We are thrilled to welcome Erin Essenmacher to the Athena Alliance team as senior partnership advisor. Erin brings over a decade of experience building programming and partnerships in the corporate governance space, most recently as President & Chief Strategy Officer of the National Associate of Corporate Directors (NACD). She’s a systems thinker, change-maker, award-winning filmmaker, and has served on and chaired boards across sectors. She’s currently a director at Sustainable Innovations and Docs in Progress.

“We are so thrilled to have Erin join Athena as senior partnership advisor,” said Athena Founder & CEO Coco Brown. “I have watched Erin from afar for years as I sat in the audience of various NACD events—from their annual summit of thousands of corporate board directors to intimate Innovation Summits with 150 attendees anxious to stay on the edge of director learning for the future. As the former President and Chief Strategy Officer of NACD, Erin orchestrated their events, the topics, the partnerships, the speakers. She is absolutely brilliant as a choreographer of executive learning and helping bring the right parties together. I’m excited for her to support our efforts to do the same.”

Below, learn more about Erin’s journey to the C-suite and boardroom, her approach to partnerships, and why she’s excited to support women leaders through her work with Athena.

A non-traditional path to partnerships and corporate governance

Erin is a gifted storyteller and relationship-builder, starting her career in media as a producer, director, and content strategist for leading media outlets like Discovery Channel, History Channel, and PBS. The common thread through her career—and the core of her approach to partnership-building—is storytelling, and her unique ability to connect the dots to discern what matters most to a given audience. Her journey started as a film producer, winning awards for her work in independent films and getting featured in the New York Times.

“I was at the pinnacle of what I considered success,” Erin reflected. “I was on my way to the next milestone in my media career. Then the bottom fell out of my world on a personal level when my mom died and I was diagnosed with cancer, which caused everything to stop.”

As Erin was finishing up cancer treatment, a colleague asked her to come on board as a consultant to help manage a growing portfolio of events.

“I was intrigued, but I didn’t have experience in corporate governance,” Erin recalls, “She said, ‘It’s just like casting. Figure out who’s my audience and what will matter to them.’” Halfway through her contract, she was asked to lead their content and learning strategy as Director of Education.

“It was intimidating at first,” Erin explained, “but I thought of my mom and her life mantra: if you are afraid to try something, it probably means you’re on the right path and should go for it. That’s how we grow.” Erin quickly found she loved the work. “Helping business leaders connect with the right experts and information to make sense of an increasingly complex business environment is critical to effective corporate governance, which in turn fosters sustainable capitalism, creates jobs, and strengthens our businesses, our communities, and our economy.”

Along the way, she found that the experience and skills she built in media were incredibly relevant — the power of storytelling, the ability to connect the dots between disparate issues, and speaking to an audience in a way that meets them where they are.

Erin served on the executive leadership team at NACD for nearly 10 years as Chief Programming Officer and later as President & Chief Strategy Officer. In these roles, she built and led a team that helped drive innovation, shaped their content and thought leadership strategy, and launched the first true certification program for board directors. Under her leadership, NACD grew its education revenue by 400% and membership doubled. She credits the success to innovation, a strong team culture, and building the right strategic partnerships across sectors including other business groups, government, private equity, and academia.

Erin’s work advancing Athena’s partnerships

Almost seven years ago, Erin tapped Athena to recruit women leaders to speak at NACD’s first technology symposium.

“I wanted to make sure that our speaker line-up reflected the diversity of our audience. There’s a perennial problem of not having enough women in leadership in Silicon Valley and I was having trouble finding a diverse slate of qualified speakers. Athena connected me with very smart, experienced panelists who helped make the event a smashing success. That was my first intro to Athena and I was so impressed with the organization, the network, and the work they were doing,” Erin said.

Erin and Coco reconnected last year at an Australian governance conference where they were both speakers on a panel focused on the future of governance.

“Listening to Coco speak, I became even more inspired by Athena’s holistic approach to supporting executive women. The work Athena is doing is critical to diversifying C-suites and boards, and to give women more opportunity to advance in their careers—which is in turn good for companies and communities,” Erin said. “It’s critical that executives and board members engage in rigorous continuous education in order to stay as current and effective as possible in an increasingly dynamic business environment. The breadth and depth of content that Athena offers allows both executives and board members to customize learning needs based on their own backgrounds and the needs of their company or boards. Partnering with Athena is also a powerful way for companies to show a meaningful commitment to support the continued development of their female leaders.”

She’s now joined Athena as a senior advisor, where she hopes to build partnerships that expand Athena’s reach to serve even more women leaders.

“You really have to believe in the mission and understand the mutual value partnership can bring, and I really believe in the mission and impact of Athena,” Erin said. “To equip more women with the skills needed to succeed in executive roles. To elevate more women into positions of power and responsibility, and to help them get clear on the practical elements of their career journey, like coaching and creating board candidate packages. It’s also critical on this journey for women to have a safe space to say ‘I don’t understand this’ or ‘I need some help’ and find a built-in network. That’s the power of Athena—providing holistic support for women leaders.”

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If you are affiliated with an association, university, or business that could benefit from a partnership with Athena, reach out to Erin here.