone.

Important Links:

About Kristy Wallace

FYB COI 29 | Ellevate Network PodcastEllevate Network is a community of professional women committed to helping each other succeed. We use the power of community to help you take the next step in your career. This is where you can meet a mentor or sponsor, get inspiration from other women, and make connections that last.

We also work with companies committed to diversity and inclusion, providing them a framework to become a leader in diversity, attract top talent, and retain high performers through our customized programming, access to career resources, and top notch events.

Kristy Wallace is the CEO of Ellevate Network, and is responsible for executing Ellevate Network’s mission of changing the culture of business from the inside out by providing professional women with a supportive community to lean on and learn from. She directs the Network’s staff, is responsible for business growth and strategy, and works closely with Ellevate’s Chapter Leaders, Business Partners, and Champions to further Ellevate’s impact.

Kristy is host of the Ellevate Podcast: Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business and is also a regular speaker and thought leader on Leadership, Diversity, Social Entrepreneurship, Networking, and Entrepreneurialism. Most recently, Kristy was recognized as a Woman of Influence by the New York Business Journal.

Kristy strives to support women and girls in achieving their dreams. She is an Angel Investor with Pipeline Angels, an organization creating capital for women and non-binary femme social entrepreneurs; a Member of the UN Women Global Innovation Coalition for Change; an Advisor for the 92Y Women in Power Fellowship for Rising Female Leaders; on the Advisory Council for the Villanova University Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Institute; Co-Chair of the Leadership Advisory Board for the Girl Scouts of Greater NYC; and a Board Member at Workforce Professionals Training Institute.

Prior to joining Ellevate, Kristy was a founding team member of Zeel.com, where she oversaw operations, business modeling, brand development, partnerships, and fundraising. Prior to Zeel, Kristy served as VP of North America Ad Sales and then GM of International Operations at Vault.com.

Kristy obtained her BA in English/Sociology from Villanova University and began her career as a financial analyst at KeyBank. A passionate runner, reader and world traveler, Kristy lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with her husband and three wonderful children.

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