One of our core beliefs at Athena is that the top level of leadership should reflect the dynamics of society as a whole. In this message, our Founder and CEO shares Athena’s commitment to fostering inclusive leadership and responsible growth.
By Coco Brown – Founder & CEO, Athena Alliance
I apologize in advance that this is a long read. But, if you want to deeply connect with what drives and forms the Athena community experience, please continue reading.
First a little backdrop for me: I’ve always been an outlier, wondering why my perspectives are so often at odds with some of the norms I see around me. I do not conform well and I live in the gray. I was born in southeast Asia, I’ve lived on 3 continents and I’ve been to almost 50 countries around the world. I grew up on stories from the teachings of a variety of faiths and cultures from the Ramayanan to Zen Buddhism to Christianity. I am incredibly grateful for these experiences as they have given me an expansive worldview. And, now 30 years into my career – a woman in her 50s with two fabulous gen-z’ers as kids, and as someone who has accomplished a lot of career goals despite all my own versions of gender-related setbacks – I find myself frustrated by the elitist and exclusionary approach I see in so many organizations centered around moving women forward.
Women need to mobilize to move society forward not at the exclusion of, but in harmony with others. In order to do this work authentically and with real impact, organizations dedicated to change must grow responsibly in a way that brings along the communities we all purport to serve. My vision for Athena has always been my vision for society at large: to ensure the demographics at the top of businesses mirror the demographics of society as a whole.
To be true to the vision, Athena has centered around five key underlying principles or “ways of being”. And let me say that while I believe we do a lot of this really right, we are a company of humans. We make mistakes, we learn, and then we try to do better – but we hold these principles at our core every single day.
We resist the temptation of unicorn hyper-growth status (and the temptation to judge ourselves for not having it). The first order of business is not how fast we grow membership, but how thoughtfully we do so. We must bring everyone along. Membership count and speed to market share can be neither the primary driver nor the primary indicator of value. We must prioritize substance and individualized, actionable support to meet people where they are and move each individual career forward. This could be to the C-suite, to become a CEO, to serve on a corporate board, to launch a business, to realize one’s “third act”, and so on. Models like ours need patient capital that can help temper expectations for speed and help focus on the right pace of growth for the purpose. This is why Athena, as I write this, is in the midst of a grassroots-focused capital raise with much of our new investment coming from our own members.
Our members ask us all the time how fast we will grow, to which I say at a pace that allows us to maintain our core promises (which I’ll explain below). We’re about 1,200 members today. We don’t want to be beyond 2,500 members within the next 18 months. And if we reach that faster than we anticipate, we’ll shift our focus from recruiting new members to developing more add-on services to further enhance the value our existing members receive to achieve their goals.
This directly speaks to how we approach exclusivity. Yes, we have parameters around who we are and aren’t for. This evolves over time. Our vision has always been the same, but our focus will adapt and evolve over time. For example, we started with one singular mission – get board-ready women on boards. We’ve brought over 400 women to board seats, and we continue to focus on this. However, we realized that expanding our mission greatly enhances our ability to support our broader vision. Our mission must be to accelerate senior leaders into any top role or roles they are striving for and help them continuously excel when they get there.
Generally our members are in their 40s to 60s. But, we have women in their 20s building incredible companies (I would have qualified myself had Athena existed in 1998 when I was running ⅔ of a $100m business at the age of 28). We also have women in their 80s who are still highly involved in business, and aren’t done yet with their incredible careers, but who have shifted to a Third Act as community leaders, investors and advisors.
When asked for firm criteria for membership we say: Anyone in or close to the C-suite, the CEO office, or the boardroom. This includes investors engaging with CEOs and boards, entrepreneurs building companies to scale, former C-suite executives in their Third Act, and individuals making their way to the C-suite.
The stickiest issue is how to define “senior leader” in a way that creates a community of peers while ensuring our mission remains inclusive. Defining membership by inflexible criteria is definitively exclusive (for example, only people of “x” title or above, or only people who have worked for companies, or who sit on boards of “x” revenue and above, and so on). Titles are gray, revenue isn’t always an illustration of complexity, and some of the best talent isn’t categorized in traditional corporate terms. Further, marginalized individuals have been overlooked. We know they have been passed by, necessitating creativity in criteria to ensure they are included going forward. There are a lot of women out there who should be VP Level and above who were overlooked or actively passed by, so we need to flex the criteria and find them. In the early days, when we said that Athena only supports women who were “VP level and above”, our membership was only 13% diverse (and we were patting ourselves on the back given that WOC only represented about 4% of top leadership). But today, we are over 39% diverse – and NOT stopping there.
