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Robyn Cohen shared thisI was 15. He was someone I knew, someone I trusted, and someone I thought cared about me. I never reported it. I was in shock, I was embarrassed, I was sick to my stomach, and it changed my life forever. So when I watched Sunny Hostin hold up a young woman's police statement on national television and say no prosecutor would have brought a case, I didn't hear legal analysis. I heard every reason I stayed silent. What's alleged in the Cornell case: ▪️ A 20-year-old student says seven fraternity members drugged and sexually assaulted her for hours in October 2024 ▪️A message allegedly went out in the frat's group chat inviting others upstairs ▪️The DA declined charges based on her signed statement ▪️This week, a campus police transcript surfaced. In it, she reportedly says: "I can say with 100% confidence, I was raped." ▪️The DA says he never received it. The case is now reopened. The men deny it and no one has been charged. That is exactly why she deserves a full investigation with every piece of evidence on the table. Sunny Hostin prosecuted sex crimes. She knows a survivor's first statement is rarely her whole story. Trauma fragments it. Shame edits it. Self-preservation rewrites it in real time. I know, because I lived it. When a woman with that résumé and that platform uses it to cast doubt before all the evidence is in, it isn't just a legal opinion. It's carrying water for the patriarchy. Since we were girls, we've been handed the rules: Don't dress like that. Don't drink too much. Don't walk home alone. Watch your drink. Text me when you get home. A whole curriculum for making girls smaller, quieter, more careful. Where's the curriculum for boys? If she can't say yes, it's a no. If you see it happening, stop it. If it shows up in the group chat, you're the one who shuts it down. Drinking is not consent. Drugs are not consent. An incomplete first statement is not consent. Most survivors never report. Among college women, it's 80%. I was one of them. She was 20, I was 15. Neither of us asked for it. #cornell7
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Robyn Cohen shared thisTwelve years ago, AMD was close to bankruptcy. This month, it crossed a trillion dollars in market value. This is Lisa Su. In 2014, at 44, she took over AMD, a chip company that had spent years trailing its rivals. She didn’t wait for a better offer. She focused on making better chips, one generation at a time. A little background: She was born in Tainan, Taiwan, and came to the U.S. as a small child. She earned three degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. At IBM, she helped develop the copper connections now standard in semiconductors. And led the team behind the PlayStation 3’s processor. The turnaround numbers are almost absurd. AMD’s stock was up more than 180% for the year when it hit the trillion-dollar mark. Its latest quarterly revenue set a record. OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft are building on its hardware. And on September 21, AMD became the first company led by a woman to pass $1 trillion in market value. When Fox Business anchor Liz Claman pointed that out last week, Su didn’t take the bait. “I’m an engineer,” she said. She’s 56. She didn’t wait for the room to change, she learned the machine better than everyone in it. The full Spotlight is in this week's AFTR Edit. 🔗 in comments. #reinventionredefined #womenover40
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Robyn Cohen shared thisEmma Grede replied to my comment on her Instagram post, so I'm taking this one to LinkedIn. 😉 Her post: "I'm working on building my personal brand. Said no man ever." Her point: Build something, get great at it, because the work comes first. I agree with every word of that last part. I disagree with the conclusion. Emma co-founded Good American and Skims. She did the work, no question. Then she started a podcast. Wrote a book. Hosts dinners for women. Posts regularly. That's not a brand that "followed." That's a brand she's building, on purpose, and really well. Here's the nuance that keeps getting lost: 👉 Superficial content is performing for attention. 👉 A personal brand is sharing what you've built, what you know, and what you've learned. One is noise, the other is leverage. The people who truly skip it exist. Like MacKenzie Scott. No feeds, no podcasts, and almost no interviews. The work speaks for them, entirely. Emma didn't choose that path. Neither did Codie Sanchez or Sophia Amoruso. For women reinventing at 40+, waiting until you're "great enough" to be visible is how you stay invisible. The work comes first, always. Then you tell people about it. Still a fan, Emma. 💛 Where do you land: build quietly, or build in public? #reinventionredefined #personalbrand
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Robyn Cohen shared this"Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn't formed out of smart people, it's formed out of people who suffered." Jensen Huang wishes you pain and suffering. I'd recommend a passport. Most people hear that quote and think startups, failure, and starting over. All true. But one of the best character builders I know is living, working, and traveling somewhere that isn't home. We lived in Brazil for four years. It was hard, humbling, and some days even exhausting. And one of the best things we've ever done. Abroad, nobody knows your title. Nobody cares how it worked back home. You're a beginner again at everything. That's where character gets built. In the small daily moments when you have no choice but to figure it out. So far, I’ve traveled and lived in: ➡️ 2 continents ➡️ 3 countries ➡️ 8 cities ➡️ 60,000+ miles across 14 states And right now, almost three weeks through Europe. Amsterdam, Valencia, Barcelona, Marseille, and now Paris. Not enough people do this and most wait until it's convenient. It never is. Have you ever lived in a foreign country? #reinventionredefined #suffering
