Katie Russell

Chief of Staff

2024 - Current

Sandhill Markets is the personal on-ramp to private market investing. As Chief of Staff I run everything from our SPV operations and private syndicate management—to our more public-facing media agency.

Building something new✨

2024

Chief of Staff

2023 - 2024

VOW is the first-of-its-kind platform transforming the future of work across Live Experiences and Events. Like Figma for design and Jira for software, VOW’s the first all-in-one SaaS solution for all stakeholders across the live event journey. Our B2B2C platform solves for massive fragmentation by centralizing teams, tools, tasks, ticketing and transactions, all in one place, all in real-time. As Chief of Staff—I ran everything from championing our seed raise, redoing pricing models, to up leveling our sales & marketing SOPs.

Venture Associate

2022 - 2024

The Fund XX is an early-stage, VC fund investing in women-led businesses across the U.S., powered by a community of founders and operators. The Fund XX charters a new frontier for women investors and entrepreneurs by harnessing the power of community around a fund structure for pre-seed and seed stage investments: - A community of Member LPs invest and bring extensive operational experience as former and current founders and operators. - 90% of our LPs are women, creating a meaningful on-ramp for women investors into the pre-seed and seed ecosystem. - Member LPs bring both capital and resources to women entrepreneurs, with an ability to deploy resources and expertise to women-led companies far faster than fragmented angel groups and syndicates as part of an overarching fund structure. Follow-ons are more easily facilitated by a community already in place. - The Fund XX’s four investment committee members are women. This differs from the current VC landscape, where 12% of decision-makers at VC firms are women. Female founder that fits our thesis? Fill out our Founder Intake Application: https://airtable.com/shrQ0TFGfSmrkoY0V Personally most curious to connect with founders innovating in: ClimateTech, Cleantech, Sustainable Supply Chains + Energy Systems, Femtech, Economic Access/ Equity, and Deathtech/Longevity

Fractional Chief of Staff + GTM Marketing Strategist

2016 - 2024

As a Jane of all trades, I enjoy partnering with early-stage founders on strategic projects across departments. Whether it's more demand generation, GTM or SEO-focused work, or fundraising decks and business model evaluation, or product roadmap and market research and customer discoveries, and even more creative focuses like event planning, video storyboarding and content creation –– I love helping my clients tell their story and drive revenue. If I don't know something they need help with, I'm eager to learn it, and if that's not possible I'm resourceful in getting help. - Previously secured contracts for NYC, Texas, Virginia and California-based clients, such as SSCG Media Group, A Thousand Thoughts, and Charity Charge, with over $121 million ARR combined across SaaS, fintech, deathtech, social impact, and film & entertainment industries - Current Clients include: VOW, Hive Wealth, and Granate, to name a few

UVA Seed Fund Investment Fellow

2022 - 2023

The UVA Seed Fund is a $10 million fund launched by the University of Virginia to invest in new ventures emerging from the university portfolio.

MBA Candidate, Class of 2023

2021 - 2023

Elected: Section Representative, Batten Innovation Committee, VP of Venture Capital Careers of the Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Club Awards: Darden VCIC: 1st place overall, Mid-Atlantic Regional VCIC: 1st place: Entrepreneurs Choice and 2nd place overall Specializations: Entrepreneurship & Innovation Certificate, Sustainability Innovation Focus in Vietnam & Environmental Innovation in Sweden Activities: CAV Angels Due Diligence Team, Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital, Graduate Women in Business, Marketing, Darden Outdoors Club

Venture Associate - Global Ventures

2022 - 2022

Sands Capital is an active, long-term investor in leading innovative businesses globally. With its integrated investment platform spanning venture capital, growth equity, and public equity, Sands Capital provides growth capital solutions to institutions and fund sponsors. Additionally expanding the reach of the Sands Capital Ventures brand by organizing industry conferences and secured partnerships with All Raise, DC Startup Week, Halcyon, and more. As an intern supporting the Sands Capital Global Ventures team, I provide investment perspectives across four main verticals that include digital life, healthcare technology, AI/ML, and identity intelligence. My personal thesis is devoted to the application of AI/ML in the ClimateTech space, specifically on energy grid transition, earth data, and carbontech.

Venture Fellow

2021 - 2022

True Wealth Ventures is an early-stage stage venture firm, led by two Austin-based women, Sara Brand and Kerry Rupp. The fund invests in women-led companies improving human and environmental health. Their investment thesis is that women-led companies perform better financially, as reported in many studies, yet are an untapped market with approximately 2% of venture dollars going to female-founded start-ups over the last decade. True Wealth Ventures was at the vanguard of this movement of women investing in women. Closing their ~$20M Fund I in Jan 2018 made them the largest VC fund ever raised with an exclusive gender-lens investment strategy, and with an unprecedented 80% of LPs identifying as women. My involvement with them has been focused on: marketing mapping spaces such as the Pre/Post Pregnancy FemTech market, Culturally Competent Mental Healthtech, and scalable, analytics ClimateTech (in addition to sourcing and database organization).

Marketing Manager

2020 - 2021

Noodle's mission is to growing online master's programs at top universities to make higher ed accessible and affordable. My personal contributions: - Lead demand generation strategy at a venture-funded education tech & services startup from Series B to Series C for online graduate & executive education programs at Columbia Business School, SMU Cox , and SMU Lyle - Redesigned Noodle’s minimal viable marketing services launch product & built a cross-departmental project management system which improved launch efficiency which help fuel 300% growth in new partnerships to date - Ran marketing strategy execution & managed client expectations of my portfolio’s over $8 million marketing budget - Helped team scale net revenue from $76 mill to $135 million via efficient, optimized website and nurture building, strategic cross-channel campaign execution, and implementing project management processes across creative and technical departments