The Future Of Work For Culture Builders with Roxanne Petraeus

Unless: The Podcast, hosted by Dr. Hemma R. Lomax

In this episode, Hemma visits with Roxanne Bras Petraeus, entrepreneur super mom, U.S. Army veteran, McKinsey alum, and CEO co-founder of Ethena.

Tune in to hear about Roxanne’s remarkable journey from serving in the US Army and at consulting giant McKinsey to tech entrepreneur designing a product to reimagine the future of culture building at work. Roxanne’s willingness to ask audacious questions and do hard things well has opened doors and brought down walls. She gives a masterclass in discovering works when it comes to culture building at work, particularly for female entrepreneurs finding their voice and for those looking to advance technology solutions to enhance the employee experience.

Highlights:

• Roxanne’s experience as a woman in the US Army

• Highs and Lows of being a female tech entrepreneur

• The magic of a stumble and what we can learn

Timestamps:

1:06 - Introducing Roxanne

3:19 - Why did Roxanne start Athena?

13:33 - How do we have impactful, quality training?

18:47 - Why leaders need to set the tone

29:38 - Athena's culture survey and hotline

39:36 - Roxanne's advice for female founders

Resources:

www.ethena.com

Biography

‍Roxanne Petraeus is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ethena, a compliance training platform startup with intuitive and powerful admin tools that make required training easy, engaging, and effective.

Roxanne previously consulted for McKinsey, and before that, she was an officer in the US Army. She found that no matter the setting, whether consulting or in the military, there remained an opportunity to make compliance training better. She started Ethena in 2019 with Co-Founder Anne Solmssen.

Ethena enjoys incredibly positive word of mouth within the HR community and is trusted by thousands of companies like Figma, Notion, Noom, Pinterest, and Carta to provide actionable training. The employees love it: Ethena has a 93% positive rating and over 2M positive reviews. Roxanne is a natural leader, and her eagerness to question and reinvent old paradigms is at the heart of Ethena’s ascendance.