Pledge 1%'s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Ishveen Jolly
CEO + Founder, OpenSponsorship
London, UK (But the company is in the US and I was pre-pandemic based in NYC)
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I am the CEO of OpenSponsorship, the world's largest two-sided marketplace connecting brands and athletes for digital marketing campaigns.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
I love our company mission and seeing my team get behind this mission and bringing it to life. Watching the team that you have brought in, perform and deliver is the most enjoyable thing.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
As above, I love our mission. Making sponsorship accessible to all - seeing brands be able to leverage athletes and sports in their marketing campaigns. Also, for athletes sponsorship can be the difference between being able to enter a competition or training vs. playing. We love sponsorship so bringing innovation to the industry is amazing.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
The entrepreneurship journey is hard, so enjoy the little wins, celebrate them and move quickly on from the failures - learn from them but don't dwell.
What does generosity mean to you?
It means giving to others who need it - financially, time, advice, opportunity - anything counts.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
Sponsorship is essentially the way that one entity can leverage the influence of an athlete to drive home key messaging. We have worked on some really important campaigns e.g. with the likes of Texas and Florida Government during COVID to promote safety and vaccines; we have worked with companies on using athletes to promote financial literacy and many more important campaigns. As we grow we think about how we can support more CSR initiatives.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Resilient - I have the ability to keep going, despite the odds.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Something without lyrics so I could play it in the background and keep working 🙂
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
We just raised a growth round, so it's an exciting year for us hiring, growing, building more processes and delivering our investors and team results.
