Hi! I’m Bethany Marzewski, and I’m thrilled to be taking over Brittany’s position as the new network General Manager at Union Square Ventures. In this role, I’ll work with the great teams at USV’s 60+ portfolio companies to expand the programming and infrastructure that we hope empowers all of our entrepreneurs to learn from each other and build better businesses.
Stepping into this role feels a lot like joining my extended family. Having spent the past four years in a variety of sales and marketing roles at a USV portfolio company, Stack Overflow, I’ve already experienced first-hand how USV’s network helps their companies help each other. When I started at Stack Overflow in 2012, they were around 50 employees, and as a journalist-turned-marketer, I had to quickly get up to speed with a lot of sales and marketing concepts. WhiIe I learned that not every answer lived within the walls of our then-office at 55 Broadway, I soon realized that being a part of USV’s network meant that I never had to look far for guidance or advice.
When I needed to better understand the Stack Overflow customer base, I discovered an in-person interview framework from the team at Meetup and the best statistical analyses tools to use from Flurry. When we were gearing up to announce our Series D funding last year, I took a page from the PR book of Foursquare. And when we wanted to effect change in diversity in tech—both internally at Stack Overflow and externally in advising the thousands of companies who used our recruitment tools—companies like Kickstarter and Tumblr gave us a lot to think about. In fact, USV’s diversity summit last year inspired me to partner with several portfolio companies and lead a new initiative, Beyond Coding, which set out to help native New Yorkers launch their careers in tech. Now, I couldn’t be more excited to have the opportunity to share what I learned and extend these relationships to even more people within the network.
Prior to my time at Stack Overflow, I leveraged my journalism degree from Northwestern University to take on roles in writing, communications, and consulting. Today, I’m still very involved in the Northwestern alumni network, where I serve as President of the Medill Club of NYC. When I’m not attending a local tech meetup or sporting my purple pride at an NU football game, you’ll likely find me lingering around New York’s theatre district to hit up a Broadway show. Okay, let’s be honest: I’ll be in the Hamilton lottery line.
I feel really lucky to continue to be a part of the USV network from a different vantage point, and I can’t wait to learn more from all of the portfolio companies about best practices in talent management, strategy, diversity initiatives, and more. I look forward to getting to know many of you in the months and years to come. If you have feedback on how we can make this network even stronger, I’m all ears! In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter at @bethanymarz.