CEO/Founder
Coco Brown
Coco is the Founder and CEO of The Athena Alliance,which works to create key connections that promote qualified women to board of director opportunities and help them excel as they serve in that role. Her career in the tech industry has centered on IT and Professional Services Leadership as Board Director, COO, and President. Having often found herself one of the few, or only women in the room, Coco has a particular passion for ensuring that the gender balance in the workplace mimics that of our nation as a whole.
For 12 years Coco ran Taos, a privately held IT Services business, which she joined in 1997, becoming one of three owners, COO and then President & COO starting in 2002. Coco led the company through significant periods of both expansion and contraction.
During the dotcom boom Taos expanded to San Francisco, Boston, Virginia, New York and LA. As VP of Professional Services at that time, Coco was both instrumental in this expansion and the subsequent contraction following the dotcom bust. While many technology companies went under during this time, Taos recovered, and continued on to experience a second boom through 2007 and a much less significant contraction during the great recession starting mid-2008. Under her 10 years of leadership as President/COO Taos grew an average of 30% per year. Taos introduce two new lines of business – extending from staff augmentation to project delivery and managed services (with an outsourcing team of 100+ in Boise, Idaho). In total Taos delivered on over 8000 engagements, with over 400 employees during her tenure. Coco stepped down from leadership in 2012, but continued on as a board director and owner through mid-2014.
In 2013 Coco founded Executive Kinections, an executive management consulting practice. Her services include Strategy Workshop Design and Facilitation, building and leading Boards of Advisors, and consulting as a trusted advisor to Organization Design and Operational Strategy. Coco’s clients include Cisco, FireEye, Loggly, Jitterbit, MentorNet, Riverbed, and UCSF.