Levo League: We Talk To Founders Amanda Pouchot And Caroline Ghosn
If you haven’t heard of the Levo League yet, you will soon enough…
Levo League aims to help young women fulfill their potential and reach their career dreams. And you all know that this kind of business is the type that will earn itself a golden star in our books! It practically had us running over to their HQ in New York City to snag some career advice from the two founders quicker than you can say the word ‘coffee’.
Built on trust, honesty, and a hard-working ethos, Levo League has been making headlines by shaping and elevating the careers and personal lives of Gen Y women all across the globe since 2011. Your Coffee Break sat down with the founders in order to gain some insight into the successful company and learn more about their innovative business, its goals, and the incredible network of women they are building.
As an entrepreneur, Amanda can’t stand negativity, while Caroline can’t stand doubt. Amanda can’t live without coffee, and Caroline can’t live
without support. In our opinion, this makes up for the perfect team!
Twentysomething Amanda Pouchot and Caroline Ghosn are the brilliant founders of Levo League, a startup designed to provide Gen Y women with mentorship, advice and wonderful career opportunities while also fostering a sense of community. The aim of the business is “to help women elevate all aspects of their career and provide tools to accelerate success.” In other words, the perfect business!
Levo is a Latin word, that means “to smooth, polish, or otherwise improve and is the root of the word elevate, which captures Levo League’s mission.” It was the two young women’s personal experiences that inspired them to start Levo League.
Amanda and Caroline, aged 27 and 26, met right in the crux of their post-college “real-life” transition; A studied Sociology at UC Berkeley while C studied International Political Economy and Environmental Economics at Stanford University. Amanda loves small surd towns, and Caroline, who has lived in Tokyo, San Francisco, Paris and New York, feels like those cities are complementary siblings. “You can never love one more,” she says, “you just love them differently“. Amanda and Caroline explain that there were many resources they wish they had access to after graduating. The two created Levo League “to bring together our peers and create a community of young professionals, mentors and companies who are engaged in supporting each other personally and professionally.”
There’s no doubt about it, A and C are our new fave power girls! With lots of personality and an awesome
attitude towards life in general, Caroline told us about how she played with the thought of owning her own business already back in Uni where she was heavily involved in student entrepreneurship, and attended Stanford in part to learn from Silicon Valley. She enjoys the chaos and thrive that comes through creation, and believes that “entrepreneurs can solve some of the world’s most complex issues through unprecedented avenues and creativity.” Caroline notes that the core question which came about in the process of creating Levo League was to figure out how one can “utilize technology to translate a fuzzy social good, like mentorship, into a scalable community.”
Amanda, on the other hand, never imagined becoming an entrepreneur. Her initial plan was to attend graduate school to become a professor of Organizational Behavior. Interestingly enough, she notes that as an entrepreneur, she is able to have the same impact as she would have had researching and lecturing on a college campus. “I can’t imagine doing anything else than what I am doing right now,” she notes.
When asked what defines a successful business, Caroline and Amanda explained that a solid structure is needed, and that the foundation of that structure starts with a co-founder. Both of the two balance each other out, and most importantly, they trust each other. C and A explained that they work really well together because they have complementary strengths and weaknesses and keep each other in check. And in order to overcome difficulties, these gorgeous ladies take things one day at a time, drawing their strength from the success stories of Levo’s community members: “Some days are harder than others, but we keep going because of our loyal community members.” They consider their biggest accomplishments to be the personal emails and stories from Levo’s members who have found jobs, mentors and new friends through the community.
Though Levo League was launched in NYC, the community is expanding to various cities across the US and the world through Local LEVO. Caroline and Amanda want women in all industries everywhere to be happy about their career choice and have a support community close to help them stay on top. We were excited to hear that there’s even one representatives based in the UK.
Stay tuned for new cities launching in 2013!