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Robyn Cohen shared thisIt took 237 years for the U.S. Senate to hold a hearing on menopause. It took me three years to find a doctor who'd actually help. This week I wrote about the first-ever hearing, and the gap it finally put on the record. Because the silence in that committee room is the same silence a lot of us have been living in. In this week's AFTR Edit: ▪️ For two years I didn't recognize myself: the fog, the fatigue, the rage out of nowhere, the 3 a.m. wake-ups, the hot flashes that ambushed me in public. I started HRT three months ago. I feel like a new and improved version of myself, and I keep asking: why did I wait so long? ▪️ We hand teenage girls birth control almost reflexively, then make midlife women fight for care, information, and honest options. The urgency should run both ways. ▪️ The Brief: hormone therapy use has fallen even as the evidence got stronger, the menopause market is now worth $15–19B (roughly the size of the care gap itself), and a new study found men over 50 are far more likely to land an Emmy nomination than women the same age. ▪️ The Spotlight: she's not a doctor or a founder. She's a lawyer who spent a decade getting women's bodies written into law. First periods, then menopause. When the Senate held its first hearing this month, she was one of only four people they asked to testify. A hearing isn't a cure. It's permission to stop whispering. What we do with that permission is the part still being written. Don't wait as long as I did. 🔗 Link below. #reinventionredefined #womenover40
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Robyn Cohen shared thisI'm investing in something far more valuable than AI. Relationships. I've spent the past 2+ weeks traveling and reconnecting with friends. In Amsterdam, a friend I hadn't seen in over five years and we picked up right where we left off. Not to mention, she also took incredible care of us. In Valencia, a friend I'd met only a couple of times, eight years ago. She opened her home and showed us parts of the region we'd never have found on our own. In Barcelona, a friend from our São Paulo expat days. It had been twelve years since we saw him last. We only had one night. He booked a table at his favorite restaurant, and again, we picked up right where we left off. None of them had to do any of it. They chose to. And then there's a 26-year friendship I recently lost. It faded from a lack of investment long before we ever fell out. Relationships take effort. Genuine, meaningful effort. And it can't just be about the good times. Connection grows in the vulnerable ones. Growing up with a disabled sister, my girlfriends became my sisters too. I've never taken that lightly. AI will never open its home to you, or book its favorite table for you after 12 years. People do. The right ones, anyway. #reinventionredefined #friendship
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Robyn Cohen shared thisMost people fight for a cause, she wrote it into law. This is Jennifer Weiss-Wolf. While the rest of us were still whispering about it, she was in statehouses getting it legislated. First periods, now menopause. Newsweek called her the architect of the campaign that killed the "tampon tax" in state after state. When the Senate held its first-ever menopause hearing this month, she was one of only four witnesses in the room. Not a doctor, not a founder, but a lawyer who has spent a career turning women's private frustration into public policy. A little background... She's a lawyer by training and an advocate by obsession. Her 2017 book Periods Gone Public took "menstrual equity," a phrase almost no one had heard, and made it a movement across dozens of states. Gloria Steinem called it "the beginning of liberation for us all." She runs the Birnbaum Women's Leadership Center at NYU Law, has testified before Congress, and briefed the White House. Her whole method is the unglamorous part: the part that comes after the applause. The funding line. The training requirement. The insurance mandate. The report no one wants to read but everyone needs. Her message is: your frustration is not a mood to manage, it's political energy waiting for a target. This month, that target finally sat still long enough to listen. The full Spotlight is in this week's AFTR Edit, 🔗 in comments. #reinventionredefined #womenover40
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Robyn Cohen shared thisNo place is perfect, we all know that. For the past ten days, I've been traveling in Europe and it's made these things impossible to ignore. 👉 10,000 steps is just a day here, nobody's counting. 👉 Coffee is for sitting and people-watching, not for a cup holder in a drive-thru. 👉 A drink with colleagues after work isn't networking, it's just a drink. 👉 Time, rest, and connection are chosen over one more thing crossed off the list. It's about less indulging, and more savoring. But think about this... I spend my days in email, on social media (LinkedIn especially!), and learning and using AI. There's a place for all of it, and it can genuinely move your work forward. And what I couldn't stop appreciating over here was the opposite instinct entirely. The quiet revolution against optimizing everything. The stubborn belief that some things are better slow. Maybe that costs them something on the innovation front. But watching people actually live over here, I'm not sure they've got it wrong. I have over a week left and will continue to enjoy the European lifestyle, and make further observations. What's one thing you've stopped optimizing for, on purpose? #reinventionredefined #lifeineurope