I have found that when I share our more flexible approach, there are people who ask “How do you ensure your community doesn’t become too junior?” I largely think of that as an elitist point of view. Most people are honest with themselves. They know how to level themselves and fit themselves into the right ecosystem. We don’t have “wannabes” in Athena. We have serious leaders dedicated to maximizing their impact and being all they can be. Our members are on some of the most prominent boards in the world. In fact, ¼ of our members are on amazing corporate boards like PNC, Cardinal Health, Metlife, and Volvo (and a whole bunch of incredible ones you wouldn’t recognize). None of them see themselves as too good for the community. We are rising together, and we support each other. We see and celebrate the bi-directional value we bring each other every day. Even our “most junior” members are top in their fields, building next-generation companies and leading incredible teams with cutting-edge approaches. They are serious about what they can bring to the table – and what they will leverage from Athena. They belong here.
If you want to know whether you belong in Athena:
People are pretty good at self-reflection as to whether Athena is right for them, and whether they are right for Athena. It’s a two way street.
When a member joins Athena we immediately encourage them to do two things: 1) meet with one of our Member Success Managers to help make connections in the community that will enrich their lives and align with their goals. 2) signup for a few of our salons or peer groups. For the salons, we encourage members to log on early to take advantage of unstructured time where we chat and get to know each other. We see and center on the whole person. We know you are juggling busy lives and we encourage you to come as you are – hair down or up, makeup on or off, in your sweats or dressed to the nines. We care about the substance of our connections and the topics we cover. People in our community know that they can easily engage with anyone equally.
Athena is not meant to be a status symbol or confer bragging rights; it’s a serious community dedicated to pulling everyone up and ensuring each other’s success. Over and over, I’ve watched Athena members make “instant” and deep connections – yes, even virtually – by approaching each other with a sense of openness, authenticity and vulnerability. It starts with breaking the ice, sharing a laugh about something silly or interesting you’ve just heard or something that is pulling at your heart. This powerful sense of community has to be reinforced every day, with every interaction you have with my team, with me, and with our community. Approachability and intimacy are ingrained in every facet of Athena, every piece of the product and every moment of engagement.
Athena helps our members in 3 key ways that make us both personalizable, and scalable:
First, we connect members to each other, not simply for networking but for movement. This is the key focus of our Member Success team. Real humans help you leverage the strength of weak ties to connect to the right other humans for just-in-time wisdom, guidance, advice, and opportunities. Most of us see the other side of the river (where we want to be), but don’t know how to get there. We wander the banks looking for a bridge. But the real way there is by stepping onto the first rock just below the surface in front of us, which then reveals another one, and so on. These “rocks” are weak ties (people). And Athena is an expert at navigating weak ties with you to get you where you are going. This is why we can’t scale like a software-only business. This is where our Member Success team lives, and while we automate more and more of their general support to the community, and we teach you to fish (show you how to make your own connections), we have to help you get started, and we have to be ready to jump in when you get stuck. Scaling this team in parallel with membership growth is key.
Secondly, we recognize that you are BUSY and need a variety of ways to get to what you need…
And third, we offer situation-based and transformation coaching with experts in negotiation, stage presence, presentation, career advancement, board achievement, etc. You choose your coach(es), and work with as many as you like.
These are just three key ways we help you personalize your Athena experience. There is so much more, but this note is not about the product, so I’ll stop there for now.
Modern leadership is evolved, it’s inclusive, and it’s constantly on the forefront of new business models, industries, best practices, shifting societal understandings, and a greater collective conscience. We are a Community of Learners at the top of business, so we must focus on modern leadership. When a pandemic hit, we mobilized learning around that; again when George Floyd was murdered, when a war erupted in Europe, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, when it became clear business was facing the great resignation or a potential recession, and so on. At Athena, we mobilize collective learning and action. And we rally around all the day-to-day business topics, too – what you need to know about SPACs or climate tech, how to read financials, how to approach angel investing, modern sustainable supply chain leadership – you name it. If it’s a business topic that matters to our community, we cover it..
BUT, the trick is… how do you cover these topics (the ones we debate) inclusively? At Athena we recognize that some of our diversity resides in very diverse political and religious views. I am always thinking about how we offer discussion around the most controversial topics of our time, while also making space for us to influence each other and find common ground. How do we focus on common ground and support one another so we can evolve as opposed to become more deeply entrenched? Within my own family, we have polar opposite political and religious beliefs. My choices as an individual are abandon, ignore, or work harder to build bridges. I choose to work harder.
How do we do this at Athena? We try to make space to say: Let’s not attack each other. Let’s focus our discussion on this very difficult topic on what it means for business, and what it means in terms of an inclusive society. Let’s look for common ground, and let’s look to understand each other’s deeply entrenched positions and figure out how we might move forward – together. As the leader of Athena, my goal is to build the United Nations of forward thinking business leaders. And that does not happen by being divisive. It happens by being diplomatic and inclusive. Athena will never shy away from the tough topics, but we also will not become an echo chamber.
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These are the five core principles I think about every day, that I dialogue with my team about every day, and that form the foundation for who we are as a company, as a product, as a community:
I welcome your dialogue with me (truly – you have my email). I am deeply committed to being a responsible and active leader in the evolution of this beautiful world. I do my work through Athena.
Onward,
Coco Brown
Founder & CEO, Athena Alliance
© Athena Alliance 2024
