Don’t Walk Away — Redefine the Game

Athena Founder and CEO Coco Brown confronts the stark numbers behind this past summer’s “Bro IPO” wave, challenging us to treat this moment not as a setback, but as a call to reimagine how women lead, rise, and reshape the future together.

November 13, 2025

By Coco Brown, Founder & CEO of Athena Alliance

There are moments when progress feels like quicksand. When the harder we’ve worked to move forward, the more it seems to slip beneath us.

That’s how I felt reading the data from this past summer’s so-called “Bro IPO” wave:

61 companies filing to go public.
88% with one or no women on their boards.
93% with one or no women in their C-suites.

After years of hard-won progress toward gender representation, it’s deflating to see how fast gains can disappear once the external pressure fades. But as I sat with it, I realized: maybe this moment isn’t a setback. Maybe it’s a mirror. And maybe it’s time we look straight into it — not to those in power, but to ourselves.

Opting Out or Owning In

For years, the story has been about being left out or opting out. About women exhausted by the climb, priced out by caregiving, or alienated by cultures that won’t evolve. And yes, the data reflects that some women are stepping back again. We’ve seen it from return-to-office policies that erase flexibility to burnout that feels unfixable. But another truth exists alongside it: women’s workforce participation is near record highs. We are still showing up, leading, building, and redefining what ambition looks like, just on different terms. So maybe the goal isn’t to “stay in” the system as it is. Maybe it’s to reshape it — for ourselves, for one another, and for those who come next.

The Future is Fluid

Staying in doesn’t mean staying still.

It means staying strategic.
It means negotiating for what lets us thrive — not apologizing for it.
It sounds like: “Yes, I’ll take the role. But I’m also dropping my kids off twice a week. I’ll work remotely when it makes sense. And when I travel, it’ll be for moments that matter.”
It means expanding how we lead — beyond titles and traditional ladders. Advising. Investing. Mentoring. Building. Learning the language of capital — because influence follows money — and using that fluency to unlock opportunity for others.
It means supporting each other not only when we “arrive,” but while we’re still climbing, pivoting, creating.

We can build collective power through fluidity, not rigidity — through the many ways women now participate in the modern economy: as executives, as board members, as investors, as advisors, as creators.

Architecting the Future — Together

The “Bro IPO” numbers are discouraging, but they don’t define us. They define the moment.

This moment belongs to women who are staying in motion.
To those who are not waiting for permission.
To those who are architecting lives and leadership models that work for real humans — not mythical executives with no other responsibilities.

It belongs to women who lift as they climb, share what they know, and open doors that were once locked.

So no, don’t walk away.

Walk forward. Together.

And build the world that will never again have to be surprised when women are in it.