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Robyn Cohen shared thisA frictionless life is quietly making us miserable. And most people can't even see it happening. Groceries arrive at the door, dinner comes in a bag, and the car pulls up before you've finished putting on your shoes. Every errand that used to force you out into the world has been optimized away. You haven't talked to a stranger in weeks. You haven't been lost, uncomfortable, or caught off guard in months. You've engineered a life with no edges, and then wondered why you feel anxious, depressed, and alone. Here's what you need to know: friction is where you actually become someone. The awkward conversation. The trip that doesn't go to plan. The dinner with people who see the world differently than you do. The place where nobody speaks your language. Those moments don't just happen to you, they change you. You can spend years analyzing your life from the safety of your couch. Or you can go put yourself somewhere that requires you to be different to get through the day. One of those keeps you comfortable, and the other one actually moves you. Stop optimizing your life down to nothing and go get some friction. #reinventionredefined #friction
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Robyn Cohen reacted on thisRobyn Cohen reacted on thisInvesting in women means investing in their mental health, too.🩷 So proud to support kate spade New York’s Global Fund for Women’s Mental Health, which supports nonprofits helping women and girls access mental health resources. Through its social impact programs, Kate Spade New York aims to reach 250,000 women and girls by 2030. Besties, I want you to have money in the bank AND someone in your corner. Financial anxiety is a huge source of strain in so many women's lives, and working to end that is something that means so much to me. Leaving this year’s Global Summit on Women’s Mental Health feeling grateful for everyone working to make that support accessible to more women! #money #finance #women #mentalhealth #katespadenewyork
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Volunteer Experience
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Startup Mentor & Judge
Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute
- Present 7 years 10 months
The Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute is a nationally ranked hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Utah and an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business. The institute provides opportunities for thousands of students to learn about entrepreneurship and innovation. Programs include workshops, networking events, business-plan competitions, startup support, innovation programs, graduate seminars, scholarships, community outreach and…
The Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute is a nationally ranked hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Utah and an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business. The institute provides opportunities for thousands of students to learn about entrepreneurship and innovation. Programs include workshops, networking events, business-plan competitions, startup support, innovation programs, graduate seminars, scholarships, community outreach and more.
I've been a startup mentor and judge for their Utah Entrepreneurship Challenge program since 2019.
The Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute is a nationally ranked hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Utah and an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business. The institute provides opportunities for thousands of students to learn about entrepreneurship and innovation. Programs include workshops, networking events, business-plan competitions, startup support, innovation programs, graduate seminars, scholarships, community outreach and more.
I've been a startup mentor and judge for their Utah Entrepreneurship Challenge program since 2019. -
Judge
RevRoad
- 1 year 1 month
RevRoad brings together 24 months of venture services, corporate partners, and investors to help visionary founders grow their companies.
I was a judge at their Entrepreneur Competition in 2019 and 2020. -
Advisor
Momni Foundation
- 11 months
The Momni Foundation works closely with their for-profit arm to help solve the global childcare crisis. They link moms who need care with experienced moms who are able to provide it, and handle all payments through their innovative sharing economy caresharing app.
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Executive Committee
Womenpreneurs
- 8 months
Womenpreneurs is a professional collective promoting women's success and entrepreneurship to ignite bold female leadership.
Honors & Awards
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30 Women to Watch 2024
Utah Business Magazine
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100 Companies Championing Women
Utah Women & Leadership Project
Associated with W Collective.
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Ontario Secondary School Diploma
Ontario Ministry of Education
I graduated in the top 15th percentile with an O.S.S.D. The Ontario Secondary School Diploma is a diploma granted to high school graduates in the province of Ontario. It is part of the publicly funded province-wide school system. It is awarded to students who complete the Ontario education curriculum with specific compulsory credits.
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English
Native or bilingual proficiency
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Portuguese
Limited working proficiency
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